A couple weeks ago, a friend asked an interesting question. He asked, “Where do Christians go when they die and where do non-Christians go?” Many people around us tried to offer their own quick thinking answers, but I prayed in that moment, “God give me an answer that will reveal your truth, but in a way that is palatable to my friend.” In that moment I believe I received an answer that is worthy of our consideration today. It is not necessarily a perfect answer, but I believe it might flush out some issues that concern us in the area of eternal destinations. The different ways Christians have answered this question in the past have offended and put off non-Christians for sometime (for some right and some wrong reasons). I would offer my explanation as one that might be easier to swallow, but still maintains the truth that orthodox Christians hold onto.
The word “follow” occurs 48 times in the New American Standard translation of the New Testament. “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Matthew 4:19) “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.” (Matthew 10:38) “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” (John 10:27) The word “Christian” occurs only twice in the Bible, and Jesus is not the speaker of either instance. In scripture, the people which we would refer to as Christians are either called “followers or “disciples” (according to Merriam-Webster “a convinced adherent of a school or individual” or in layman’s terms “a learner). Followers or disciples hold onto three distinct things that set them apart from others. First, they are about the things Jesus is about. Second, they do the things that Jesus does. Finally, they follow Jesus where He goes. In modern times there are many different views as to what makes a person a Christian, but I would insist that these things have to be true about a person in order to call them a Christian.
So if we have these Christians who are following Jesus, the next question obviously is, “Where are they going?” If Jesus calls people to follow Him, then obviously He must be headed somewhere. Well Christ is leading His followers to many places. I think Christ is leading people to divine self-improvement; He wants His followers to improve their lives by living as He dictates. I also believe that Christ is leading people to a place where reconciliation happens. Part of Jesus’ purpose was to renew relationships. He wanted to see people coming together as people again in healthy ways. There are many other places Christ is going, but finally we are promised that Christ is leading His followers to heaven. In John chapter 14 verses two and three Jesus says, “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.” Christ went to Heaven to prepare a place for Christians and He is going to come back so that they may follow Him there.
So that answers part one of the question. Christians go to heaven when they die. Why? Because that is where Christ is going to ultimately go and Christians are going to follow Him there. But the second part of the question still remains unanswered. In John 14:6 Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” Well, the Lord’s Prayer begins with, “Our Father who is in heaven,” (Matthew 6:9) so what Christ is telling us is no one goes to heaven except through Him. Even though Christ said it and we should simply take Him at His word, I think I have found a logical explanation for why this is so. If Christians are those people who are following Jesus, then it is understood that non-Christians are people who are not following Jesus. They may be following someone or something else, or nothing in particular, but we know they are not following Christ. Logically, if people are not following where Christ is going, they are not going to end up at Christ’s destination. Heaven is not a place that is randomly stumbled upon, rather it is intently sought after.
I have heard many times from many people, “I believe I am going to heaven because I have lived a good life.” I applaud people who live good lives (although I might point out that their lives were possibly not as good as they thought), but mere moral obedience is not a summary of following. Clearly, Christ urged His followers, “Go. From now on sin no more.” (John 8:11) But there is so much more to following Christ than just living good lives. Think about it this way. To get from point A to point B you must travel exactly 200 miles north. If you leave from point A traveling northwest, you will not reach point B. You may insist, I was going fairly north, and I will forever agree with you (Northwest is much closer to North than South). But regardless of closeness it still will not get you to point B. Though in the beginning of your journey you may be close to the right path, as you continue on in the wrong direction you will only get further from the right path. A life lived in obedience to a half-Jesus will take you somewhere, but it will not be where Christ himself is.
To close, I would like to clarify what being a follower of Jesus looks like. A follower is about what Christ is about, does what Jesus does and goes where Christ goes. His obedience is not to be perfect in all his actions (for if that were the standard none would follow with any success), but rather obedience is continuing to follow. In addition, his obedience is one that moves. There is no standing still because Jesus is not stationary. We are either moving along with Christ or getting further from Him. It is because Christ was about making followers that Paul wrote using the analogy of a runner, “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.” (1 Corinthians 9:24) How do we run that we may win? We do it by running in close proximity to Jesus.
