Heaven and Hell
I have been feeling for a long time that western Christianity, both protestant and Catholic, is somewhat dysfunctional because they don’t talk about heaven and hell very much. I know growing up as an evangelical we believed in heaven and hell but we didn’t really see it as a motivator for our actions. Salvation was a free gift that did not depend at all on works of any kind. So connecting it with daily life was heresy. We mocked the fundamentalists with their “turn or burn” sermons. We preached on the love of God and the fact that a holy life was a happy life. It was a more sophisticated, more affirming spirituality.
On the Catholic side it seems like some statements from Vatican II on the potential salvation of non-Catholics were pushed way beyond their intent. They were used to essentially deny the reality of mortal sin. Just because there might be some protestants or non-Christians saved didn’t mean that was guaranteed or even probable. It seems like we take any opportunity to disconnect our eternal destiny from our moral behavior. The trouble is it tends to make us quite complacent. We have the twin vices of despair and presumption that both lead to less positive action.
Today I read this quote from CS Lewis:
Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.
It is a bit like saving yourself for marriage. When you do it does not mean you relationships as a single suffer. Quite the opposite. They flourish because you have set the bar so high in terms of authentic love and commitment. Thinking of heaven forces us to set our bar high. It calls us to strive to be what we know we can be both as individuals and as community. It prevents us from being satisfied with the things of this world. That gives us the grace to want to change this world and make it more heavenly.
Of course, it is not the teaching on heaven that scares us. It is teaching on hell. But you can’t have one without the other. Talking about heaven without contemplating hell is meaningless. We end up just projecting our evil desires into heaven. Like the Moslem idea of be rewarded with a bunch of virgins for endless cheap sex. That is much more like hell than heaven. We already have that on earth in you local porn shop. That is precisely what we should be trying to transform.
