Clearing Something Up

I feel the need to state something bluntly; whether or not you go to heaven when you die is not the point.

It's not what Jesus talked about.  His good news, the gospel, is not about how to get into heaven when you die.  It's not what those who wrote the various books of the bible talked about.  It simply is not the point.

For some reason, it is what many "christians" and "churches" have tried to make the point.  It's the infamous alter call, "If you were to die tonight, where would you go?"  Making getting to heaven and avoiding hell the point, is solely responsible for the salvation=free gift mentality that I wrote about in my last blog.  It is also responsible for the 77% of americans who claim to be christians (according to a December 2012 Gallup poll) while living in a decidedly un-christian nation.

How does that happen anyway?  How do so many claim to of the way of Jesus, and have the result be a nation that is marked by greed, and excess, and hate, and bigotry, and abuses of all varieties, and the list goes on?

In the 1960's, the number of americans claiming christianity was at 90%.  That's a fairly steep drop.  What is interesting is that of that nearly 40 million people, most of those have not abandoned religion in general, but instead have embraced the idea that all roads lead to heaven and it is shallow and small minded to claim that Jesus is the only way.

So let me state again, Jesus' point was never about how to get to heaven when you die.

But didn't Jesus say, "I am the way the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father accept through me."  

Yes, but notice what He did not say, "...No one gets into heaven accept through me."

When getting into heaven becomes the point, then I begin to look for the least exhaustive means of entry, the minimum requirement.  Jesus came to offer something different.  Jesus came to offer life; a certain kind of life that only the Father has to offer.  Jesus' good news is that God is eager to rescue all of humankind into this new kind of life.  Right now.  As we are.  Today.

So for Jesus to claim that He alone knows the Father but His desire is to make the introduction to all of humanity, then it is not exclusive, just a statement of what He alone has to offer.  He is offering God's kind of life.  If you want to know more about it, you've got to come to Him, on His terms, with the intent to learn.  He's the teacher.  He's the master.

His good news, His gospel, His message belongs to Him.  It's His.  He is the only one offering it.  You can look for life on your own, He won't stop you.  You can look to another teacher, another rabbi, another god, another master, He won't interfere, it just won't be His gospel.  

So the real question that should begin to form is not which of these roads, if not all of them, get us to heaven when we die; but instead, what kind of life today is Jesus offering that He is claiming no one else can?

Now this is where things begin to get exciting...