All Dogs Go

It was clear to us that our little dog Skipper was not right. He hadn't been eating or drinking much. He would come into a room and look around like he couldn't remember why he was there. He was very old by dog standards - we had had him for 13 years, but we were the fourth owners, inheriting him from my wife's dad when he passed away years ago. We figured he was at least 17 years old, maybe 18, which for a dog is ancient (vets consider dogs "senior" when they are seven years old). We had been chalking it up to age and senility, but a week ago Friday, he was having trouble walking more than 5-6 feet without lying down. Morkies don't really cry when they are in pain, but it was clear to us then that it was high time to take him to the vet.

The story wasn't good. They did a blood panel on him, and it showed that his kidneys were just short of shutting down entirely, and he was probably suffering from cancer as well. He didn't have long to live, even if we took extreme and expensive measures. He was suffering and would continue to suffer. We made the decision that many, many loving pet families have to make... to let him go and put an end to his pain.

We actually made an appointment and took him home for a couple of hours - my son was at work but he got the afternoon off so he could be with us. It was like having a little bit of doggie hospice time; it gave us a chance to love him for a little bit longer and say our goodbyes. We took him back at the scheduled time, me and my wife and our two kids and my wife's brother, who was the one who originally got Skipper for my wife's dad years before. They gave us the option to just say goodbye and go, but none of us were going to leave him there to cross the rainbow bridge alone. Even so, watching our best friend breathe his last breath was one of the most excruciating experiences of my life. We're so thankful that he's no longer suffering, but we miss him terribly, and there will always be an empty morkie-shaped place in all of our hearts.

Decades ago, I heard a mom describing taking her kids to the movie theater to watch an animated movie I still to this day haven't seen, All Dogs Go to Heaven. I was never clear on what exactly in the movie upset her, or why she would even take her kids to see a movie by that title if she was going to be theologically offended, but apparently she stood up at the end and proclaimed to the theater that dogs don't go to Heaven but people do. Not sure whether her kids were impressed by this or mortally embarrassed. But was she right? Do dogs NOT go to Heaven? To humans live on in eternity while their pets live for a decade and then no longer exist? Are the atheists right about death being the final end... but only for Fido?

There are certain things the Bible doesn't say much about. This is for the simple reason that the Bible is a book, and a book is about something, and the Bible is primarily a book about God reaching out in love to the human race. It's not about chemistry, so there's not much in there about that. It's not really about geography or astrophysics. It's not really a music textbook, although there's a lot about music because that's a good way for humans to approach God. And it's not really particularly about animals, especially pets - although because of the time period when it was written, there's a lot about farming. There's even more about shepherding because God repeatedly uses that metaphor to describe how He approaches his people. So it doesn't really tell us whether animals have spirits that live on after death. But there are some interesting passages about animals.

In 2 Samuel 12:1-6 there is a story which turns out to be a metaphor to convince King David that he was guilty of wrongdoing, but there is an interesting implication. "And the LORD sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, 'There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.' Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, 'As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.' "

As it turns out, the lamb in the story represented a woman, Bathsheba, and the evil rich man was David himself, who had murdered her husband to steal her for himself. But what I think is interesting is that this story paints a picture of a sheep being treated as a member of a the family, a pet - not just as livestock to give wool and one day become a meal. David didn't seem to think this was unusual - in fact, he was enraged that someone would take someone else's pet sheep and destroy it. Echoing this, the Psalms and then Jesus Himself characterize God's people as His sheep, with God being the shepherd who loves each sheep so much that if one goes astray, He will go find it and bring it back. That goes way past the level of "Oh well, I still have 99 sheep, let that one feed the wolves tonight." It seems obvious that even in those days, a pet sheep wasn't a totally alien concept.

