How do you spell "heaven"?

America, with her heritage of individual freedoms and, for the most part, tolerance of differing viewpoints, is by-and-large a nation where "live and let live" is a value accepted by the great majority of people. It is no surprise, then, that a recent poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reveals that 70% of those surveyed agree with the statement, "Many religions can lead to eternal life."

Now, there are some among those polled, Protestants mostly I suppose, who may use the term religion" to mean "denominations" as well as totally unique faith groups like Islam and Hinduism. But even so, that's a high degree of tolerance, especially when the actual doctrines taught by most of those "religions" teach a more exclusive view. There are some world religions, like Buddhism, that don't teach a doctrine as much as a way of life, and so make room for many different kinds of people in whatever they call "heaven." But many others, Islam, Judaism and Christians, have in their doctrinal traditions more of an "our way or the wrong way" outlook on the afterlife.

Perhaps most surprising, at least for those in the Christian sector of world religions, is that 79% of those identifying themselves as Catholic agreed with the statement. This from people who are taught that there is no salvation outside the Roman Catholic church, which is more restrictive than most Protestants believe about their own denominations. And amazing for Christians of all varieties to be so inclusive when they claim to believe in a Savior who said, "I am the way, the truth and the life; no man comes to the Father but by Me."

So was Jesus being overly strict in His teaching, just to keep the folks in line, but intending one day to throw the pearly gates wide open to those who wish to come with a different belief? Or, and this should be the more likely explanation to anyone who takes the Lord Jesus seriously, does this survey show that the American people have been so thoroughly indoctrinated in tolerance and a "who am I to judge?" mentality that they are loathe to rule any "sincere" person out of bounds for heavenly reward?

Muslims and Hindus and Zoroastrians and many others can believe whatever they want to believe. They are free to do that. But surely there's a difference between what one is free to do and what is right to do. I am free as an American citizen to have an affair with my neighbor's wife. I am pretty much free to lie about my neighbor, though I may get sued if I do in print. And I can covet all day long my neighbor's property. But God regards those behaviors as wrong, and hence there will be consequences, regardless of what I say to the contrary. For that matter, I am free to leap from tall buildings in a single bound, but I'm still not Superman.

One thing is sure, if the Bible is truly God's Word (and most of those surveyed say it is): God isn't going to take polls into account when He gathers His own into the heavenly realms. He has already declared the parameters of acceptable belief, regardless of whether or not Americans include them in political correctness. The good news is: there's room for everyone in heaven - everyone who comes in Jesus' name. By God's grace, no one will be excluded except one who refuses to acknowledge God's absolute right to set the standard for eternal life - believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved!

If God is really there...

The debate between the proponents of a purely natural approach to science and the advocates of a super-natural approach to faith continues in our day, and is taking on a new form of aggressiveness by secular atheists, who insist that religion of all kinds is an ancient delusion of superstitious minds, now rendered obsolete by the increasing scope of scientific knowledge.

Many in the scientific community have concluded that mankind's advancements in knowledge of the intricacies of the universe, from the galactic level down to the sub-atomic level, have made a religious explanation of reality unnecessary and antiquated. Religious answers, they contend, were for unenlightened days when men needed a way to explain the mysteries of their world; why the wind blows, the sun rises and falls, the seasons come and go. As if some caveman once uttered around a prehistoric campfire, "Maybe there's a great Power making this fire happen!" And it just went from there.

This whole view of the origins of religious belief appears to rest on the assumption that "God" is a product of the human mind's desire to understand our world; fine for a time, but now we know better. But what if God is really there, and not just a figment of our collective imaginations? What if the reason our universe is so orderly and predictable that we can study it is that God made it that way, rather than because it evolved by mere chance and time? And how would such a thought of God happen in the mind of a creature that by the dumbest of luck evolved from the ooze? We have no evidence that such "delusions" are taking place in any other life forms on our planet, do we?

If God is there, would we expect to know about Him without His first making Himself known to His creatures? And, if He was to do that, there would have to be at least one type of creature capable of receiving His communication; creatures with a real mind, not just instinct and the capacity to remember stimuli. And as for interpreting the evidence of non-verbal clues to His existence, the Bible tells us that we have the ability to deduce God's existence from the universe He made. And, with such ability to interpret the creation, men are said to be "without excuse" for their failure to interpret the evidence rightly.

So, if ancient men realized a creation must have a Creator, it's what would be expected. After all, physicists have never seen subatomic particles, and yet they deduce their presence from experimental observations of that invisible world. It is therefore not wrong to think that we are able to deduce God's "invisible attributes" from His creation. Certainly we cannot take God into a laboratory, nor should we expect to be able to observe Him by natural senses, but if God is really there, why would anyone expect His presence to be susceptible to discovery by merely natural methods? Would He not have to take the first step toward us?

