Me: What do you think happens when people die?
Aaron: We say goodbye to them.
Jordan: I think their soul goes out.
Rachel: I agree, we say goodbye to them. What do you mean, their soul goes out?
Jordan: At the moment people die I think their soul goes out of them. [He made a wiggly motion away from his chest.]
Rachel: Does it go somewhere?
Jordan: I don't know.
Rachel: I don't know either.
Jordan: I think maybe it goes to us, so that we remember them. I think maybe that is how we remember them.
Rachel: Wow. I think that is pretty great. I don't know what happens after people die, but I like your idea a lot.
And then I launched into this other part:
Rachel: Another story about what happens when people die is that there is a wonderful place called heaven, and your soul goes there when you die. I don't believe this story myself, but it is a story that is special to Christian people. One story is that heaven is up in the clouds.
Jordan: I don't think your soul goes up in the clouds.
Aaron: I don't think anyone goes up in the clouds unless there is a rocket ship. And then you go to space.
Jordan: And your soul wouldn't go in a rocket ship.
Rachel: I don't believe this story either, but some people like this story. Another part of this story is that your soul only goes to heaven if you are good and you do good things. If you do bad things, you go to another place called hell.
Aaron: If you do bad things you go there?
Rachel: That's the story.
Aaron: What is it like there?
Rachel: Supposedly it's full of fire and monsters and devils.
I was trying to be casual, but I think Aaron's imagination took him somewhere awful very fast, because his eyes got big and he started to tremble and blink back tears. I instantly regretted the whole conversation - now my poor baby is worried about going to hell!? Scrambling to get out of it, I said,
Rachel: Aaron Aaron I forgot to tell you that there is an important rule about who can never go to hell. Do you want to hear it?
Aaron [little voice shaking]: Yes?
Rachel: Children. Children can never go to hell.
Aaron: They can't?
Rachel: Right. Because children are not bad. Children are learning.
[There was a collective puff of relief. Both Aaron and Jordan looked very grateful to be hearing this piece of news and got out of their chairs.]
Rachel: Like if a little kid broke something, they didn't do it on purpose, they are just learning.
Jordan [standing up to explain]: Kids make mistakes. Kids don't mean to hurt anyone.
Aaron [waving his arms]: Like if a kid broke his brother's toy he didn't mean to do it, it just broke.
I even think this is true, isn't it? Innocent youths? I guess it depends on your convictions. Well, I hereby refuse to educate my kids about any religion that threatens to send little kids to hell. And it was time to change the subject.
Rachel: Right. Now heaven, on the other hand, the story is that heaven is this wonderful place where everything is good.
Jordan: Is everything made of candy?
Rachel: Actually they say the streets are made of gold.
Jordan: Wow!
Aaron: And what else?
Rachel: All your friends will be there, and all the people you love.
Aaron [dancing around the kitchen]: Emanuel will be there, and Finn, and Sean and Henry! [All of whom are alive and well, and of a variety of religious persuasions. Never mind.]
There followed a very excited and imaginative babbling about what heaven would be like. Both kids got so into it they pushed the dinner dishes out of the way and started drawing heaven. Aaron drew himself sitting on a cloud and wanted to know how to spell "Whee!" because it would be so fun.
Jordan drew this fascinating image:
Those are the streets of gold, and green fields, and "a giant portable box of candy." A friend pointed out that it is a crossroads, as well, which struck her as auspicious.
The conversation was really out of my hands by now, but I tried to cram through to my point, which was that the baby Jesus grew up into the man Jesus, who had a lot of very good ideas and instructions for how to live a good life, and that the Christian story that if you live the way that Jesus said, you would go to heaven. And that Christmas is Jesus's birthday, so songs like Away in the Manger are for saying that when Jesus was born it was very special. Amen.
8 comments:
OK, you asked for a comment. I must admit that what happens after one dies is a really big deal for us Christians. Yet, I don't think about it. My wife asks me where I think our friend X is, who just passed away after struggling valiantly with cancer for several years. Dianna then gets impatient with my stubborn refusal to speculate.
I don't believe that heaven is a physical location. Jesus said that the Kingdom of heaven is within us. (I don't think he meant it is next to the gallbladder.) Nor did he speak about streets of gold.
There is a huge debate about hell. Some people think of it as a literal location, with fire and brimstone. Others think of it as a place of voluntary spiritual exile. All SPU students read an essay by Orthodox theologian Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, entitled "Dare we hope for the salvation of all?" in which he shares the long tradition of universalists (Christian teachers who throughout the ages taught that God, in his love for humankind, cannot possible stand that anyone should suffer eternally, and therefore chooses to save everyone.)
