So Serious Saturday #15

Fiction needs a basis in reality. Exercising non-fiction muscles once in a while benefits an active imagination, channeling creative energies as it focuses on a subject. So Serious Saturdays will be an active place for critical essays or writing about reality in the context of real events - even when it is not written on Saturdays.

Type:News/Informational

I’ve Got a Golden Ticket

My social network brought and interesting piece of news to my attention. Somewhere in Florida a husband and wife duo stand accused of selling “golden tickets to heaven.”

Among their claims is that Jesus gave them the tickets to see so that they could make a profit and pay for transportation to a planet made of drugs. I would say they are already halfway there. Even stranger is that some people actually bought those golden tickets.

 Again, it’s an interesting an even hilarious story, but it raises the question of who would buy those tickets. It is too easy to answer that the customers must have also been half-baked. Atheists would also have no trouble telling their audiences why they think the whole thing is phony.

It is not bad to want to go to heaven. In fact, it’s a good desire to want to enjoy eternity with God. It is bad, however, if you try to earn your way there. In his letter to the Roman believers Paul wrote, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23-24). No one – not one – aside from God has not sinned, which creates a rift between an entirely holy God and the human race.

Heaven is not like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – a place there cannot be bought, earned or traded. The evil in the world can only be atoned for by the reconciliation of humankind and God, through the mediation of the fully human and yet fully God person known as Jesus of Nazareth.

Only he can pay for those who accept his continual giving of forgiveness and being in right standing with God because of who he is. Those who acknowledge him acknowledge his simple yet unparalleled relation to the person of the Father and the other person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

Though God calls those his children who not only know but trust in him for their salvation, it is not nepotism. He can get you to heaven, but is it not because  of who your parents are or what they believe, or how often you go to worship gatherings, or how often you give a dollar to a person in need. These things are good, but not good enough, even if you were to try to save yourself from an eternal separation from all goodness by your own efforts.

What is good enough is accepting the gift that Christians call grace, which is free and unmerited favor. This is not the free coupon to mini golf that Students of the Month get. It is more like – and yet still an imperfect analogy – going in for coffee and the guy ahead of you in line says to the barista, “I’m paying for this person’s coffee for the next year. Did I say year? I mean lifetime.”

Then he hands you a gift card with hundreds of dollars on it. You did not earn it, but you accept the gift card from his hand. You have to take the card out of its gift card holder and use it so that you can receive the benefit: coffee paid for by someone other than yourself.

By accepting Christ’s offer for him to be the Lord and Savior of your life, you take an unbelievably more awesome and unlimited gift card giving you access to love, help, and forgiveness at all times.

This is an illustration of grace, not heaven. Heaven deserves a grander metaphor I am trying to tie together. Basically, it’s not only a good place, it’s the good place, the happiest place in the universe.

If I could talk to those who had purchased the golden tickets – those believing that buying these tickets could get them into God’s favor, or into their idea of heaven – I would tell them that a relationship with the God of heaven and earth has already been paid for by God himself. Ultimately, I would want to say that the way to him is not through their wallets, but through their hearts.