Who Gets to Go to Heaven?

Great questions! I appreciate you asking and I appreciate even more the opportunity to answer them.

"Who gets to go to heaven, since that's what being a Christian is about?"

Okay, so if you read through the New Testament, when there is a challenge to "obey God" or "follow Jesus" or whatever, heaven is never really offered as the incentive or prize. The ultimate "aim" of the New Testament is the fulfilling of the Old Testament expectations that go all the way back to Genesis 1, where God "walked in the Garden" with Adam and Eve. God's purpose for humanity is to live with humans (not to "take humans to heaven to live with him"):

1) God rescued the Israelite slaves from Egypt not just in answer to their cries of despair, but so they could "worship him in the wilderness"--where they established all of the laws, the tabernacle, sacrifices, etc., that would enable them to live with him in their presence.

2) When Solomon built the Temple, God deigned to "live there" although he doesn't require a building created by human hands.

3) When Israel was removed from the Promised Land, it wasn't just their removal, but God's presence left the Temple (as per Ezekiel). The promises of Isaiah were that one day God would return (promises that the New Testament writers applied to Jesus).

4) Explicit in the Lord's Prayer is the request that "God's Kingdom would come," not that we would leave.

5) The climax of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, has "heaven coming down to earth," fulfilling all the promises and expectations from the very beginning.

Again, none of the New Testament "gospel preaching" carries with it the offer to "go to heaven when we die."

Okay...what about "eternal life"? Sure...somewhat. "Eternal life" is a John phrase, used almost equivalently to the "Kingdom of God" in the Synoptics (actually, Matthew uses "Kingdom of Heaven" as a Jewish euphemism, likely to avoid using "God" casually, and this unfortunately sets us up to understand "Kingdom of God" as "heaven" because we're culturally removed. Better to read "Kingdom of Heaven" as "Kingdom of God").

The Roman Catholic Church over time emphasized the almost Gnostic idea of an immaterial spiritual heaven that was so perfect that purgatory was required to "purge us" of whatever sin was left over (actually denying to some extent the efficacy of Jesus' sacrifice, which is a whole other topic). Generally speaking, the Reformers rejected the idea of purgatory as "unbiblical" but (accidentally?) retained the idea of that immaterial spiritual heaven at the expense of the biblical idea of "heaven coming to earth."

So..."live forever"? Sure. But that's hardly "it." The point is God restoring all things and making all things right. For everybody? Some people think so...a minority (in other words, God's love is so powerful that ultimately it is irresistible).

But we have Platonized Christianity, adopting an "eternal soul" view, which just isn't really in there. First of all, our image of "hell" comes more from Dante than scripture. Flames? Okay...that is "lake of fire" imagery, but Revelation says that hell and death are destroyed in the lake of fire...so...? Jesus uses the term "outer darkness"...so...black flames? Yes, extreme literalists have postulated black flames in the desperate attempt to avoid any metaphor whatsoever. Oh, you can read about "eternal torment" which is more likely "eternal punishment" or "eternal destruction" in the original language--which evokes an idea of "permanence" rather than "perpetuation." I really like C.S. Lewis's idea that if we refuse to say "your will be done" then he will say to us, "your will be done," i.e., we reap the natural consequences of our rejection of God/goodness.

Still begs the question, who "gets in" and who is "cast out"?

Ultimately, that's up to God. For some people, it's about acquiescing verbally to the right set of propositions and that's it. "I believe that Jesus is the Son of God." Big frickin' deal. What does that even mean? If it's just words you're saying and you can't explain what it means and it has no impact on your life, it's meaningless. The biblical idea of "faith" (Gr., pistis) is both belief/trust/faith and faithfulness. A legitimate idea gaining popularity lately is the idea that the best single word to describe faith today is allegiance (like: "fealty"). "Jesus is Lord" is the central idea of Christianity--the one who deserves our loyalty. Honestly, regardless of what you believe about the Trinity or ordinances or even his divinity?

There's a lot of leeway there...Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, whatever. Frankly, I don't even think those labels mean much in the grand scheme of things. It has become pretty apparent that you can be a "member in good standing" in a church or denomination and be so corrupt that any allegiance to Jesus himself is completely absent, certainly compared to demonstrated allegiances to money or the pursuit of power or self-interest at the expense of certain people groups or whatever.

What I have a harder time grasping (but I think there's something there) is this:

What about those that have not rejected Jesus, but have rejected a caricature of him? Who have rejected a "white Jesus toting a bazooka who is just itching to blow away the Muslims and the gays, etc." or the "Republican Jesus" or the "Democrat Jesus" or the "anti-science Jesus" (there's a whole conversation there about each one of those Jesuses...Jesi?). What about those who have rejected the name of Jesus but have accepted and adopted allegiance to the Name of Jesus--his character, his self-sacrificial love, his resurrection life, even if they don't identify it with the historical crucified/resurrected Jewish Messiah, because the latter has been so distorted to them as to be unrecognizable?

How's that for a response? I welcome responses to my response...