When Jesus is the instrument of our idolatry
the heart is a factory
"If you were to die today, do you know for sure that you would go to heaven?"
So goes the opening gambit of a widely used evangelism strategy (not quite verbatim). And, honestly, there is something to be said for it - it asks the addressee to think about a question of eternal realities that they generally may not ponder or want to ponder. At the same time, there is something deeply wrong with this way of conceptualising Christianity.
What's the point of Christianity? What's it meant to do? If the answer is "so I can go to heaven when I die", then we've missed the point, we've misunderstood heaven1, and we're actually short-changing ourselves in a terribly foolish way.
Let's back-up and consider another question:
Q: What is the chief end of man?
A: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.
So begins the Westminster Shorter Catechism. I want you to notice three things. Firstly, a human's existence is goal-oriented.2 We are made, and exist, for a purpose. Secondly, that fundamental orientation is supposed to be to glorify God. Why? Because God is God, he is the supreme ultimate being and reality, worthy of glorification, of worship, beyond all others. Thirdly, that in fulfilling the goal-directed nature of our life in God, human beings also and actually find their deepest fulfilment, and so enjoy God.
The greatest, deepest, truest, best source of joy and enjoyment for a human being is God, and all other true pleasures come from him and are enjoyed in him.
Which means that when we think of trusting in Jesus as basically a ticket to a heaven where God is largely absent, that the main game in town is 'getting across the line' so that we can enter an afterlife that is an eternity of delights, most of which are conceptualised as "heaven is the place where you get to enjoy things forever and God stays out of your way", then what have we done?
We've made Jesus an instrument, a tool, a means, that we use to get to our real goal - enjoying things other than God.
That's idolatry. When our real god is pleasure and the real God is not our goal, but our method.
What difference would it make if we really thought that the main point of our existence was to glorify God and enjoy him? We'd think of heaven differently, for one. We'd recognise that one of the chief benefits of the new creation and resurrection life after the end of all things, is to enjoy God forever in new and ever-living ways.3 We'd think of our life now differently too. You know, you can enjoy God now. You can begin to find your chief joy in God this very day.
This thought came to me the other day, though in a different form. It is not just that God comforts us, as if he only provided various things that provide us comfort. No, but God himself is our comfort. When we need comfort, we are to look to him, not for the gifts he gives, but for his very self.
So too with joy. God gives many good gifts, to be enjoyed, which are rightly enjoyed in him. But the point of it all is that we love and delight in the Giver, not merely his gifts.4
Taste and see that the Lord is good;
blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.Ps 34.8 NIV
I’m using ‘heaven’ in a shorthand way here. A more proper exposition would involve talking about the New Creation, as a physical reality in which resurrected and redeemed human beings dwell in permanent dynamic shalom with God forever. Perhaps time for that another day.
If you want a fancy word for this, we are telic or teleological beings.
This is, by the way, what Aquinas and the catholic tradition mean when they talk about the beatific vision.
What about his good gifts then? We are to delight in them, in Him.