As I contemplated entering the season of Lent this year an idea struck me, and though it captivated my imagination it also took me a while to make peace with going through with it.
But, early on Ash Wednesday, I finally made my decision.
I am giving up heaven and hell for Lent.
Now I will explain what that means in a second, but first I want to say what it doesn’t mean.
That does not mean I don’t believe that heaven or hell are real, I do. Monday I wrote about my belief in hell, and I’ve often affirmed here my hope for a future where God has set all things to rights.
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So why give up heaven and hell for Lent?
Two reasons.
Though I believe in the reality of heaven and hell, I also believe we bring an incredible amount of baggage to both.
Often we talk about them more in terms of concepts we’ve learned from Greek philosophy and Medieval literature than anything we find in the Scriptures.
This baggage too often leads us to teach, believe, and live in incredibly harmful and unbiblical sorts of ways.
We’ve learned to use heaven and hell in ways the Bible never does, and in the process end up sounding far more like the people Jesus warned were teetering on the edge of hell than the people who he promised would inherit the kingdom of heaven.
My other reason is this, when we place individuals going to heaven or hell at the center of the story, we are forced to re-form Jesus to fit. Essentially Jesus becomes our ticket out of hell and into heaven.
And that misses an incredible amount of who the Gospels tell us this Jesus is and what he was doing in his life, death, and resurrection.
If we would have no reason to follow Jesus if there were no hell for him to save us from or heaven for us to bring us to, then do we love Jesus or simply what he gets us?
Ours is often a consumerist Jesus, who we sell to the masses to solve a problem (hell) and gain a benefit (heaven). What this Jesus said and the life he called us to are then far less important than if he “works” for getting us the result we want.
Too often we teach a Christianity in which, if there were no heaven or hell, there would also be no point to following the Messiah.
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What does giving up heaven and hell look like?
For me, it will look like this.
Over the next forty something days I will attempt to live and learn my faith as if this life were all there was for me.
My reading of the Scriptures will focus on laying down my accumulated baggage and seeing the text in all its this-worldly relevance. Also, I will spend time working through the reflections on mortality in Ecclesiastes along with some friends.
Metaphorical language and parables used when speaking of heaven or hell will be left as just that, metaphor and parable, and not pressed for a detailed doctrine of things to come.
My prayers will be turned towards imploring God to care for earthly needs like bread and peace and the righting of injustices, and lifting praises of thanks for the beautiful and God-soaked life that we can catch glimpses of here and now.
My actions will – I pray – be an attempt to passionately live out the sort of story Jesus called us to live here in this life, without framing it as being in some way about where I will go afterwords.
I will, insofar as it is possible, try to engage in an act of imagination.
An act of imagining a Christianity which would still be worth believing even without heaven or hell.
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Heaven and hell are real, I believe in both. Or, for the sake of imagination, I did. And will again on Easter morning.
– For vocational reasons this fast will not apply to Sunday’s.
