Personal

People die for all kinds of reasons. I died for the love of chewing gum.

        I didn’t realize the exact date (or that it was for gum) until maybe twenty years later when I found the stack of old calendars Mom kept. She recorded her kids’ dental appointments and other life-changing events on them. Great. I love to rummage through historical records.

        Scanning through the years, I found an entry for April 7, 1953, when I was nearly eight years old. Her note said I had gotten born for the second time. Then I remembered kneeling with her at our pale green sofa with its silver- and gold-colored metallic threads. She asked if I’d done bad things. I remembered lying, so I said Yes. Then she asked if I was sorry and wanted to let Jesus into my heart and forgive me. I said Yes and did it.

        I cannot explain how or why, but 20 years later, standing in her kitchen, reading her old note, I re-lived my earlier death and all its gummy details: 

        At about five years old, I stole some gum from an Acme food store. Mom was paying for groceries and talking just out of sight with the cashier. Marketers had put the gum right in front of me—at chin level. Yum. I liked that brand but decided not to ask Mom to buy it; she might say No. I reached for it. Then words came distinctly in an adult male voice: “Don’t take the gum.”

        What? Who said that? It didn’t sound like Dad, and he was at work. I looked around. Mom and the cashier were still talking. Being short then, I didn’t see anyone else.

        I reached out again, and the same unknown voice said: “That would be stealing; don’t take the gum.” I looked all around, still seeing no one.

        I reached for the gum a third time, but no words came. I took the gum. I knew it was stealing and stealing was wrong. I died then, but didn’t know it.

        Fast-forward 70 years. A Christian preacher said all human babies are born dead. That seemed wrong. How had they lied or stolen before being born? I’m not sure if he meant dead in soul or dead in spirit (or both). He didn’t blame anyone, but I’d bet on Adam and Eve. Why?

        Death is a separation; things get lost. Even relationships can die, and the proof is separation—usually at multiple levels. When Adam and Eve did the only thing God had told them not to do, they got consequences He had warned them about: they died.

        For one thing, they immediately realized they were naked, so their deaths had a visible result: the loss of covering Glory. For another thing: A bit later God called out, “Adam. Where are you?” Of course, He knew where Adam was. But He wanted to show the man (and us) that something invisible had gone wrong. When I was young, that invisible thing was commonly called “original sin.” For a long time I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but “they” said it passed to every descendant of Adam and Eve.

         So, what really happened? A clue came in a much later Bible account of Glory lost.

        Israel’s sins had gotten so bad with human sacrifice and other despicable things that the Glory of The Lord departed from the Temple in Jerusalem (Ezekiel 8:6, 9:3-4, 10:3-4, 10:18-19, and 11:22-23). But something invisible departed there, too.

        The Temple also lost God’s inner Presence which had caused the Glory. The same mysterious but obvious thing happened to Adam and Eve. That inherited loss of close relationship is the reason I was born without a covering Glory. It is also the reason I was born separated from God’s inner Presence.

        The Christian preacher I mentioned had taken the mysterious thing a step further and said I had been born dead. But Paul writes in Romans 9:11 that Esau and Jacob, Isaac’s children in Rebecca’s womb, had done nothing either good or bad; they were innocent. We each die for our own sins (Deuteronomy 24:16, Ezekiel 18:4 and 20). Therefore, children are not born carrying their ancestors’ sins. Otherwise, when a pregnant woman dies, her unborn child would go to hell, and King David would have been wrong about going to his dead infant son (2 Samuel 12:23). We don’t die toward God until we ourselves sin for the first time. For me that happened when I deliberately stole the gum. Paul mentions his own first time in Romans 7:9. (“I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.”)

        Children are not born dead. Thanks to Adam and Eve, they are born empty.

        That empty place inside every newborn human is what we spend our lives trying to fill with everything except God Himself.

        I started to fill the empty place by stealing gum. It was a tiny selfish beginning, but most beginnings are small—like the Big Bang: starting so small as to seem insignificant, but so heavy with consequence that it balloons and affects everything. One problem with sin is how to stop it. Another is what to do with them as they accumulate. Try saying, “It’s nothing” or “Everyone does it” to the victims of sins. It doesn’t work for them.

        And saying, “It’s nothing” or “Everyone does it” doesn’t really work for the offender either. Even if some victims are forgiving, the deeds are done, and consequences still come on like a freight train.

