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"If You Died Tonight, Do You Know Where You'd Go?" (No, And I'm OK With That).



“If you died tonight, do you know where you’d go?”

For the last few decades, Evangelical Christians have been tossing out that eternity-bombshell question to youth rooms filled with petrified teenagers, to packed Sunday morning church services, and to stunned strangers passing by on the street.

It’s the ace-in-the-hole, sure-fire, close-the-deal query, designed to demolish all listener ambivalence, overcome any offered obstacles, and to get all the knees to immediately hit the pavement.

It’s the most powerful Christian knock out punch we have in our arsenal.

It’s also a question we should stop asking people altogether, at least in the way we’ve learned to.

There are plenty of reasons why we need to abandon this frightening soul-destination pop quiz as any sort of evangelical tool or salvation litmus test, but here are a few of the most important:

1) You can’t scare people into the Kingdom.

Faith in Jesus is ultimately an act of love, not of fear. It is not a decision one can truly make or a reality that one can fully accept if they’re doing so simply to escape punishment. A relationship with Jesus, (as any real relationship) isn’t built on the premise of avoiding violence. If we put a gun to someone’s head, of course they’re often going to say what they think will help them dodge the bullet, and that’s what The Big Question does.

Hell is a really lousy bullet.

Jesus’ teachings certainly have vivid, (yet still enigmatic) references to the afterlife and to eternal life and salvation, but he spends far more time helping equip people to live lives of peace and beauty and love and meaning and goodness, right here and right now. For every image of life beyond our earthly existence that Jesus provides, he offers so many more that simply illustrate the “abundant life” that he promised within that earthly existence.

Why do you suppose that is?

If faith was simply fire insurance, there would be little reason for Jesus to care very much about the stuff he seemed to care greatly about and talk so much about in the Gospels; the poor, justice, mercy, service, community, tangible love, lives of benevolence.

His ministry was much more than simply a damnation ultimatum.

Jesus never asked people if they knew where they’d go when they died, because his sole purpose for us wasn’t simply getting to Heaven when we leave, it was bringing Heaven down, here. It was about an eternity that we are already in the process of experiencing. When he instructs those who would follow him, to pray that God’s “kingdom come and will be done on earth” , he isn’t telling us to do that in order to get our tickets punched to the afterlife or get us a reprieve from the electric chair, but to help us to reflect the character of God in our daily lives in this moment.

2) You can’t ever answer the question objectively and honestly.

When we’re speaking about the incredibly vast, ineffable nature of God, and about the specific conditions of and qualifications for life beyond this one, our limited words and understanding both fail us. We just don’t have the simple, clear data needed to answer properly with any authority, not even using The Bible to do so (More on that later). Our most enlightened responses are at best, speculation based on very incomplete information, and at worst, nice lies we tell ourselves.

When Jesus says,  Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.”, just what does he mean?  Just how much belief is he requiring, and how does one know whether or not they’ve made the cut? What specific tenets and creeds do we need to agree to for our belief to be valid? He doesn’t tell us that stuff.

We simply can’t know what The Big Question implies we can know, because that would place us in the very position of God. Growing up Catholic, I heard the Gospel described during the liturgy as “the mystery of faith”. I love the honesty and humility of that language. It properly assesses the lofty and elusive nature of spirituality, and of the questions that come along with it.

There is mystery in this.
There is paradox.
There is something here that cannot be fully grasped.

When we ask someone if they “know” where they will go when they die, we’re asking them to assume ownership of God’s knowledge, (or that we ourselves have it, if we find their answer unsatisfactory).

That didn’t go very well in the Garden.

3) It’s a question Jesus never asked or answered in the Bible.

Jesus wasn’t simple and succinct regarding eternity, as much as we’d like to make him be so. For every seeming silver bullet Scripture passage one wants to quote from Jesus’ teachings to justify why The Big Question has merit, (and I am certain I will receive many), there are fifty more that show just how cloudy the water really is. In fact, when Jesus’ disciples asked him why he taught people so often in difficult to understand, incredibly symbolic word pictures called parables, he shared with them that the truths of His Kingdom were not easily accessible, not clearly defined, and reserved for those who continually dig deeper.

