Saturday, August 20th, 2005
Tomorrow night at Logan Uniting we’re focusing on heaven. My kids were shocked when I told them I was reading up about heaven so I’d be ready for Sunday. I’m not planning to go there just yet.
So the focus of the night will be imagination. We’ll have five paintings around the wall, especially commissioned for the night to get us dreaming. We’ll have an excerpt from C S Lewis’ book, “The Great Divorce”.
We’ll use Mercy Me’s song, “I Can Only Imagine”, to capture something of the awe of being able to worship God in a new and fantastic setting.
Bart Millard wrote the song as he worked through the grief from his father dying. People kept telling him his father was ‘in a better place’. Not great news for a 19 year old. “I used to write the phrase ‘I can only imagine’ on anything I could get my hands on.” Millard says he did this for two reasons: “I did know he was in a better place and that would set me off thinking about what he was seeing. Getting strength he never had here and seeing things he couldn’t fathom here. And it really brought peace and hope to me. At the same time, I really wanted to know, ‘God, what’s so great about there that he would want to leave me or not come back?’ Call it selfish, but it’s just being human.”
So the song wasn’t written out of some super-spiritual motive to move closer to God. Instead, it was written by a grieving son crying out to his Creator for some sort of cosmic clue.The song lyrics emerged out of the phrase “I can only imagine” and were recorded on the album “Almost There”.
Bart and the Mercy Me team have worked with Jeff Kinsley to publish their book, “I Can Only Imagine”, a book on worship God with all of our lives. There’s a chapter on heaven, deconstructing cliched concepts of heaven and building a minimalist framework that sets the imaginative juices flowing.
I can only imagine
What it will be like
When I walk
By Your side
I can only imagine
What my eyes will see
When Your face
Is before me
I can only imagine
{Chorus}:
Surrounded by Your glory,
what will my heart feel
Will I dance for You Jesus or in awe of You be still
Will I stand in Your presence or to my knees will I fall
Will I sing hallelujah, will I be able to speak at all
I can only imagine
I can only imagine
When that day comes
And I find myself
Standing in the Son
I can only imagine
When all I will do
Is forever
Forever worship You
I can only imagine
Tags: heaven and hell, Music, Theology
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Monday, May 9th, 2005
Tonight (East Australia Time) a number of bloggers have started conversations with Brian McLaren, touching on the issues raised in Brian’s most recent book, The Last Word and The Word After That. It’s not often an author takes the opportunity to dialogue with his readers in this way. (The image to the right by the way has been doctored to include Brian’s photo and a hint of hell.)
At Tall Skinny Kiwi, for example, Brian asks two questions:
#1 For you personally, is the gospel primarily information on how to avoid hell, largely but not exclusively for hell avoidance, partially but not mostly for it, peripherally for it, or not at all for it? (Not sure if you could make this a poll?)
#2 And if the primary purpose for the good news of Jesus is not to get individual souls out of hell after this life, what is its primary purpose?
Head on over to Tall Skinny Kiwi’s blog, vote in the ‘Skinny Poll’ and put your two cents worth in the comments.
At Jen Lemen’s site Brian talks about some of the personal background to the book. How he developed his thinking and so on.
At Pomo Musings (Adam Cleaveland) Brian comments:
“One of the sub-themes of the book is that our understanding or misunderstanding of hell, judgment, the purpose of God, and the character of God has huge ramifications in how we live - including how we treat other humans, other living creatures, and the planet itself.”
At Jordon Cooper’s site the action is yet to start.
At Dwight Friesen’s site, Brian writes:
“I have felt for a long time that Western Christian theology (in its Catholic and Protestant forms) had somewhere become preoccupied with getting individual souls out of hell after death, and had too often lost a sense of God’s continuing love for all creation in this life - in other words, we had substituted something else for the gospel of the kingdom of God, which was at the heart of Jesus’ message.”
And at Chris Monro’s Paradoxology blog Brian’s just getting into the conversation.
Tags: Adam Cleaveland, Brian McLaren, Dwight Friesen, Emergent, Emerging Church, heaven and hell, Jen Lemen, Jordon Cooper, Reading, Spirituality, Tall Skinny Kiwi, Theology
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Sunday, May 1st, 2005
Last week I had a quick read of Eoin Colfer’s novel, “Wish List“. The book, first published in 2000 by O’Brien Press in Ireland, is aimed at kids but makes a good yarn for adults.
The gist of the book is an attempt by Meg Finn, recently deceased, to have another chance to enter heaven rather than hell. In her previous life she had a troubled home life dealing with her abusive stepfather and tangling with Belch, a simple criminal teenage boy. While attempting to rob a pensioner’s flat the teenagers both die in a gas explosion. Now she’s sent back to help the pensioner make something of his life, in the process turning her aura from red to blue. She’s chased by a soul man - Belch - her former ally - who hopes to drag her down to the dark side.
This is a humorous take on the conventional after-life metaphors of heaven and hell. St Peter’s pictured coming to terms with databases and mobile phones. Beelzebub, number two below, is run around by Satan whose evil is as quirky as treacherous. God is referred to but not engaged with in the storyline.
As a conversation starter this is excellent. We get to explore the popular stereotypes of heaven and hell, along with the ideas related to being ‘more good than bad’ in an effort to go up rather than down. The cosmology is on the same level as Peter Jackson’s movie, The Frighteners.
After avoiding the topic for some time in the emerging church, I think it’s time we engaged with heaven and hell. I note that Brian McLaren has entered this conversation in his most recent novel, The Last Word and the Word After That: A Tale of Faith, Doubt, and a New Kind of Christianity. It’s on my wish list at Amazon.
It’s also an opportunity to explore the way we live while on Earth - dealing with childhood regrets, shame, fears and hopes.
The books’ been published in German, Polish, Russian, Swedish, Chinese, Japanese, French, Serbian, Finnish, Portugese, Lithuanian and Spanish.
The author, Eoin Colfer, started writing while working as a school teacher (for 10 year olds). He is now known mostly for his Artemis Fowl series:
Artemis Fowl
The Arctic Incident
The Eternity Code
The Opal Deception
The Artemis Files (Guide to the world of Artemis Fowl)
Artemis Fowl starts the series as a teenage criminal genius who encounters a hidden world of technologically advanced 21st century fairies, elves and goblins. Over the series he matures and learns to invest in the lives of others.
The Artemis Fowl books were published by Puffin in the UK and Miramax in the United States. Larry Guterman has been directing the movie which will be released some time this year. The producers are Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro.
Tags: Eion Colfer, fantasy, Fiction, heaven and hell, Reading, Spirituality
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