Earning Heaven

“Will God keep me out of heaven because I don’t take better care of my mother?”  It was an unexpected question that came from a soul that had been tortured for more than fifty years.  The question was followed by a litany of explanations for her behavior and decisions regarding her mother. It seemed important that she be able to justify her behavior and convince me, or perhaps God, that she was a good person despite the way she has treated her mother for the last 50 years.  

Truth be told, after listening to her torment of the last fifty years, I had a hard time finding fault and was not at all sure that I would have done any better.  But the thing that was most concerning was not her behavior or decisions. It was her deep need to justify her actions.

Will God keep me out of Heaven because . . . ?  It’s not such an unusual question.  I’ll bet you’ve asked it yourself, if only silently.  Will God keep me out of heaven because . . .

• I’m divorced
• I can’t stop drinking
• I’m gay
• I abandoned my kids
• I wear jewelry
• I don’t give enough money to church
• I can’t stop looking at porn
• I belong to the wrong denomination
• Of my business practices
• Church people disgust me
• I smoke
• I was born in the wrong country
• My father abused me
• I’m a bad person
• I haven't been baptized
• I quit going to church

Maybe you see a question here that resonates. Maybe yours simply hovers in your conscience.  I expect that, as you look over this list, you may see some things that cause you to say, “Why would anyone even think that’s a problem?” and others for which you might banish people, were you God.

There is much talk inside and outside Christian circles today about “sin”, and we all seem to be trying to nail down exactly what it is and what it is not. We want a good definition, a list, a standard to which we can measure ourselves (or more likely each other) to see if we’re sinners . . . if God finds us acceptable. If we can’t gain sufficient comfort in a list of rules, then we search for reasons why we’re not responsible. “I abuse my kids because my father abused me,” “You have to be shrewd in business to survive,” “The people at church are money grubbers and hypocrites.”

I’ve become tired of the conversations around determining what is and what isn’t sin and how our environment or genetics are the truly responsible agents. I’m tired because these arguments are framed to miss the point.

We have become a society, and all too often a church, that advances two ways in which we can be justified. We convince ourselves that either: there is nothing wrong with what we’re doing, or It’s not our fault.  Either of these conclusions cuts us off from the redemption we find in Jesus.

The truth is that we are all hopeless and helpless sinners mired in our own depravity with no capacity whatsoever to rise above our own sin, AND there is nothing on the above list or any other that can separate us from the love of God through Jesus. We will never develop a list that will keep us from being sinners, and we can never use our human condition to mitigate our responsibility.

To be human is to have shadows on our conscience. What makes all the difference is what we do with them.  We are sinners. Jesus is our friend, our Savior, and our only hope.  When we truly embrace these core truths, perhaps then we can explore all those questions of secondary importance without the need to either condemn or justify ourselves or our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Ultimately, I passed along to this tormented soul one of the few truths of which I’m certain and on which hang all my hopes. “There is absolutely nothing that we can do to get us into heaven and nothing we can do that will keep us out, and that is good news indeed for me.”

John Monday