​72. Choose Wisely

Heaven. Hell.

Pick a lane.

I just finished Tim Mackie’s four part series on Heaven and Hell in Scripture on his My Strange Bible podcast.

I want to start telling people on the bus how amazing it is. And also start riding the bus.

Here’s a recap that will undoubtedly rip apart heaven and hell in the traditional sense. So buckle up:

God created Eden. Eden was a place where heaven and earth collided. God walked with man and woman in the garden. This was the original design, that we could plant and cultivate and write poetry and do gnarly tricks on a skateboard, all while walking with our Creator.

But then man and woman defied God, and we were left to walk this world alone. EXCEPT that God mercifully created a plan to redeem our folly, our desire to walk away from Him and rely on our own efforts to create a world based on our own defined truth.

Sound familiar? Welcome to 2021.

This plan included God Himself walking the earth in human form, willingly suffering and dying for our immense sin, conquering death and becoming the first fruits of our awaited future (if we so choose that particular future).

Heaven is a choice we make right now, and God in His graciousness, allows us to actually make that choice. We are not forced. We can choose to walk with Jesus or not.

Walking with Jesus means we live a full and abundant life now in His name, sharing who He is and what He’s done with others with a heart that’s chosen love for our neighbors. When we die, we rest in Christ for a period until we are resurrected back onto this earth to live peacefully under Christ’s rule, living and breathing and writing and cooking and plowing and sewing and doing all the things we were created to do without evil breathing down our necks.

No harps or halo required.

Or we can walk this life without recognizing Him as king and live in the darkness of our own sin, listening to the wet sound of teeth tearing through our very spirit. In that case, we die but not in Christ. And we’re judged according to our sins and thrown in the lake of fire where evil will be eternally destroyed.

Seems like an easy choice to me.

Heaven or hell are now friends.

Choose wisely.