But do animals have a spirit? Well, anyone who has spent a lot of time around animals knows that they can be intelligent indeed. In fact, there is a story in Numbers 22:22-35 where God actually temporarily gives a donkey who is being abused (for doing the right thing, saving his master's life, though the master didn't know it) the ability to speak! The story is a bit surreal, because the donkey's master Balaam doesn't even seem surprised when the donkey talks to him. "Then the LORD opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, 'What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?' And Balaam said to the donkey, 'Because you have made a fool of me. I wish I had a sword in my hand, for then I would kill you.' And the donkey said to Balaam, 'Am I not your donkey, on which you have ridden all your life long to this day? Is it my habit to treat you this way?' And he said, 'No.' " (verses 28-30) This doesn't tell us that animals have a spirit, but it does imply that they are intelligent enough to both make wise and selfless decisions, and to know when they are being treated badly.

There is a passage in Ecclesiastes that does say outright that animals have a spirit. Ecclesiastes 3:19-21 says: "For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?" (boldface mine) In the book of Ecclesiastes Solomon is basically expressing his doubts about just about everything, so I'm not sure if this is him sharing something he knew, or using poetic symmetry to make a point.

But, will Fluffy be there in Heaven when I get there? Heaven won't be the same without my beloved Spot or Puddles or Felix! Well, let me preface this by saying that I believe that life in eternity will be such that our short time on this planet will feel like the opening scroll of Star Wars - the part before the real movie begins. Not to minimize what we do on Earth - we have a charge from God to do good, help the poor and widows and orphans, and spread the Gospel across the world. But from that side, I think this side will feel like preface. I'm not sure we really know whether we will miss pets if it turns out they aren't there.

But I think there will be animals in Heaven. The book of Revelation talks several times about horses in Heaven, including a whole army all riding white horses behind Jesus, who is also on a white horse. In Isaiah chapter 11 there is a passage that talks about animals who are mortal enemies on this earth being OK with each other when Messiah reigns: the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the goat, calves and lions, cows and bears. Even cobras! Now, the book of Revelation tells us that there is Heaven, but ultimately there will be a new Earth as well, and this passage really refers to the new Earth. So, were these animals previously in Heaven? And, to bring things back around, are they animals who lived on our Earth and died, or are they new animals? Scripture doesn't really tell us.

Near-death experience literature is a huge genre. It shouldn't be taken as gospel truth - it's not the Bible, and it's pretty certain that some of it is completely fictional. But if we assume that some of it describes true experiences of people who have literally died, seen Heaven, and come back, you'll find many instances where people describe animals in Heaven. Is that proof? Of course not. But it's an interesting data point.

The Bible is about God's relationship to creation in general, but humans in particular. It doesn't tell me whether I'll get to one day pet Skipper's fuzzy head again. But it doesn't tell me I won't! So is it my opinion that animals that lived on this Earth will one day live again in eternity? In my opinion, I kind of think they will. I think this creation was damaged badly by the sins of the human race, and God's ultimate goal is by His grace to restore that creation to what it was originally intended to be. Sin brought death, which means that death was never God's plan, which implies that my furry friends and yours shouldn't have had to ever end their lives in the first place. If God is resurrecting all of creation, that includes my fuzzy buddy.

Do dogs (and cats, and birds, and horses and wolves and lambs and whatever) go to Heaven? I don't know for sure. But if they can, Skipper is there now, having a great time, probably hanging out with my father-in-law. Maybe Don is FINALLY getting enough time to teach Skipper how to fetch the ball and actually bring it back!

EDIT: a Theologian says ABSOLUTELY YES!

Christmas in Heaven

Well, Christmas Day 2015 is now behind us, but I was thinking the other day about my dad. He passed away a year and a half ago. I suppose it's pretty common to think about people you've lost at Christmastime, which since Christmas is a joyful, celebratory time, seems a bit paradoxical. But, it happens, and it was happening to me. I was wondering something that I'll bet a lot of people missing their loved ones at Christmas wonder: I wondered if they celebrate Christmas in Heaven?

I mean, obviously Jesus is as central a figure to people in Heaven as He is to us still on Earth. Maybe even more so in significant ways, since He is bodily present in Heaven! So, wouldn't they want to celebrate His incarnation as the Savior who got them to Heaven in the first place?

But to most accounts, time is not the same kind of thing there that it is here. I don't know if, to an occupant of Heaven, it even makes any difference at all whether or not it is December 25th on Earth. Certainly God created the cycle of seasons that make up the year, but Heaven isn't on Earth anyway. There are no seasons there, and certainly no specific dates. There's not even a nighttime! What use is a calendar when there are no day/night cycles, no seasons, and nobody even gets old anyway?

