Around the time I released my first book in 2010, I remember a group of young bloggers who represented the newer, more compassionate face of Christianity.
I always remember the story one of them told about his friend from another religion who asked if he thought she was going to hell.
I remember the story highlighting the tension of “I have friends who are different than me” versus “How do I stay true to my beliefs when confronted with a black-and-white question when the answer could be hurtful?”
I also remember being saddened by his resolution of this tension.
The way I remember it, he said something like, “What else could I tell her? I told her yes, I thought she was going to hell.” That ended their years-long friendship.
He agonized, saying he had no idea what else to say. I want to take a shot at a different type of answer.
Your friend, acquaintance, or co-worker asks, “Do you think because you are Christian and I am not, that you are going to heaven and I am going to hell?”
How do you respond? A great deal of that depends on how you think.
If you think of Heaven as a reward or destination for those who have gotten it right, another fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you will be locked into potentially divisive answers.
What if Heaven is another dimension or type of reality? This can change more than answers to difficult questions. It can change our life.
As Dallas Willard famously said, “We spend too much time trying to get people into heaven and not enough trying to get heaven into people.”
Even if getting it right means placing our faith in Jesus, it is the Heaven-as-destination thought that is so problematic.
What if instead of asking, “Is Jesus the only way to heaven?” we ask, “How does this spiritual dimension enter my soul?”
The offer of Jesus was not a set of principles or guiding values that would help us live rightly.
The offer of Jesus was the restoration of the integrated spiritual and material nature of the human soul.
Jesus was not telling people how to get to heaven. Rather, He was letting us know that heaven was present and available now: the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
What happens when the source of all life offers to people cut off from that life an opportunity again to receive?
Is the question “Is Jesus the only way?” Or is it, “Is Jesus, the author and source of aliveness, offering to connect us again to that from which we have disconnected?”
Now my friend asks me, “Do you think I am going to hell?” and it is my turn to answer.
I say, “I think it is so sad that this is the conversation that Christians and non-Christians engage, as if it is a better-than-less-than proposition. Let’s talk about heaven in a different way.”
“I think my picture of heaven may be very different than what you think it is. I do not think heaven is some destination for those who got it right. I think heaven is a spiritual dimension, present today and now, and I think Jesus’ offer was that this realm could also enter my soul.”
“In my mind it is less about our destination and much more about the nature of what makes us all fully alive, when we were originally made to be both physical and spiritual beings. It seems to me that only the source of spiritual life could restore that.”
“No set of principles, no prophet, no human, and no human strategy can place spiritual life back in our souls. Only the source of life can give spiritual life to us. It is not just that Jesus is the only way, it is that He is the only one offering new birth.”
“Before the question ‘Are you going to hell?’ I would ask you, what is true about you on the inside? What is your source of life and identity? Does it come from you or to you? Is it material or spiritual? Is your way to the divine following principles, or the Divine One Himself?”
These conversations could be about the nature of reality and belief systems rather than a comparison of “You are going to hell and I am not.”
I see Jesus talk much more about present engagement and relationship than about destination hell.
When we think of the question “Is Jesus the only way?” as a comparison of religious beliefs and figures, we miss the rich discussion of the spiritual dimension, the nature of man, and the offer of the Creator of all humankind.