Country Club Heaven

Country Club Heaven

Why heaven might be big enough for people who don't believe the right stuff (you know, the stuff I believe)

All my life I've thought of heaven as a members only club.  You must believe in Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and accept Him into your heart.  What about the guy on a desert island who never hears of Jesus?  Or the poor kid that had the bad luck to be born into a Hindu or Muslim family?  Well, that's why we have missionaries-to share the bad news; unless you convert, you shall all likewise perish.  And God gives light enough so that even those people are without excuse...you accept the light God gives and you'll get more.  So that makes me wonder, in this country club Christianity of ours, how much light do you have to have to warrant TRUE "saving" faith?

We have to believe in Jesus, right?  But in what way?  Can the oneness Pentecostals who deny the distinct Persons within the Trinity yet affirm the deity of Jesus by saying that he is both Father and Holy Spirit as well as Son...Is their unorthodox view of the godhead ok enough to let them in (even though they might not want to let any of the Trinitarians in)?  What about the good Christian at First Anykind Church Anywhere USA who firmly believes in the Trinity and the deity of Christ but couldn't explain the first thing about what the Trinity means?  Do they believe in the right Jesus?  What about the guy who loves Jesus with all his heart but still talks about "God and Jesus" as though Jesus wasn't really God or even the Son of God because that guy isn't far enough along theologically to even care about it...and what if he dies before he has the good sense to care about such an important doctrine?

Can I doubt the literal nature of some of the miracles recorded in the gospel?  Can I believe that maybe Jesus didn't cast out literal demons but instead healed mental illnesses and still make it in?  Or does that doubt exclude me?  Where do we draw the line?  Is it the Nicene Creed or the Athanasian Creed?  Or the Apostle's Creed (the one not available at the time of the Apostles)?

I don't think I'm a universalist yet.  Because I am so convinced of the reality of Christ, I believe that every person who enters into eternal life will do so because of what Jesus did.  But I just can't wrap my head around the creedalism of all of Christianity (including the sects that reject Creeds) that says entrance into heaven is based on what someone believes.  I'm not saying what you believe doesn't matter...or that faith isn't what saves us.  I just think that grace and faith might be bigger concepts that anyone ever imagined.

Isn't that what the writer of Hebrews suggests when he says that Abraham was saved by faith?  Now, in my early days of preaching, I'd say that just like we look back to Jesus and the cross, Abraham looked forward to Jesus and the cross and was saved just like me.  But that's both unrealistic and not exactly scriptural.  Abraham just believed God.  And he was counted righteous because of it.  And I just don't believe Abraham had any concept of a Messiah, of a cross, of a sacrificial death of God.  It didn't coincide with his worldview and God was revealing God's self to Abraham in terms Abraham could understand.  Ultimately, and finally, God reveals God's self in Jesus who we all can understand, even if we don't all the time or until the end of time (?).  So Abraham is saved by God's grace-the grace that gives Abraham the faith to respond to God in the way God is calling at that time.  

So what if God isn't calling everyone to a commitment card to sign on the dotted line concerning Jesus?  What if, instead, God is at work in Jesus reconciling the world to God's self in radical ways for a radically diverse world?  The Methodists call it "prevenient grace."  Grace that precedes and is at work in a person long before they are even able to respond...the grace, indeed, that gives the person the ability to respond at all (hence, the response-ability).  It's why Methodists are quite comfortable baptizing infants while other traditions might hesitate because, after all, God is already at work in that infant's life in God's prevenient grace so why wouldn't we mark that child as a partaker in the covenant community of Christ?  Maybe God's prevenient grace in the world is also a prevalent grace that is at work in places and among peoples who don't yet (or may never) share our faith in Jesus but among whom Jesus is busy at work.  Maybe God's grace is preventative, keeping the human race from stumbling out of God's hand even if they change their doctrine and get it wrong (or never believe the right thing ever?).  Certainly it is a Providential grace that is working a much bigger plan than just the conversion of individuals to a doctrinal stance (even one related to the very person of Jesus himself).  

After all, when the centurion said "Surely this was a son of (the) god(s)" he didn't mean "Son of God" the way we Christians do and yet I fully believe God responded when Jesus asked the Father to forgive him.  And the thief on the cross-did he really understand the deity of Christ (the gospel writers believed he understood at least the kingship) even though Christ had not yet entered his glory?  And was that even an issue when Jesus welcomed him into the kingdom?  Yes, there's the question of the other "thief"...the question of persistent or hostile unbelief...questions after questions.  But they are that for me-questions.  For too many people they are certainties.  Certainties of what God requires a person to believe in order the get into club heaven.  Certainties I don't share because I'm not sure their heaven is big enough for all of my wrong beliefs.  They see Jesus as "THE Way" and I see Jesus as "the WAY."  And I'm just not sure that faith in God and what one believes about God are necessarily codependent.  Sometimes I think we believe God and it is counted to us for righteousness even when we don't get who the God we are believing in really is.  That was certainly true of all the disciples prior to the resurrection, Pentecost, and maybe even later than that.  It's been true of the developing beliefs (now dogmas) of Christianity for two thousand years now.    Sometimes I think maybe we don't even believe in God at all, but we do believe in the work God is doing in the world though we may not see the God doing it.  Maybe the atheists aren't as faithless as we accuse them of being.  I certainly see greater faith among them than in all of Israel many times.

Maybe the country club has a back room we neglect as we rattle on about things like "absolute truth" and "true faith" and "non negotiables."  I'm by no means certain.  I don't know if I believe everyone goes to heaven in the end.  But at least I can say that I hope so-and I hope if heaven is smaller than that it's at least big enough to fit all us Christians with our wrong beliefs in too.