As I have been reading and thinking lately, I have begun to notice a pattern in the way people view and worship God. I suppose it would be more appropriate to say that a majority of people do not worship one God, but many different individual gods. Anyone who studies history is aware that most of the religions in human history have been polytheistic, that is having more than one god. When we study Egyptian, Greek or Roman mythologies, we see deities which all usually represent something different. When I think about some hypothetical reality where there are many gods each with their own sphere of control, unique personality, and level of affinity for humans, I must admit that I am not particularly comforted by divinity. Who wants to live in such a paranoid, inconsistent world? But nonetheless people embrace polytheism (in many different ways), and the reasoning behind this fact is what I intend to examine.
I would like to propose that people embrace polytheism for three major reasons. They are comprehension, comfort, and compatibility. People want to be able to fully comprehend our deities. We want to be able to understand and explain them. We also want to feel comfortable with whatever sort of divinity we are going to encounter. We don’t want any sort of surprises to shift the current paradigm. Lastly, we want to be compatible with our gods. One god gives us a much smaller chance of compatibility than many gods with their own variations.
In C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, the George MacDonald character says to the Lewis character, “You cannot understand eternal reality by definition.” We like to think that we have God figured out and thus we try to define Him. The problem with this goes to the very nature of definition. When we define something, we describe it by its purpose and its limitations. However, when we are speaking of an infinite being we have trouble narrowing down a concise purpose or establishing any limitation. I would propose that this is one problem that people use polytheism to try to solve. When we have many gods we can understand them better because we generally have them each serve a specific purpose that we can clearly identify. In ancient cultures nature was a great mystery and thus they created many gods to help them understand the goings on (i.e. Poseidon controls the seas, Zeus controls thunder). We create our own little systems with their own hierarchies of gods who understandable and explainable.
Stemming from the idea of comprehension, comfort is another reason people create their own gods to rule the world. We desperately want to feel good about this place we are in. When we comprehend our nice, neat deities with their beginnings and ends, we can be a lot more comfortable with ourselves. If I keep my gods in my proverbially pocket, I don’t have to worry about the unknown. In ancient Greek mythology the gods were concerned very little with human welfare and when they were it was a concern of wrath or anger. By being able to clearly identify what gods are responsible for what men are able to navigate their own world while stepping on as few of the gods’ toes as possible.
Completing the idea, men are attracted to polytheism because they have a better chance of finding compatibility with the divine. One god with a concrete attributes presents a problem to a person who likes to have things their own way. One god has implications, whereas many gods offer choice. If I don’t like god x, I will simply turn to god y to have my needs fulfilled. However, if god x is my only option, then perhaps the change is not required in the creator, but in the creature. One god might ask something of us rather than us asking of it.
I hope I have been able to offer some insight into the nature and reasoning behind man’s creation of many gods. But it would be easy to simply say, “Look how crazy the pagans are,” and completely miss the plank found in our own eye. We Christians (that is, followers of Christ) are equally guilty of the same crime. Though we profess to believe in one God eternally existent in three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we rarely worship Him and Him alone. First, we Christians have a difficult time serving our true master. John Calvin wrote in his Institutions of Christian Religion, that our hearts are idol factories. We will look to anything and everything before we will look to God. Anything can become God to us: money, sex, sports, fame, relationships, children, and the list goes on and on. This is the obvious instance of serving multiple gods in the Christian life, but there is another that has infiltrated the spirituality of following Christ.
What I am referring to can be best described as essence worship. Christians will fall victim to this trap, but surrender to it is not an acceptable option. Essence worship is when we take different attributes of God or the Christian life and we make them the god of our lives. For instance, I once had a conversation with a street preacher who goes out and preaches “the Gospel” on Friday nights near some local bars near my college. In our chat the man told me how God had called him to preach a specific message: a warning of God’s wrath on the sinners of the world. However, what he publicly declared did not speak of God’s plan for the redemption of mankind. What he claimed that God told him to preach is a half gospel, which is no gospel at all.
If we intend to follow Christ, we must be ever vigilant that we present Christ in His entirety. It would be easy to be caught up in one aspect of Christ, but that one aspect is not Christ himself. It could happen with anything-the Bible, the Spiritual Gifts, theology, particular ministries-and we are at constant risk of making something else our God. It is understandable that we struggle with this; the God of the universe is infinitely complex and there is always more to find of Him. In 1 Timothy Paul wrote, “Great is the mystery of godliness.” We will never be able to fully comprehend the greatness of God, but settling for just one part of Him is not only idolatry, it is also unacceptable.
