Eternity Lost

Why is Jesus almost always portrayed as a blue-eyed Caucasian rock star?

I read a little book last Friday called "Heaven is for Real", by Todd Burpo. Here verbatim is my two-star review from Amazon.com...

Message of this book: children are humble and guileless and without an agenda, whereas adults are not. Guess which group the author belongs to, though he never comes clean about it? (Hint: he has a large agenda.) And it flows daily from the little boy's mouth. So sad, and hardly smart or even original. I gave this book my undivided attention for a day, and then went back to more important matters. This little story is unbelievable -- literally. It is so full of holes it would sink an aircraft carrier. I believe *wink* that the father is using his son to advance his own ministry, and I also believe (having grown up in just such an environment myself) that he sincerely believes what he has written. Whether any of it is "real" or "true" is a matter of utter conjecture and subjective speculation.

I see many four and five star reviews here citing this book as a confirmation of people's faith and hope. Very sad. I do not know how to believe something which is not real. It is not encouraging, neither does it give one "hope" -- it's just depressing. New York Times bestseller? Translated into 35 languages? Speaking engagements around the globe, and now a movie? No mention of where all that money is going, but my guess is there is one less garage door business in Nebraska.


As a child and teen, I was taught from the Bible about the pleasures of Heaven and the horrors of Hell. If you have followed any type of Faith at all, either as an insider or from a distance, these do not need to be reiterated here for you.

Instead I would like to mention something that was brought into a clearer focus for me by my reading. This book is written by a Christian minister from Nebraska whose four-year old son did not "die", but was gravely ill from a misdiagnosed ruptured appendix. This child supposedly visited Heaven for a three-minute period during his time in the hospital. The author recounts events and persons mentioned later by the son as "proof" of his mystical journey.

I found the story lacked credibility on several levels, not the least of which is the father's insistence that he knew "everything" which this child had been taught in his home, Sunday School, and Church. More-to-the-point, the father claimed to know exactly what information the boy did not have. The story got me to thinking, however. Was it the threat (or promise) of eternal torment or bliss which got masses of Christians to sign up with God, or the idea that these things are eternal and endless? This strikes at the core of why I am a skeptic. Humans claiming to have some idea or knowledge about the nature of an afterlife is equivalent to penguins being able to conceptualize quantum mechanics. I will not say in all certainty that penguins cannot do this, but I have no way of knowing if they can. I am skeptical based on my experience with many animals, however.

The idea that any punishment or pleasure will be "eternal and never-ending" in a Universe (or level of existence, if you prefer) other than the time-dimensional and limited one we exist in now seems absurd to me. If a dimension is eternal, then logic tells us that time would not be a factor since it would not exist. How then would a being in that "place" be able to discern the difference between the point of entry and some point several trillion, billion years "further out"? I don't know about others, but the fear and terror of Hell -- as presented many times quite graphically to me -- was not the wailing and gnashing of teeth, but rather the hopelessness of it ever "ending". As if I (my soul) would somehow see the severity of my plight by it's duration. Perhaps we just "exist" in some constant state? Songs have a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion. So how does one "sing" in Heaven, or "wail" in Hell?

It is illogical and not rational -- hence the penguin metaphor. We cannot assume anything about an existence for which we have no evidence other than second-hand hearsay. All "moments" in eternity would, by definition, be equidistant from each other. Therefore, there would be no way to "experience" any event the way we are familiar with here. Yet people routinely speak of meeting others, performing jobs, or burning on spits. Am I the only one who has significant skepticism about all of this? If people of faith have been puzzled by this paradox, I have never heard or seen any evidence of such.

I was accused the other day of a lack of imagination by a man who professes to hear the voice of God speaking to him. He claims that I want to live in a Cartesian world. I do happen to agree with Descartes. The only reason this subject has any meaning or reality for me at all is because I have thought about it. It is not because I cannot imagine a life after death, but because I can. And just as a penguin cannot recognize a quark, I cannot know anything about life after death.