Imagine There's No Heaven?

I recently enjoyed watching the opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics. It inspires me to see people from the nations of the world come together for a peaceful competition that promotes understanding through a common language of sports.

But one part of the pageantry made me wonder. That was when four Korean singers offered a rendition of John Lennon’s song, “Imagine.” You’ve heard that song and know that it begins with the words, “Imagine there’s no heaven.” While I love the image of people living together in peace, I am very skeptical of the path that the song describes as a way to get there.  

For instance, one line lifts up a vision where people have “…nothing to kill or die for. And no religion too.” I get the part about not giving people a reason to kill other people. I agree that beliefs about an other worldly heaven and hell can be used to manipulate or control people and that does lead to divisions and wars. But that is a result of human nature and not what I think Jesus intended. The Bible is clear that God so loved this world that he sent Jesus to save it. Jesus tried to give us a clear image of heaven so that we could make it a reality in our lives today. He taught his followers to pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Any beliefs about what happens to people after they die should give more importance to this life and not less.

A healthier aspect of beliefs about heaven and hell is the truth that there are consequences to our actions. The wages of sin is death. We cannot escape that fact. The wrath of God is simply the truth. By only living in the moment without a view of the bigger picture that a relationship with God can give us, we can make choices for pleasure now that will lead to harm and a lack of life later. Instead of a way to control people, beliefs about heaven and hell can bring about an evaluation of our behaviors that can help to save life. (Our care for the environment is a prime example. There is hell to pay for our actions if we damage our world.) Hell is real when people are living for themselves and tormented by their own self-centeredness and isolation.   

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is one of the best examples of a person who not only imagined a brotherhood of man, but also worked to make it happen. His vision and motivation came from his relationship with God through Jesus. In 1963 he said this: “There are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for. And I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

I’m not interested in religion. I am interested in relationships. I believe that it is my relationship with Jesus that empowers me to love my neighbor as myself and to even to love my enemy. That kind of self sacrificing love doesn’t come to us naturally. We have to receive that love in order to share it. That is the story behind the season of Lent, Good Friday and Easter. Through the life, death, sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus, God offers us a taste of heaven in a relationship that can bring peace to relationships with the people around us. There will be safety in those relationships because of the truth and love that comes from God and we can offer to others.  

Are there divisions between you and the people around you? What can we do to live together in peace? To follow the example of Jesus I will seek to listen and understand their perspective so that I can earn their trust. When they feel safe with me we can find a way forward together.

By imagining my relationship with God in heaven I can bring a taste of heaven and a life of peace to the relationships in the world where I live. What about you?