That is; they weren’t easy and they weren’t easily summed-up either.

If Jesus really wanted a quick, un-missable solution to eternity that required no interpretation at all, he would have started the Sermon on the Mount with, “You’re all going to Hell if you don’t pray this exact prayer, so let’s pray it together now. It goes like this….” Then he would have simply left. He didn’t do that at all. In fact, he spent three years painting in those cryptic word pictures and healing sick people and caring for the poor and teaching at length on all sorts of topics. Jesus’ life and ministry are far more vast and sprawling, and his instructions on life, belief, sin, and salvation a million times more layered and complex than can be summed up in a nice, neat little smoking gun question.

Sometimes Jesus seems to say that it’s all about faith.
Sometimes it seems it’s about the kind of lives we live.
Sometimes our own affluence is an obstacle to receiving it.
Sometimes those who “know” they have it, do not.
Sometimes those who are sure they are in, may not be.
Sometimes those who are so very right, might actually be wrong.

If we try to make Heaven and Hell the answer to a simple “Yes” or “No” question, we really have to ignore Jesus’ very life and ministry to do so. In fact, his answer to The Big Question, like many of his replies in the Gospels would probably just have consisted of more questions.

Jesus seemed to revel in the mystery.

4) It’s cheap church.

So many pastors and ministers have made the “If you die tonight…” question, the centerpiece of their worship services, festival events, and youth retreats; not trying to explain the expansive, lavish love of God, not helping someone make an informed decision to follow Jesus, not walking alongside people as they navigate the complex, meandering, muddy path of faith.

The Big Question has become the center of ministry events, because it allows everyone to get a quick high and a measurable result before they exit.

It’s instant faith with immediate gratification. It gives everyone involved in the church experience an emotional crescendo around which worship gatherings and youth meetings and rally days can be arranged. The videos, the songs, the speaker’s carefully chosen words, all set you up for that moment when they can seal the deal.

That’s why so many pastors loudly trumpet their altar call responses and baptism stats; because it gives them raw data that assumes to quantify things it has no business quantifying. Our true religious lives don’t revolve around the mountaintop adrenaline rush of a momentary emotional decision. They are formed through a continuous series of ordinary, unremarkable, mundane decisions to seek faith and obedience without the roar of the crowd or the forced drama of The Big Question. As pastors, we should be more concerned with helping people learn to walk that road.

5) It’s too easily turned into a weapon.

The Big Question can damage badly. People like to think they’ve got God all figured out; that they have the inside track to eternity. They like to imagine they’ve cracked the code to Heaven’s admission policy, and once they’ve done so they almost automatically do two things:

1) They of course, declare themselves in.
2) They begin deciding who is out, based on their assumption.

It’s not just Jesus, they eventually determine; it’s Jesus understood this way, faith in him expressed this way, and faith in him lived out this way. The restrictions for others soon become greater and the conditions regarding retrieval of the eternal reward, more and more selective. That’s why someone can “know for certain” that they’re going to Heaven when they die, and be harshly corrected by the one asking the question. (So yes, certainty is possible, but usually only for them).

Once someone believes that they “know” the path to paradise, they no longer are open to anyone else’s perspective and they seek instead to conform every other believer into their likeness.

6) No one really knows. They just don’t.

More than anything, this is why we should never make the “If you died tonight…” question anything but a useful, thought-provoking, self-reflection activity.

We’re talking after all, about faith, not about knowing. There is a difference. Faith will always require us to step beyond the solid ground of what we know, and into the chasm of what we do not. Faith is the sacred place where our intellect and our understanding and our limits end, and yet we still walk.

We don’t have all the information, but faith moves us on anyway.

It is a holy unknown.

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. – Hebrews 11:1

The kind of confidence and assurance the writer speaks to here, isn’t a specific bullseye reality. It’s not a clear, precise religious formula. It isn’t answerable through a Big Question. The many Jewish ancestors of the faith listed following this often used definition, never even knew of the name Jesus. For them there was mystery and unresolved tension and unanswered questions, even as they lived and died. The Bible tells us this explicitly.