Then I thought about what constitutes "celebrating Christmas" - stripping away things like shopping (but keeping a giving heart in the mix), traditional Christmas stories like Rudolph and Frosty (but of course retaining the one with the manger and the baby), putting up decorations and lights. If you remove the cultural trappings, Christmas means celebrating the amazing miracle of the incarnation of Christ Jesus, and that brings with it the impulse to celebrate! To sing, to give, to love. To appreciate and enjoy those around you. To me, those are the things that really make up Christmas. If I miss seeing a Rankin-Bass special one year, Christmas does not truly lose anything - but if I miss the chance to love others by giving, I miss out on something important.

If those things are the central point of Christmas, then I would say in Heaven, they do celebrate Christmas. They celebrate it every single day! Every day, the risen Christ is a physical reminder to them that He came to Earth to save every human being He could. How joyful of a celebration is that?

And that's why I'm still blogging about Christmas this year, the week after December 25th. Because just because we're not in Heaven yet doesn't mean we can't celebrate Jesus' coming to save us any time we want! I know "Christmas all through the year" has become a bit of a cliché, but for Christians, it is absolutely true. We can celebrate the freedom brought to Earth by Jesus every single day. It's what makes us look to the world like something is different about us! Something is different. Jesus paid us a visit, and we can never be the same after that.

So take a moment today to celebrate Christmas with my dad. With your departed loved ones, too. And with me, and with everyone else that Jesus' coming to Earth has changed forever! Let today be Christmas to you, because Jesus has arrived in your heart!

Love Wins - can we back the truck up just a minute?

There are a number of things in the writings of C. S. Lewis that should positively baffle most Christians. Take the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia, titled The Last Battle. In chapter 13, the heroes of the story metaphorically "go to Heaven" by being forced through the door of a stable (which is obviously a reference to the stable in which Jesus was born). Some of the "villains" of the story go through the door too, a bunch of dwarves who have consciously decided to reject the Lordship of the Christ-figure of the books, Aslan. They all, heroes and dwarves alike, wind up in a beautiful place with blue sky, refreshing summer breezes, delicious fruit growing on the trees, and reunions with loved ones. The heroes of the story love it, but the dwarves hate it; they are so determined that they know the nature of the inside of the stable that they refuse to see the reality inside. They imagine a place of discomfort and punishment, when actually they are in a place comfort and plenty. The implication would seem to be that even if someone rejects Christ, he still goes to Heaven... he just doesn't know he did. A chapter or two later, a Calormene (a member of a country that is the sworn enemy of Narnia) who spent his life serving Tash (the Satan figure in The Last Battle) gets into Heaven because Aslan has accepted his service to Tash, thinking Tash was the good true God, as service to Aslan. If you told most Christians that you thought that people who had rejected their former religion would go to Heaven anyway but not know that they were in Heaven, or that a Muslim who served Allah with all of his heart would go to the Christian Heaven because Jesus would accept his heart toward Allah as a heart toward God, they would say you were nuts, but that's what Lewis is implying in the book.

In a different story C. S. Lewis wrote called "The Great Divorce," the characters, who we eventually learn are deceased, begin as residents of Hell, but they take a ride on a bus to Heaven where they are given a chance to become full-fledged citizens. Most of them decline the invitation, and go back to Hell. Hell in this story is not a traditional flames-and-pitchforks place, but a dreary, boring, rainy kind of place. What? No fire in Hell? People leaving Hell and given a chance to repent and go to Heaven after they've died? This from the author who wrote Mere Christianity, one of the clearest articulations of the Christian faith ever written? Scandalous!

I don't think, based on what I've learned over the years about the life of C. S. Lewis, that it registered to the readers of his time what he was saying in his stories. Either that, or those kinds of views were much more mainstream in Christianity then than they are now. So C. S. Lewis probably never reaped the benefits of the sensationalized marketing that seems to surround each new Rob Bell book. I wonder if all those people who wrote all those scathing debunkings of his new book, Love Wins, before it even came out realize that all they were doing was raising interest in the book? I know several people (myself included) who might never have read it except for the controversy surrounding it. I'm glad I did pick it up, though. It gave me a lot to think about.

