Preached · August 1, 2017
Hey, Anthony Parrott here. This is a long time coming. A while back—a couple of months ago—we did a sermon series called I'm Dead, Now What?, and we planned to do some Q&A. We got a lot of good questions, but we actually ran out of time in the sermons to cover some of them, because we wanted to give proper attention to the material we were teaching and still leave some room for the questions that came in.
So, sorry this is so late after the fact. We've had a few changes around here. But I wanted to go through a couple of these questions and give you some of my best thoughts, based on Scripture and Christian theology and orthodoxy, about some of these topics.
What Does the Bible Say About Purgatory?
First, question number one: what does the Bible say about purgatory?
If you're not familiar with the concept, purgatory is the idea that some folks, when they die, will need to be sanctified—to have sin, or their sin nature, removed from their souls, from their essence—before they enter into heaven, into God's presence.
The very best thinking about purgatory actually comes from the Catholic Church today. Not all Catholics hold what I'd call the caricature or cartoon image of souls just waiting around forever—or maybe not forever, but hundreds or thousands of years—getting lightly tortured until they're ready to enter the presence of God. Pope Benedict XVI, the last pope before Francis, actually wrote quite a bit on purgatory. In his view, purgatory was whatever process is necessary between death and entering into the presence of the divine that makes you holy.
Scripture says that when we see him, we will be like him. When we encounter the presence of God, we will enter into that kind of divine nature. That's the sense of 1 Peter, 1 John, all those kinds of things. So we do believe—everybody believes, any Christian, evangelical, Catholic, whatever—that upon your death there is some process by which you enter into a form of moral perfection so that you can then enter into the presence of God. In modern Catholic theology, that's purgatory. For some Catholics it could be an instantaneous process; some believe it's more of a multi-year thing. And even evangelicals and Protestant Christians believe there is some moment, some quick or instant process, that prepares your soul to experience perfection in the presence of God.
So purgatory, per se, is not a particularly Protestant belief. And I don't think it's all that helpful to imagine that God can't stand to be in our presence until we become, quote unquote, perfect. God, in the form of Jesus, was already present with a very imperfect humanity. But I think it is important to know that upon death, all those things which hold us back from being perfect like the Father is perfect—as Jesus puts it in Matthew 5—will be removed. Paul talks about the weight of glory that will far surpass the things that pain us now.
So, is purgatory a place we go to? Is it a lengthy event? I doubt it. But I think it is good to know that whatever holds us back—that mirror we now see through dimly—will be removed through the grace of Christ.
What Is Hell Like?
All right, next question. It was framed like this: eternal torment and suffering, fiery consumption, separation from God, being eaten by worms, being drowned by a concrete necklace—are all of these vivid images about how awful hell is, or about why we should choose life instead? In other words, what is hell like?
We talked a little about this during the sermon series. I think a lot of our images of hell are mostly influenced by Dante's Inferno—somewhat medieval imagery inserted into biblical language. By no means do I want to water down the idea of hell. The way Jesus talks about Gehenna as a place of fiery consumption, the place where the worm never dies—these things are definitely true. But when I think about demons and tights and pitchforks, pits of fire, circles of hell, and "there's a special level of hell for you," that's all cartoonish imagery that comes from medieval Catholic thinking rather than solid biblical thinking.
So what do I think hell is? I think the imagery gets across the idea of humanity's worst wishes coming true. Take individualism to its extreme; take consumerism and endless consumption to their logical conclusion. I think that's a good explanation of what hell is going to be like. It's going to be the hell of loneliness. It's going to be the hell of gluttony and consumption. It's going to be the hell of militarism and violence. And I think it will be absolutely miserable. Strangely, I think it's exactly what some people want—maybe without thinking through the logic of it.
I do think it's going to be a place where you are somehow disconnected from the presence of God, which Scripture tells us is everywhere—and disconnected from being with God's creation, the Imago Dei, completely cut off from that.
So do I think it's literal fire, skin melting off, all those nasty images? Not necessarily. I don't think that's the point of the imagery Scripture gives us. But I do think that any imagery we use is pointing to something that is terrible, that is awful—and we should feel an impetus, a strong impulse, to tell people that it doesn't have to end like that.
Do We Become Angels When We Die?
Question number three: do we become angels when we die?
This is a kind of pop folk theology, folk religion—the idea that when somebody dies they become an angel, or maybe they're up in heaven right now but eventually they'll get their wings. There's really no scriptural reason to believe anything like that.
Angels are a unique and special creation of God. They are different from humans, and humans don't graduate up to become angels. Humans get to be redeemed from bodies that decay and die, and will receive new bodies in the resurrection—the return of Jesus, the new heavens and the new earth. Angels are purely spiritual beings. They are not physical or material beings, from what we see in Scripture. Whereas humans are both soulish—we have souls or spirits—and physical, material, bodily.
So becoming an angel is an impossibility in the logic of heaven, the logic of the afterlife, because angels are a wholly different creature, a wholly different part of God's creation. In fact, I'd say angels should wish to become humans, because we get the privileges and the unique capabilities of being material, physical creatures of God's good creation.
So, no—we don't get wings, and we don't become angels. We become more fully human upon Jesus's return and resurrection.
Do All Dogs Go to Heaven?
Question number four: do all dogs go to heaven? In other words, what happens to our pets, to animals, when they die? Do we have any hope or expectation of being reunited with beloved pets in the new creation, in the resurrection?