        I remembered my first offense decades after I did it. And if I hadn’t prayed at that sofa and turned my life over to Jesus Christ as the redeemer God promised to Adam, Eve, Abraham, and the world, I might still be carrying my own “original sin”—plus the other sins I’ve done and regretted since then. But when I admitted my sins that day and wanted to change into someone who wouldn’t do them (the technical term is “repentance”), God did for me what He’s done for multiplied millions of others: He took all my sins off my back and put them on Jesus, whose Spirit then stepped somehow into my empty place.

        The Bible story of humanity begins in Genesis, chapter three, with the loss of God’s Glory and Presence by those first two people. That continuing story will end with what the Book calls “the restoration of all things” (Acts 3:19-21). For each repentant human, the last of those restored things will be God’s full inner Presence, and then his Glory. Each restoration begins as Jesus says in the last book of the Bible (Revelation chapter three), when we take Him up on His offer: “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten, Therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”

When I was about ten years old, some adults told me in all seriousness that one day I would know everything. At fifteen, it happened. But that’s not what they meant, and the Hereafter they talked about turned out to be a big jigsaw puzzle which took me years to put together.

          My dad’s mother died when I was a kid. I’d heard stories about what happens before and after death because people everywhere like to mingle and talk about themselves, others, and their ideas. Besides “knowing everything,” they mentioned singing and playing harps, plus other things to see and do. I pictured The Hereafter by using what they said as interlocking shapes of puzzle pieces whose lines and colors were fuzzy grouping clues about the place.

          As I grew and sorted through the jumble, I could see differing beliefs about what’s after here, and yes, some assume such a place doesn’t exist. But let’s assume that it does exist because, first: Every culture has rules plus places to put people who break them. Punishment usually sends the breaker to some kind of prison, but it could be ostracism which is a five-dollar word for “You must go far away forever.”

          And second: I found puzzle pieces which prove that our entire 4-D space-time did not exist until a gravity-defying Bang blew a tiny but massively heavy pile of stuff into what we see now. Therefore, everything in our Big Bang cosmos had to come from other place-time dimensions. That seems definite now, given that at least seven extra dimensions are needed to make the physics of “our” four work out. To say that those dimensions don’t exist or that nothing exists in any of them is laughable, and to say, “It just happened,” but not give a testable scientific explanation of how it did so, is as useful as saying, “God did it.”

          Over the years, all the things I know about us, about our cosmic place (and even about its Hereafter) come through facts, experiences, and stories—especially stories well-told.

          We may have fun now discussing whether or where a particular Hereafter puzzle piece fits in our big pictures, but facts and eye-witness accounts of some such place are rich. And most of the talk is about two places, not one. In English they are heaven and hell.

          Both places must be full of talk, though, due to the unquenchable human desire to rattle on about what we love or hate. Most of the interesting talk comes as stories rather than opinions, but the main difference between heaven and hell is their themes: of generosity, love, and reconciliation in the one place, versus greed, hate, and revenge in the other.

          According to most reports, hell is the uncomfortably hot core of the planet. Its inmates are in cells or chains to keep strong ones from abusing the weak. But worst of all: There’s no future in hell, even for the nice people who’ve only told a few lies and haven’t stolen much, but who won’t admit that they’ve done anything so terrible as to deserve hell. Despite all the talk down there, its inmates will hear clearly only the stories of those nearby—perhaps well-told—which will repeat over and over. Nothing new. Forever.

          As I matched more puzzle pieces, my picture showed that the separate place called heaven is enjoyable. God Most High has his throne there and He thought enough of humanity to have his Son Jesus die even for those who hate Him. I use “enjoyable” because heaven’s residents can move freely, they don’t lie, and truth is stranger than fiction. Residents would have many old stories plus an endless number of new things to learn, experience, and share.

          Okay. For quite a while that’s how I saw the puzzle fitting together. But as with many big pictures, a stubborn hole took shape in it, and a few pieces remained that were hard to place. For example: Will we hear every story? Will every heavenly story be fascinating to everyone who hears it? I’d say the odds are against both—it’s a puzzle within the puzzle….

          The name of God Most High differs from one religion to the next. The names I use are I AM and Jesus Christ. In any case, I have a list of dead people to talk with in heaven. Fairly near the top of my special list is Nebuchadnezzar, the greatest King of the ancient Chaldeans. He handled a particularly knotty problem brilliantly, and then learned its lessons.

