Finally Some Good News: A fear of heaven

By DR. MARK ROSS/Columnist

“I do not want to go to heaven.” My friend shocked me when she said that. She is a good person, faithful to her church, charitable with the needy and sincere about her beliefs and convictions. She is just not sure she wants to go to heaven.

Everybody wants to go to heaven
Get their wings and fly around
Everybody wants to go to heaven
But nobody want to go now Kenny Chesney

Chesney’s song likely comes from an old story about a minister who accosts patrons of a local bar with the question, “Do you want to go to heaven?” When they answer, “Yes,” the minister commands them, “Then leave this bar at once.”
Yet, one customer, with a full beer in front of him, replies negatively.
“Do you mean when you die, you do not want to go to heaven?” the minister asks.
The man replies, “When I die I want to go. I thought you were getting a load up now.”
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to go now.” Kenny Chesney is having too much fun to think about going to heaven now. My friend’s struggles were much more complex.
She explained, “While attending a funeral, I heard the minister say something that disturbed me. The minister claimed that when we die and go to heaven, we would see all the people who have gone on before us.” Then my friend added, “Some of the people who have gone on before me, I never want to see again.”
My friend is not referring to people who have been rude or insensitive, but cruel and unkind. She is not thinking about an awkward celestial moment, but the prospect of being in heaven and it feeling like hell. I understand what she means.
She is not the only one who is a little anxious about eternity. Who else will be there, what will we be like, and what will they be like? Will we know each other in eternity?
When it comes to our questions, the Bible is not a textbook, indexed with answers to the things inquiring minds want to know. Rather, the Bible is a storybook that raises as many questions as it answers. Yet, the stories carry great truths.
When the shyster Jacob finally turns homeward, he must face Esau, his angry brother he had cheated years ago. Although Jacob is at his mercy, rather than attack his brother, Esau embraces Jacob. In response, Jacob says to his brother, “To see your face is like seeing the face of God.”
I think that is a little of what eternity will be like. We will see the best in each other. We will see God in each other. Centuries later, the Apostle Paul would say about eternity, “Now we see through a glass darkly, then we will see face to face.”
None of us wants to spend eternity peeking around corners, dodging people we do not want to see. My best hope is in something else Saint Paul said about eternity, “We will all be changed.”
As we are now, we are no more ready for eternity than eternity is ready for us. Yet, when we arrive at that place and time, our enemies will all be changed. The cruel will be gentle and the crooked will be straight. The biggest shock of all will be the change in us.

Dr. Mark Ross is the pastor of Marion Baptist Church. To learn more about MBC, visit http://www.marionbaptistchurchva.com/.