I would say: well, why not? If we think of the afterlife as purely going to heaven when you die, then it'd be pretty easy to say, "Yeah, I don't expect a whole lot of animals up there." But if we're actually using the biblical language that Scripture uses to talk about the afterlife—this idea of creation being renewed and restored and the curse being taken away—it's different. The book of Romans talks about creation groaning, waiting for the redemption, the reconciliation of all things. You have the passages in Isaiah about the wolf and the lamb lying down together, and the little child who shall lead them, and all these kinds of images. Then of course we would expect to see not just humans in the new creation, but all of God's creation—plants, wildlife, all of it.
So do I believe that specifically my dog Chelsea, who was hit by a car when I was a kid, is going to be in heaven? I don't know. That gets a little more complicated. Is there an essence of Chelsea the poodle's soul that God is keeping in his memory? That's kind of an impossible question to answer. But I do believe there will be animals in heaven, and I believe we'll probably be able to domesticate them in some way. And it would be silly to say the opposite—that absolutely not, there will be no Chelsea the poodle in the new creation—because that would be beyond my ability to answer purely from Scripture.
The Undead Prophets: Enoch and Elijah
Next question. This one came in written out:
Of the undead prophets, who wins in an arm wrestling match, Enoch or Elijah? Do they serve as eternal witnesses at the coming of Christ? What was their purpose for no death? Hebrews sheds a tiny bit of information on Enoch's departure, about as helpful as the information regarding Elijah.
So the questioner is asking about the two cases in Scripture where people don't die. I joked in the sermon series that one out of one persons have died or will die—and that's entirely accurate, because you've got Enoch and you've got Elijah, whom Scripture describes as being taken up into heaven. Enoch walked with God, and then he was no more. And Elijah has this experience where a chariot of fire takes him up into the heavens.
So what's going on here? Do they experience some sort of instant transformation into resurrection bodies? Are they experiencing something like the ascension that Jesus experienced? All interesting questions. Honestly, it's hard to say for sure. As the questioner implied, there's not a whole lot of information in Scripture itself.
I think there are a couple of possibilities. For Enoch, Scripture says that he walked with God and then he was no more. That doesn't necessarily preclude death happening to Enoch—that God decided to end Enoch's life early so that Enoch could be immediately in God's presence. Not an impossibility. Elijah is taken up in this chariot of fire, with the implication that he's taken immediately into the presence of God. But I also think that could be poetic imagery and language used for Elijah's death. Even if there is a literal chariot of fire carrying Elijah away, I think that, almost by definition—given everything we've experienced so far—Enoch's body still had to die before going into the immediate presence of God.
The only person we know of who was able, in bodily form, to be taken up into the heavens, into the immediate presence of the divine, is Jesus. Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection. Jesus has the privilege of a resurrection body, and I don't want to apply that same concept to Enoch or Elijah, because I think it dishonors Jesus and puts too much honor on Enoch and Elijah.
So, yes, it could be a kind of rapture idea—Enoch or Elijah as precursors, their bodies being transformed. But again, I think that gets things out of order. Jesus is called the firstfruits of the new resurrection, not Enoch or Elijah.
Is Cremation Okay?
Okay, final question: is cremation okay? Is it acceptable, when someone dies, for them to be cremated instead of buried?
I've encountered this question before, and I used to have different thoughts on it. The idea behind the concern is that if you burn someone—burn up their corpse and turn it into ash—does that somehow remove the possibility of physical resurrection for them when Jesus returns? I think that's nonsense, because for people who have been dead hundreds or thousands of years, the body has essentially turned into ash or dirt already. So I don't think it's any sort of hard thing for God to take a decomposed body—which by now has probably been in the water and soil cycle for many generations—I don't think it's any sort of hard thing for God to take the soul of that person and match it with a resurrection body.
So being cremated doesn't express any kind of desire for God not to resurrect you. It doesn't make it harder for God to resurrect you. God is able to do what God is able to do—which, in case you didn't know, is everything.
I've heard people say that cremation is somehow an expression of a lack of hope in the afterlife, or a way of physically manifesting hell on earth, and that people who are cremated have somehow taken their faith or trust out of Jesus. Again, I just don't see that. People have died in many, many kinds of ways. It's actually a little weird, a little presumptuous, to assume that only people who have been buried whole are the ones who will experience the loving embrace of God in the afterlife and the resurrection at the return of Jesus and the establishment of his kingdom. People have died in many horrific ways. People have been burned at the stake for their faith. People have been eaten by animals for their faith. People have died in all sorts of horrendous ways through accidents.
So cremation, for me, is perhaps my preferred way of burial. I feel like caskets are really expensive, and cemeteries take up a lot of land, so I'm not convinced burial is the most ecologically responsible option—and I don't feel it's the most financially responsible either. And please don't mishear me: I'm not saying anybody who decides to be buried whole, or buried in a casket, is doing something wrong. I'm just saying that for myself, I probably plan on cremation, because I feel like it's one of the more responsible ways to handle burial, financially and ecologically.
And that's not me taking my faith out of Jesus—by no means. I fully believe that I will be embraced by God upon my death, in his presence, in paradise. And that when Jesus returns and establishes his kingdom in the new heavens and the new earth, it will be no problem whatsoever for the divine, the creator of all things, to reunite my soul with a body fit for the new creation.
Closing
So that's it. Those are all the questions we got. Hopefully this was helpful for someone out there. And again, I apologize that it was so late. Thanks so much. Talk to you later.