The Bible is a book about God and His pursuit of man, based on His love for mankind. For that reason, some things are left very ambiguous. Take the origins of the universe and mankind, for example. The Bible, not being a science book, does not explicitly confirm or debunk the Big Bang, evolution, the age of planet Earth, or many other things that scores of extremely smart human beings have spent their lives trying to figure out. God (or Moses, who scholars believe wrote Genesis, if you want to get picky) apparently wasn't that concerned with those details; the point is that God caused the world to exist and God caused people to exist, but people tried to do things their own way and they wound up in a pickle because of it. The ultimate fate of mankind is another thing that the Bible doesn't have as much to say about as we would like. Despite what some may think, the Bible doesn't say that the human race will sit on clouds in Heaven and play harps forever.

In fact, the Bible doesn't say that human beings will live forever in Heaven at all. Check the end of the book of Revelation: the human race doesn't wind up in Heaven. The human race winds up on Earth. It indicates that there will be an end to this world, God's people will be saved from destruction personally by Jesus Himself, there will be a thousand years of peace, and then... it doesn't say much about the time after that, other than that we will be on Earth (obviously a "new" Earth, one with some qualities that set it apart from the current Earth, but Earth nonetheless) and that God will be in charge through Jesus. The idea that Christians will spend forever someplace in the sky is the kind of misconception that Rob Bell takes on in the book.

But let's back the truck up here. Let's talk about the things that people have said that Bell says in the book, but which he does not actually say.



Rob Bell does not say in this book that Hell does not exist. He pretty clearly says that Hell does exist. In fact, he extends the concept of Hell from the time after death into this lifetime. Ever hear someone call something "Hell on Earth?" Ever hear about something happening with qualities that are so horrible that it qualifies for the description "hellish?" He extends the concept of Hell to those before-death situations, but he also affirms the existence of a Hell after death, flames and all.

Bell does not say that everyone will go to Heaven. In fact, he affirms that some will go to Hell, and that it will be because of their own choices that they do.

What Bell does do is challenge the cut-and-dried concepts of Heaven as a place in the sky where people play harps forever, and Hell as a place under the ground somewhere where people burn in anguish forever. Bell seems to characterize "Hell" more as the torment that a human being feels when he has chosen to reject God than as a specific place, although he does discuss Jesus' story of "the rich man and Lazarus," which indicates that the two of them are physically in two different places, at some length. Essentially, Bell seems to indicate that the "punishment" of the flames of Hell is not there to callously torment people forever, but to "punish" them in the sense of purifying them and teaching them that there is something wrong about them that needs to be corrected. He also contends that the word "eternal" (as in "eternal punishment"), based on the meanings present in the source Greek word, most likely refers to the intensity of the experience rather than the time span in which it occurs. So when an uncomfortable experience for you seems to take "an eternity," that's the sense he postulates. So perhaps the "eternal punishment" of Hell is not burning forever with no end at all to the punishment, but an experience which, no matter how long it actually lasts, is a very intense lesson in "right" and "wrong." The fire which the Bible says in several places will try the works of believers is in mind here, the "wood hay and stubble" fire. Maybe the same fire that burns away those things and leaves the gold of works done by believers by the Spirit of God - maybe that same fire will be applied to unbelievers, and likewise purify them.

Bell doesn't even contend that people will get out of Hell immediately... actually, he doesn't say that they will definitely get out at all. He seems to be saying that the purifying process will last as long as it takes for them to let go of anything they are holding onto which is anti-God. After they have been purified, presumably they will be able to join in the afterlife God had wanted for them all along. Presumably they'll get to take C. S. Lewis' "bus ride to Heaven" at that point. Whether or not anyone will be stubborn enough to stay in the flames forever or not is a question Bell does not address.