          A puzzling dream worried him. His wise men and magicians were to be relied on for solving things like that, so he asked them to interpret it. They naturally asked him to tell them the dream. ...Here is why I admire Nebuchadnezzar: He asked them to tell him the dream first. Only then could he be reasonably assured that their interpretation was correct and not just some pleasing tale they thought he would like to hear.

          They protested, of course. I would, too. How could anyone interpret a dream without having heard it? But their King had given an order and said they had to comply or else be killed miserably and replaced. He could do that in those days. The rest of his story—and the lessons he learned—aren’t relevant to that puzzle hole I mentioned, but the curious scenario that prompted this essay is very relevant:

          All is excitement. Jesus Christ appeared on Earth with his angels and saints as promised. He stopped nuclear World War III and has begun directing the clean-up. I finish my work for the day and dash off to find Nebuchadnezzar.

          I’m running. I’ve wanted for years to hear the Chaldean King’s whole dream incident from his own lips and point of view. So, where is he?

          ...Oh.   Of course.   I must already know where he is because I was taught as a child that “When Christ shall appear, then we shall know even as also we are known.” And since God knows me completely, then (so they said) I shall know everything completely, including where Nebuchadnezzar is.

          So, I go where I know he is. I start to ask about his famous story, but find that I know what he will say since I already know it completely (even the parts that are not in the Bible). I keep mum, though, when I remember he must know what I want to hear.

          Then comes a great disappointment. He is about to tell me his story when he realizes I already know exactly what he will say and how he will say it, so why continue?

          We stare at each other, smile, and give each other such brotherly greetings as we know is appropriate in the cultures from which we have come. The rest of our time together is completely enjoyable because it is spent “in the moment” and is entirely new and fresh in those moments. We even start to say to each other how pleasant it would be to tell each other our stories, but we laugh because each knows even those two desires, as well as knowing the stories.

          He motions for me to follow him since he wants to give me a tour of his favorite places, but ooops: We already know where he will take me and what I shall see; it’s like being there now. We sigh a sort of weird satisfaction and pick up handy harps to strum in absolutely genuine heart-felt praise to God Most High. What else is there to do—other than go back to work or have the same sort of thing happen with anyone else we meet?

Now I ask you: Could that really be a picture of heaven?

          No. Can’t be. It’s a delightfully disappointing story made possible by a flaw of some kind—a fundamental mistake, probably.

          As a Christian, I know that the Bible is its own best interpreter. All of it is true all the time using the culture, the grammar, and the definitions of the words as they were when first written. But our interpretations of it can be warped by our peculiar language translations plus our personal and cultural biases. Whenever I say the Bible is wrong on some point, I have started making my own religion. So, it’s best to use the whole Book and not skip around saying I understand everything.

          The next thing I should ask now is: How can the remaining puzzle pieces fill that last picture hole?

          As I wrote earlier, I was taught that when Christ shall appear, I would know everything. (My teachers used First Corinthians 13:12.) Some translations say I would come to know everything. Take your pick, except that Revelation 2:17 says Christ will give at least some of his overcoming children a white stone to each, on which will be written a new name known only to that child (and God, of course). And since God’s children will number probably in the billions, that means a lot of things we cannot know.

          There is clearly a flaw in what those childhood instructors told me about knowing everything. So, instead of what I was taught, what does the Bible actually say there?

          The critical Corinthian part starts with verse 10 and ends with verse 12: “When that which is perfect shall come  . . .  then I shall know even as also I am known.” I’ve read many translations. First, it does not say I shall know everything. But what then shall I know?

          It plainly answers: “…even as also I am known.”

          That answer is given as a How, not a What. So, maybe in heaven we shall know (or come to know) in the same way we are known now by everyone around us?

          That fits. We make ourselves known both to ourselves and to each other every day as we live, talk (or not), work (or not), share a meal, and so on. “Making ourselves known” also means telling our stories to others. And it also means listening to others who were witnesses at the time but have a different POV.

          That seems like a better way to learn than by getting an instant dump of everyone’s entire book of stories, especially if they’d be told by those who know how to tell them. 

          All the telling and commenting back and forth must take forever for two reasons: First, there are trillions of stories plus more all the time. And second, we must have frequent breaks from storytelling. God Most High will have other things for us to do and experience, like teaching others some of our skills (since they won’t already know them), or maybe we’ll be helping build new things. And what about the many unimaginable things he promised?

          But we cannot ever know everything. Only God Most High has the necessary bandwidth.

          So now I can look forward again to my talk with Nebuchadnezzar. Other questions need answers—like those about the lessons he learned.