Who knows?
Rather than concentrating on the unknowable, many Christians pay more attention to Christ's promise of the transfiguration of the present being. In Christian anthropology, humans--all humans, and especially Christians--are sick in need of healing. Christ is the healer, the medicine, and the hospital.
Sorry, Unknown is Stamatis.
Another explanation for why it is good to follow Jesus' teachings is not to GET to heaven, but to BRING heaven here. ("On earth as it is in heaven.")
Theologian/novelist C.S. Lewis (in The Great Divorce) gives a less scary description of hell: in The Great Divorce, when people die, they either go to heaven (where everything is "more real" than on earth) or to what is essentially an endless suburb. In the endless suburb, people continually build gray houses further and further apart from one another, alienating themselves more and more from one another and from what is real. A bus comes by on a regular basis to take people from the drab suburb to heaven, but a lot of the suburb-people find heaven to be TOO real, too overwhelming, and they choose dull lonliness over the bright colors and powerful emotions of heaven. But God keeps sending out the bus, hoping that at some point in eternity, the suburb/hell people will choose community and love.
Of course, Lewis's story isn't canonized, but I rather prefer it to Dante's descriptions.
Hell is also in SE Michigan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell,_Michigan
(Julie)
I'm grateful you asked. I've actually thought about Jordan's picture a lot since you posted it on Facebook. My response to it reminds me of my favorite, favorite part of being a graduate student at UW: being in an office with atheists who tell me what they think Christians think, and then me realizing that's not what I think at all, and then needing to find a way to articulate what I think and why I think that way. (I got asked by my church to talk about being a graduate student at UW, and the most important thing I had to say was that I was so grateful for my dear atheist friends who had refined my faith by their curiosity. I honestly don't think that's what my church had in mind, but it was my truth.) I realized that Jordan's representation of heaven doesn't match mine, and I imagined how I would tell him about my own, were he to ask me.
I think of heaven primarily in terms of clarity and presence: that it is a place where we are known and understood fully by God and by our fellow heaven-inhabitants -- and where we know and understand God and one another fully -- and it is a place of presence, where we are (and can be) fully there, all of ourselves, and where God is. I think of hell in the opposite terms: a place where God is absent and where things are kind of muddy and unclear.
I really like Julie's example from the Great Divorce, and I also like another metaphor from Lewis' "The Last Battle." In that story, all of the people of Narnia are ushered into Aslan's kingdom, but not all of them know it, and not all of them see it clearly. For example, there's a group of dwarves that keep bumping into the trees in Narnia, as though they don't see where they're going. I'm still figuring out all of the implications of this for me, but the metaphor informs my sense of heaven being about clarity, at least in part.
My understanding of how one 'gets' to heaven or hell only makes sense in light of the cross. My understanding is that there is nothing one can _do_ to get to heaven; Jesus' death and forgiveness are the atonement and redemption that're necessary. Meaning: I get to go to heaven because Jesus went to hell -- that place of absence and muddiness -- for me. So I get to heaven by accepting that forgiveness and atonement, not by _doing_ anything particularly good or heaven-worthy myself. (Sam's asked me how to make sense of "Jesus dying for my sins" and why Christians say it, and I think I can answer this question, if you're interested. I know it can sound kind of cryptic.)
By the way, your kids' questions are super refining for me. I'd be MORE than happy to talk about anything they ask, with them or with you. (You know my number.) I think it would probably help me more than it would help any of you! :)
Most of what I have to say about dying reduces to "I don't know." Even some things that I ought to know, or have been taught, by my religious practice. But despite my ultimately not knowing, I also have some strong opinions - again these may or may not be in line with what I've been taught by my church (the Episcopal Church). First, I do not believe at all in the idea of afterlife as reward or punishment. I think the whole idea is quite demeaning, and I have a hard time keeping a cool head about it. What simplistic, insulting garbage, not fit for any precious and wonderfully complex human person. Sorry to offend anyone. But I REALLY hate the idea of sorting people into insiders and outsiders. and I hate the idea that people assume that's what Christians are up to. I realize that some Christians say explicitly that this is the point of or essential to Christianity. In my opinion, they are wrong, and they have a poor understanding of their own religion. It seems so obvious that the idea of sorting is a projection of (not the best parts of) human psychology onto the universe.