There are a number of things Bell doesn't address directly in the book, although you can infer some of the answers. One thing he does not directly state is whether or not he thinks that everyone will eventually come to Salvation. In fact, if you notice my use of phrases like "perhaps" and "seems to" and "most likely" throughout this post, you'll realize that Bell, as often as not, leaves room for doubt about what he actually believes. Whether this is to allow the reader to reach his own conclusions, or whether it is there to provide Bell some "plausible deniability" of the "I never said everyone would go to Heaven!" type, or maybe a little of both, I guess is something only Bell himself knows. I know that the sort of "presenting a huge list of unanswered questions" format of the first chapter, which is presumably intended to be compelling, I found frustrating. I already have questions - everyone does. I didn't read the book to get more questions. After that chapter, the book is less riddled with question marks, but it is also a lot less filled with "this is how it is" kinds of direct answers than most books about religion tend to be.

And in a sense, that's a good thing. Sometimes people have to be forced to think for themselves, to examine their own beliefs about things, and to reach conclusions based on their own perspective of the facts. Love Wins presents itself as this kind of book, but because it doesn't truly present every side of the story, in the end you wind up supporting Bell's apparent views without him ever saying that his views are correct. So you are convinced of something that the book never came out and said, this is what the Bible says. It's clever writing, but I'm not sure it's 100% honest about its intentions.

For many years I've said that I truly believe that we will be surprised at the people we run into in Heaven. In the end Bell brings this to an extreme: we may be surprised to find that anyone might be there one day, even people who consciously rejected God in this life. Even people who consciously reject God for a while in that life. I don't want you to get me wrong; I enjoyed this book very much. I like Bell's writing style, and his ideas gave me a perspective that will be with me for a long time as I go through the Scriptures. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in the afterlife. His ideas are different from what most Christians believe, but not in the way the pre-publication critics thought. Bell agrees that Heaven and Hell exist. He just thinks they exist in a different way than we always thought. Give the book a chance. Find out what it says. Then take it or leave it, but you owe it to yourself to at least know what it is that you're taking or leaving.

Heaven

Last night I had a dream. In my dream, I was hanging out with an old friend from high school, and he had some photos of friends of ours from back in the day. The pictures were in black and white, but as I looked at each one, it turned into a color picture before my eyes. When I looked away, it would turn back to a black and white picture. I woke up feeling sort of wistful, almost nostalgic. I miss those kids I grew up with.

Of course, they're not kids any more. They're all either pushing 40 like I am, or past it. I know why I had that dream: it's all the fault of Facebook. On Facebook I've connected back up with people I knew during many phases of my life... in high school, in college, and several people from seasons after that (and even one guy from grade school!) I've gotten to see current pictures of them and their spouses and children. It's amazing to see the things we still have in common, and even stranger to realize that in many cases, we have more in common now than we did then!

It's weird sometimes, too, when those worlds collide... when someone I know from high school has a discussion with someone I just met last year, or when someone I met at a previous job turns out to know someone I met at my current job (this happened recently). The illusion that all of these people are somehow together in the same place is a strange one. The fact is that these people are scattered all over the country, and in a few cases, the world. I'm in Oklahoma now; many of my friends from high school are still in Louisiana, but some are in Arkansas, Virginia, Texas, and other places. My high school youth pastor is now a missionary to Africa. My friends from college are even more scattered, since their places of origin were more varied to start with. Last year we switched from our long-time church; even our friends from that period are still at that church or scattered at various churches around town. But by some miraculous circumstance, I can find all of those people in one "place" on the Internet. There's never been a time in history where people all across the face of the globe could feel connected to each other like they can with a social networking site like Facebook.

I have a theory that human beings have something inside them that longs for Heaven. When we feel nostalgic for something in the past, we're longing for Heaven (because when we think back truthfully to that time, it's never as happy of a time as it seems like in our nostalgia). And Heaven is a place where hopefully all my friends and I will be one day! Facebook is far from being Heaven, of course... there are bugs and privacy concerns, and the purpose of Facebook is basically to gather enough information about you to target advertising your way. But being with your spiritual family is part of what will be wonderful about Heaven. Being in close fellowship with the other saints of God... and saints who are once and for all freed from the temptation to sin! ...that will be amazing. I can't wait!