Jan 31 2009
CCCA – 2: Knowing and Choosing Your Eternal Destination
[This is the second post in a series, "Campus Crusade for Christian Assumptions." Original post here.]
Thank God, according to the Bible, not only can you know, but you can choose where you will spend eternity.
So goes the first sentence of the ATS (American Tract Society) pamphlet I pulled from a professor’s door on campus this week. Thank you, professor-to-remain-anonymous, for providing students with such important news. You think. I hope that students who read your literature will do so critically. In the one sentence above I spot 4 new assumptions.
Before we begin, however, I should make sure I’m using the word “assumption” correctly. According to the Encarta dictionary, an assumption is -
something that is believed to be true without proof
Looks like I’m using it right.
Yesterday I covered these three assumptions: that there will be an eternity, that there is a soul/spirit that continues to exist beyond death, and that there are distinct places within an eternity for a soul to go to. What fresh assumptions do you spy in the single tract sentence at the head of this post?
Continuing the numbering from the first post . . .
4) That by “God” all people know which god you are talking about. Do you mean the god of the Jews, of the Muslims, one of the Hindu gods? I do not believe that the god of the Jews and the god of the Christians and the god of the Muslims is the same god, for each of these groups speak of a god with a distinctly different message for his people and plans for them. Blaming the messengers is a nice fudge. Claiming that only your messenger got the message correct is a transparent yet fully bogus ploy. One true god? No. I see a bunch of different gods, all assumed by the people of that god to be “The One True God.”
5) That “God” needs to be thanked or that something is gained by doing this.
6) You can “know” where you will spend eternity. That is one significant stretch of the word “know.” It seems that even the supposedly singular god of the Bible didn’t know that eternity was in the plans for his people until very late in “his” book. For ancient Israelites, the reward for allegiance to their god was (long) life, prosperity, many children, and the honor of being “set to rest” with one’s esteemed ancestors. The perks for following the Bible god later evolved and blossomed into a post-death retirement package. Or punishment. Many Biblical scholars have argued that much of Jesus’ talk of the coming Kingdom was actually a veiled reference to the day Jews would take back their land from the Romans. Paul and later writers finally fully Hellenized the religion (just gave up on attaining their own kingdom?) to where ideas such as a transcendent soul and a heavenly abode became central elements.
7) You can “choose” whether you go to heaven or hell. Let’s face it, heaven and hell is what the talk of where in eternity you will go has been about. The existence of heaven and hell aside — I’m sure we’ll meet those further along in the pamphlet — even the choosing part is problematic. Among Christians themselves — believers in the same version of “God,” — there are different ideas of precisely what it means to choose. No a person can’t just put their finger to their lips in thought for a moment, and then say “I choose heaven.” If so, they haven’t read the fine print. Their choice will determine nothing. Different Christian denominations have differing ideas about how you must choose, and what it means to choose, and how that choice will remain valid. Or not.