Faith isn’t about “knowing” in the way that you know a mathematical equation or a recipe or a street address. It’s trust and belief and the very height of hope—and that’s all it has to be.

When I posted my objection to The Big Question earlier on social media, a fellow pastor replied: “If you are a Christian, you should know where you’re going. Christ pretty much assured us of our destiny.”

Pretty much? That isn’t knowing. That isn’t certainty. It simply the beautiful, glorious stuff that faith is made of; the almost have it figured out stuff, the incredibly strong feeling stuff, the I so hope I have this right, stuff.

Saying that “Jesus clearly told us everything” seems quite logical, reasonable and proper for a Christian to say, but it doesn’t stand up well to scrutiny and follow-up:

Just what is eternity with Jesus? What was it to Jesus as he preached it? What did he mean specifically when he talked about salvation?

What was the afterlife to a first century Jewish Rabbi, and does it at all resemble what it does in churches today?

Did the concept of Hell even exist in the Old Testament? (See: Sheol)

Just exactly and specifically how does one receive this eternal reward? Is it one-time magic prayer? Is it a lifetime process of conforming to Christlikeness, and if so how close do you have to get in order to make it into the club?

Who gets in, who gets shut out, and what specifically and succinctly is required? Faith? How much faith? A prayer? Works? Behavior?

The more we seek to give a defined, nuts-and-bolts answer to these smaller questions, the deeper the rabbit trail becomes for The Big Question. If it was the right or the best one to ask, we’d have a simple, short moral checklist and make quick work of the spiritual journey. The Gospels don’t give us that option.

One of the greatest gifts we have in this life of faith is humility. When we are fully holding that humility, we have the strength to admit that we don’t know much of anything. The best we have is our best guess based on the information we have in front of us. This doesn’t equal a lack of faith, it equals a lack of arrogance regarding that faith.

We should never ask The Big Question as the most important one, because we simply don’t know the answer.

I don’t know where I’ll go when I die.
You don’t.
You favorite pastor doesn’t.
Your grandmother doesn’t.

We simply believe.

I’ve been a pastor for nearly two decades, doing the daily work of trying to discern the righteous, narrow path both alone and in community. I’ve walked along that road with lots of faithful, good-hearted, God-loving people who have reached the same conclusion that I have.

My faith tells me that Jesus is the answer and that it involves a level of belief in him, but beyond that, I can’t tell you much for sure.

I don’t know the mechanics of the salvation transaction itself or just how the deal is sealed or of the reality beyond this life that it will lead to.

Of course I’d like to have a clear picture of what happens after I die, and I absolutely do want to experience the overwhelming, indescribable beauty of what God has planned beyond the here and now, but I can’t have all the answers here and now.

This lack of certainty doesn’t dissuade me. I’m OK admitting the mystery in much of this. I want to encourage you to be OK doing the same. I don’t want you to stop seeking, I simply want you seek without needing certainty or demanding it from others.  

If you’re a Christian, you might choose to read this as a call to abandon faith in Jesus, but I hope you don’t. It is not that. My faith is in Jesus, and yet so much else is difficult to hold.

This is the faith journey. It’s not simple, and it’s not always clear, but it’s the journey that we’re invited into.

It’s the one I continue to walk, moving toward Easter with legs that falter, with flesh that fails, and with answers that evade.

If I die tonight, I hope that God who has seen my path intimately, determines me worthy of goodness beyond this life.

If I die tonight, I pray that all the questions and the wrestling and the striving to find and follow Jesus, will in themselves be part of the answer, as He himself has witnessed it all.

I continue to study and reflect and pray and serve.

I continue to hope and wish and desire and believe. 

But no, I don’t know where I’ll go when I die.

No one does.

Well, only One does.

Rather than asking or responding to the Big Question, I will simply seek Him and wait expectantly.

Be encouraged on the journey.

 

 

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