Chapter Eight: Episode 34

Heaven All Around

The Language Games of Care

In particular, our church-based “Care Group” meetings were crucial in helping us become adept at the religious language game. There, we deeply discussed scripture and its application to our lives. 

When our group’s leader, Jim Steinfeld, got brain cancer, our language game enabled us to face this crisis together.

We continually prayed for Jim’s healing and the family’s daily well-being.

But, when Jim’s suffering increased and we realized he would die, we didn’t say, “Well, religion doesn’t work!  Those prayers were all for nothing.” No, our Christian faith is based on Jesus Christ, who himself suffered and died. So, as Jim suffered and prepared to die, we prayed that he would sense Christ with him, sharing his suffering and fear. 

As the Christian story unflinchingly records, as Jesus died on the cross, he cried, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” And the Christian story recounts that God did not forsake him. God brought Christ through a harrowing death to Eternal Life.

Especially notice this. We didn’t reject the language game of medical science in Jim’s crisis. Members of our group were physicians and committed to medicine’s power, and Jim himself tried every possible medical solution. 

So, we moved between our language games -- medicine and religion -- seeking answers and help from each. 

But, the medical language game could only do so much.  The religious language game, by contrast, gave us strength in each trying moment of sickness and crushing therapy.  And our language game gave us hope, knowing Jim was united with Jesus Christ in Eternal Life.

Certainty about Heaven

But, why were we so confident that Jim was with Christ?  How do we know Eternal Life is real? How can we be certain? 

Jim was devoted to the teachings and spirit of Christ – that was the air he breathed. Your dad John remembers skiing with Jim on Mt. Hood, setting out on a startlingly beautiful day of fresh snow and sunshine.  As they rode the lift up, Jim said, “John, this place is so full of Christ’s grace, blessing us with this day, let’s just pray to him right now, thanking him for this moment.”

 Jim was already leaning into Heaven because he saw Heaven all around him. His vision of life – his Christian form of life – let him see the world as abounding in Christ.  

His life was saturated by a reality – heaven -- that can’t be lost in death.  Neither Christ’s death nor Jim’s.

Jesus linked confidence in heaven to our moral life in the present.  In the “Sermon on the Mount,” he preached. . .

·       “God blesses those people who depend only on him. They belong to the kingdom of heaven!”[i]

·       “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

·       “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.”

Belief in heaven presses itself upon us as we live aligned with heaven’s values.  Every day we aspire to live by heavenly values.  Then, over time and through circumstances that test us (“persecuted because of righteousness”), our conviction about heaven only grows because that is the world we inhabit. 

The more one lives a “heavenly life,” the more one believes in heaven! The moral integrity and joy of this form of life deepen belief in heaven.[ii]

(To be continued August 11, Chapter Eight: Episode 35)

To Eight Trails readers: Does this post suggest a moment you’ve experienced and, perhaps, a photo you took? Share your reflections and photos with me by clicking “reply” to this email post. I would be delighted to include them in new posts — of course, crediting you!

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[i] I prefer this translation of Matthew 5:3, from the New Living Translation

[ii] I am indebted to the insight of Paul Holmer’s, “On Believing in Heaven.” Pietisten, Volume V, Number 1, Spring 1990 http://www.pietisten.org/v/1/on_believing.html