Let me also say that the idea of "God" is problematic - that is, it can and should be problematized - What sorts of things could we possibly mean when we say "God"? Surely metaphor is involved in our various images. But leaving that aside, I (officially) believe as a Christian, that as (or in place of) final judgment, God offers grace: love, acceptance, understanding, forgiveness, for everyone, regardless of anything. Then, we all may accept or refuse the gift. (Is it binary? Is it a matter of degree - to what degree do we accept? Hell if I know. Surely these schematizations are yet more metaphorical projections.) Religious practice is therefore the preparation, or training, of the person, and community, to receive this gift. It can be received now, though I personally vary in my own ability, or frequency, or depth, with which I accept it. Can it be received after death? I don't know. When I don't feel optimistic about my ability to accept the gift with the constraints of having the body and brain that I have, I wish that there will be an opportunity for me to do it at or after death, when I can more effectively let go. I hope to be able to let go in this way while I live - or put differently, I expect that there will be a high degree or quality of living that is inaccessible to me until I really let go and accept the gift.
I think Hell is a terrible idea, i.e., constructed to terrify people, in order to get them to behave certain ways. Terrorism, I guess. What is Heaven? I'd rather not speculate. But dammit, there had better be something, because I have a lot of questions, and I want the mystery revealed. Maybe it's something about whether we, at death, can manage to offer ourselves for inclusion, to be received, thinking ourselves worthy enough to be sustained, or to continue, in whatever form, for whatever purpose or adventure. As opposed to an idea or choice, or whatever, to discontinue, to opt out, to end. I really don't know.
But to restate my most urgent point: I do not believe that our fate depends on how we behave. But it might depend on our willingness to engage in relationship, which according to our own ideas, might depend on our opinions of how we behave.
I like what Hunter said, too. Especially the "willingness to engage in relationship" part. And the grace and love part. :)
Wow. It is always fascinating and thought-provoking to read what thoughtful Christians think about God and afterlife.
I think both sides of afterlife myths are interesting: both that people expect their loved ones/things are "there" (so they don't feel as bereft now?) and that they expect to also go "there" when they die (so they behave properly when alive?).
As an agentic atheist, I do not believe in an afterlife. This life, here and right now, is all we have. It is our highest duty to make this life the best possible life because (in part) there is nothing else to wait for.
Lea hears about Christian constructs in school -- soul, heaven, hell, God, etc -- and then we have conversations where I try to disentangle the things she remembers from her classmates' taunts from things thoughtful, mature Christians might actually believe. It's hard to strike a balance between respect for her classmates and teaching her that their beliefs are only beliefs (not truth), and that we don't believe those things.
Every year, for example, we have the same Jesus conversation:
Lea: Mom, my best friend gets to open ALL her presents on Christmas Day!
Me: That's because her family believes that Christmas is Jesus's birthday, and so they open all the presents at once.
Lea: I want to open all MY presents on Christmas Day.
Me: Really? Because that's a whole WEEK from now. We were going to start opening presents tonight.
Lea: ALL of them?
Me: No, we open some presents every night until all the presents are gone.
Lea: How come?
Me: Some people believe that there's a special day in the middle of winter, and it's really important to throw a big party on that day. Some people think the special day is the solstice and that throwing a party will help winter be over faster. Other people think it's Jesus's birthday and since he's not here to get presents they give presents to each other. Other people think there are 8 days in a row that are special, or that a different day is special so they eat lobster for dinner or have fireworks after bedtime.
Lea: But how come we don't open them all at once?
Me: Because if there's no special day, it's more fun to open some of them every day.
Lea: We don't think any days are special.
Me: Right.
Lea: Except my birthday.
Me: Yes, your birthday is special to you. And it's special to us because we love you.
Lea: Jesus was a real person.
Me: Yes.
Lea: Maybe some people think his birthday is special because they love him?
Me: There's a little more to it than that. Some people think that Jesus was more than an ordinary person, so they throw extra-big parties for his birthday.
Lea: Do they think he was magic like Santa?
Me: Magic, yes. But his superpowers are different than Santa's.
Lea: OOOH! What kind of superpowers did he have? Can he fly?
Me: What do you think he should have?
Followed by the "what's the best superpower?" conversation.
I think I forgot to mention (please forgive if I already did) that Jordan's drawing looks like the final shot of Cool Hand Luke to me:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VydEYMUpnG8/T0JrnL1vbJI/AAAAAAAAEZg/QQmc9CKmpxY/s1600/CoolHandLuke28.jpg
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