Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No Hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one.
- John Lennon’s “Imagine”
All hell has broken out. 'Time' has done a cover story on the subject as has 'Good Morning America' and the 'Sunday Morning NBC Chris Matthews Show.' It's all because an evangelical mega-church preacher, Rob Bell of the 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church of Grand Rapids, Michigan, finds himself in hot water. Or, should I say facing 'fire and brimstone,' with the release of his new book, 'Love Wins.' The book debunks the idea that non-Christians are all suffering for eternity in hell fire just because they don’t believe as Christians believe.
Hell’s fire concerning Bell’s book has spread across the American landscape. Its flames blazed when a North Carolina pastor in the United Methodist Church, Chad Holtz, agreed with Bell’s position on his Facebook page.
Members of Holtz’ Henderson, North Carolina congregation complained to the United Methodist district superintendent and Pastor Holtz was removed from his position within two days of the Facebook entry.
Many of the evangelical brothers and sisters of Pastor Bell are condemning him for promoting Universalism, the belief that all people, regardless of their specific beliefs, are eligible for redemption and salvation. The religiously conservative blogosphere is overflowing with criticisms of Pastor Bell and his book for being “unbiblical” and for luring unsophisticated and naïve Christians away from the doctrines of the true Christian Church.
Doctrinaire United Methodists have supported the removal of Pastor Holtz from his pastorate on the grounds that, by his Facebook comments, he was undermining the authority of United Methodist doctrine.
This accusation is made even as the United Methodist’s Book of Discipline makes no specific statement on the nature of heaven or hell. The discipline does include the Confession of Faith of the Evangelical Brotherhood that became a part of the United Methodist Church in 1963. Article XII of the confession affirms a belief in life eternal for the righteous and endless condemnation for the wicked, but the meaning of statements like these have always been open to interpretation.
This statement, along with the fact that John Wesley stated a firm belief in hell in his sermons, assures the doctrinaire United Methodists that Pastor Holtz should be removed from his pulpit.
Once again we are witnessing the ever-present antipathy that exists between people who take their faith literally, and those who understand faith to be a metaphorical process.
Fundamentalists and those of a more progressive persuasion continuously find themselves in opposition to one another. The disagreements are always centered on whether scripture is to be understood literally as the inerrant word of God, or whether the sacred writings are simply inspirational and open to creative interpretation and criticism. The current dispute about heaven and hell arises out of this very same ground of dispute.
As we witness the religious debate that has now risen to the surface, we are given cause to wonder just what it is we really believe and why we believe it.
Do we believe there is really a literal heaven and hell? If we do, where are they?
Is heaven really somewhere out there in the sky or in outer space? If it is really a literally geographical place, will the Hubble telescope encounter it? Is hell really somewhere down below the surface of the earth? If you could actually see or visit these two worlds, would you find people enjoying the bliss of paradise or the torments of hell?
Perhaps, after concluding a literal heaven and hell makes little sense, do we abandon a belief in these realms altogether?
Maybe we concur with Pastor Bell that a hell that must include, for instance, a Gandhi. Because he was not a Christian, is that unjust?
Perhaps the injustice of it all causes us to reject an affirmation of heaven and hell as the eternal abode for our souls? If we deny the existence of a heaven or a hell, what then happens to any sense of justice that might transcend the short span of our lives? Does an Adolf Hitler, in the end, die free of responsibility for the crimes he committed against humanity and those crimes against any sense of what might be deemed Divine?
Heaven and hell does not have to be accepted or rejected based on whether they literally exist. There is another way. It is the way of metaphor.
Heaven and hell can be experienced and understood not as literal places in time and space, but as a way to express something even more profound and meaningful. Heaven is not somewhere. Rather it is everywhere since it is the abode of God, and God is everywhere. To be with God, to be engaged with what is Holy, is a heavenly experience.
Wherever and whenever we find ourselves at peace, when we are experiencing love shared, when we are in a state of awe because of life’s beauty, it is to know Divinity and to dwell in heaven.
Even in the midst of life’s tragedies, as we find ourselves in deep pain and sadness, we discover how a kind gesture, a loving hand, or just light shining through a window can touch us with heaven’s bliss.
Likewise, as heaven is a metaphor for experiencing the Divine, hell is realizing we are cut off from such heavenly experiences. Sometimes we cut ourselves off through our selfishness. Sometimes we just simply choose to live in the dark rather than facing the light. Hell is a metaphor for a life lived in despair.
Both heaven and hell are experiences of the kind of life we choose by our actions and inactions as we relate to others and to the world. While we are alive, we all have the opportunity to choose heavenly or hellish lives.
Along with the metaphors for heaven and hell there is another metaphor that helps to make sense of it all. It is that of eternity.
Most often we think of eternity in a chronological sense. A literal eternity becomes the time in which a literal heaven and hell exist.
Our deep religious traditions offer another way of understanding time and eternity. It is centered in the quality of the time experienced rather than its quantity.
In Greek, time is called kairos as opposed to chronos. Kairos concerns the depth of time experienced and not its measure. Kairos has sometimes been called “God’s Time.”
Heaven and hell are always experienced in this way. Heaven knows the depth of life possible in the presence of the Divine. Hell knows life’s emptiness and despair without a sacred center. These experiences are eternal because they are beyond measure.
Is there a Heaven? Is there a Hell? The answer is yes, but they might be quite different than what too many of us have come to believe. Can we imagine a new heaven and a new earth for our lives?