A man skeptical of the claims of religion vs. scientific discovery ended an article in which he attempted to defend his proposition that science has made God obsolete. Yet he did so in a way that, contrary to his intentions, actually supports the point I am making, i.e., that we should not expect to think up the idea of God unless He actually is there and has first communicated to us. Says Michael Shermer, "Science traffics in the natural, not the supernatural. The only God that science could discover would be a natural being, an entity that exists in space and time and is constrained by the laws of nature. A supernatural God would be so wholly Other that no science could know Him." No science, that is, except the divinely enabled knowledge that comes by faith in what God, who is indeed there, has revealed.

The Victorious Life

Paul made a bold statement to the Roman church, to describe the triumphant quality of the everyday Christian life. He said, in connection to the suffering we all go through in this world - a world that is deeply opposed to the true Word of God, "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us." (Romans 8:37) The nature of "all these things" he likened in the previous verse to being "considered as sheep to be slaughtered." And all that "for God's sake".

The idea of suffering as normative for the Christian life has a very old and very Biblical history, yet it remains one that the average believer is troubled by. And all the more so, in a culture like ours that becomes accustomed to "the good life." Believers, for the most part, have been more likely to respond to their suffering with a cry of "Why, Lord?", as opposed to "Praise the Lord!"

In other words, the concept of a "victorious life" for the Christian is something that happens in their suffering, rather than instead of their suffering. Where would the victory be if there was no enemy, and a very clever, determined and powerful one at that? Victory is the power of the Holy Spirit giving us the peace "that passes understanding" in the midst of troublesome and confusing times. Victory is the power of God to "Take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm." (Ephesians 6:13) To be victorious in the Christian life is to not be defeated; downcast, discouraged, disheartened to the point of giving up and caving in to the desires of the flesh.

How different this is from some preaching that suggests that the victorious life is riding the crest of our personal happiness wave. And worse, one very popular preacher teaches that the secret is to tap into the inner resources of our souls, drawing out the innate power of our confidence and personal strength. Says Joel Osteen, "Remember, God has put in you everything you need to live a victorious life. Now, it's up to you to draw it out." (As quoted on whitehorseinn.org) Where does "when I am weak, then I am strong" fit into that scheme?

It might be more appealing to the masses to proclaim a Christian version of the "American Dream," but it doesn't stack up to the Biblical evidence. Our victory takes place "in the presence of my enemies," not in their absence. Our victory is being "...afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed." (2 Corinthians 4:9)

Our unchurched neighbors don't really need another testimony of how to succeed in prosperous America. Many of them are managing just fine to do that without ever setting foot inside a church. What they need is to see someone going through the kind of experience that can leave some people bitter and angry with God and life itself, and still be, not only holding their faith intact, but also displaying the fruit of the Spirit, instead of the gut reactions of the human mind. Now that's victory!

Is there really a "God particle"?

For those, like me, who are confused by the language of scientists who spend their time figuring out the invisible world of the atom, their occasional news reports of quarks and neutrinos, weak forces and other phenomena may seem like more science fiction than science. But it's all very real and it gives the rest of us a rough idea of how complicated are the most basic elements of the world that God made.

Now, that phrase, "God made", is as much a source of controversy as the nature of sub-atomic particles and their interaction with each other. The idea that we should assume a Creator from the complexities of the creation is thought by many to be "unscientific", belonging instead in the realm of faith. Presumably faith, for many critics of Intelligent Design, is thought to be something we "just believe" without much in the way of objective evidence.

So scientists of the atom, and of the physical forces that make our universe work, continue to explore answers to what holds all this together and what makes the cosmos what it is. A recent study was hoping to uncover what some called the "God particle", so-called because this particular bit of matter is thought to hold the secret of how everything else "holds together" and makes the universe work as it does.

I realize that the scientists could explain that last part a lot better than I just did, but that seems to be the gist of it, from what I read in the news reports. Well, good luck to them, but it might be a lot simpler for the rest of us to take the Bible at its word that God did indeed make this world as He says He did. As for the "glue" that keeps things together, Paul gave us a wonderfully profound statement when he said that Christ, the incarnate Word of God, is the full expression of God's wisdom and power, in Whom "all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17).

I wish he had said just a little more about that, but for now such knowledge belongs in the realim of the unrevealed information that God has not chosen to make known. ("The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law." Deuteronomy 29:29)

God has revealed all we need to believe and obey Him. Other things we try to figure out by the "scientific method". But even then, we've learned about things like "photosynthesis" and "DNA". But who really knows exactly how such things work and why they do? And yet so many have come to accept that mankind understands enough about the universe that we don't really need belief in God to explain it all. Good thing for them that God is, at least for now, holding them together along with everything else.