Week 3 - Youth Questions
WHAT WE DISCUSSED ON SUNDAY IN REDEMPTION YOUTH
Sunday we shifted gears and spent time discussing questions submitted by our students. I’m always so amazed by how good their questions are, and by how seriously they engage every question—especially the ones they did not ask themselves. Often we get through all of the questions submitted, but Sunday we only had time for two because we spent almost 40 minutes talking just about the first question! What follows is a summary of our conversation.
Question 1 - “Can non-believers go to heaven?”
By the end of our discussion on this question, I asked if there were any follow-up questions or needed clarification, and one student responded with a great summary of the places our discussion went. She said:
“I thought this was just going to be a conversation about whether or not non-believers can go to heaven. Instead, we were being asked all sorts of things like, ‘What is a believer?’ and, ‘What is heaven?’ and then, ‘What is hell?’ and even, ‘How do we know Revelation is giving an actual description of heaven and hell and that it’s not using metaphorical language borrowed from other ancient Jewish apocalyptic writings that were not attempting to describe something super detailed about the future, but to encourage people to live a certain way in the present in light of the reality that Jesus will return?’ So no, I don’t have any follow-up questions.”
Her response pretty much covers the gamut of topics we discussed as we were trying to answer the question at hand. And really, so many questions related to God and the Bible should go this way, because most good questions require us to consider what we think about topics adjacent to the topic at hand. This question is no different. As such, this question required us to consider who a believer is, who a non-believer is, what heaven is, what hell is, what the Bible says about these questions, and finally how we might then answer the question that started it all.
Without spending too much time rehashing our whole conversation, here is where we ended up on all the topic-adjacent questions, as well as the main one.
Who is a believer? A believer is anyone who confesses faith in Jesus and his life, death, resurrection, and oneness with God.
Who is a non-believer? A non-believer is anyone who does not believe that Jesus is Lord.
What is heaven? This one is trickier. We often consider heaven to be our ultimate destination after death for those who live a good life or believe in Jesus. And yet, while the Bible does talk about heaven, the earliest Christians placed little hope in heaven. Instead, they believed—like we still believe today—that Jesus would return to renew the earth and raise the dead to eternal life on a renewed, perfect earth. Heaven, on the other hand, is that intermediate resting place between death and resurrection. The hope we have as Christians is not that we will get to heaven, but that Jesus will raise us from the dead to a new, perfect, eternal life with him on earth.
What is hell? Again, this is a tricky question. Like our understanding of heaven, our knowledge of hell is largely derived from pop-culture, and especially from Dante Alighieri’s, Divine Comedy, which is a fictional, poetic story about a man’s journey through hell to heaven that we (often unknowingly) base much of our understanding of hell on. The reality is that we know very little about hell and what the Bible tells us about hell is that it is either the place of the dead (think the ancient Jewish understanding of “Sheol”), or a place of fire and brimstone (see Revelation 20, or Matthew 25). Whatever hell actually is, we know it to be a place of unpleasantness, permanence, and absence of God’s goodness.
So, can non-believers go to heaven? If by “go to heaven,” we mean be raised to a new, perfect, eternal life with Jesus here on a renewed, perfect earth with no suffering or pain, to worship Jesus and glorify him forever, then the answer is probably no. I say “probably no,” because I hold out hope that God in his infinite grace, mercy, and kindness will see fit to save and forgive all people. And yet, we so often see in Scripture (and in the world around us) that evil exists, that some love evil, and that God is just. As such, God will punish evil and banish it from existence, which leads us to believe that non-believers will probably not “go to heaven.”
Question 2 - “What if Jesus isn’t real and we are believing something that doesn’t exist? What if having faith is pointless?”
This question came from a student who was trying to figure out how to make sense of Christianity when she has friends who follow other religions. And really she was curious how Christianity holds up, or fits next to other religions.
Interestingly, the Bible never denies the existence of other gods (lower case “g”). In fact, there are numerous occasions where the God of the Israelites goes toe to toe with the gods of other peoples. In 1 Kings 18, the prophet Elijah takes on the prophets of Baal. And in that situation Elijah’s God—who is our God—convincingly, and without fail, defeats Baal, and in so doing shows that he is the Lord of lords, the God of gods, and the One, True God who is greater than all.
The same is true for us today as it was thousands of years ago for Elijah. We encounter people everywhere who believe differently than we do, who trust in different gods or things than we do, and yet we can still have confidence in our God because we have seen his faithfulness to a thousand generations and we will see his faithfulness to a thousand more.
This means that it is okay to question what we believe. I, in fact, believe we should question what we believe, because that is in part how we grow and learn that because God is who he says he is he can handle our doubts and fears.
HOW TO CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION AT HOME
Looking back on my childhood, one of the things I am most thankful for is that my parents created space for me to bring up questions like the ones above. My dad was a pastor and my mom the daughter of a pastor, so they had an unusual amount of familiarity and comfortability with these kinds of questions and conversations. And yet, they still had to create space and freedom for me to be able to feel like I could talk about my faith—and more importantly—my doubts openly with them. One of the ways they created that environment was by having nightly family dinner. Growing up in the Wiggins house, family dinner was sacred. I did not always love it, and I did not always want it—and truly, it did not always happen. But most days I could count on sitting at the table at 6pm with my parents and siblings. And it was at this table that my parents spoke to each other openly about their fears, doubts, frustrations, and joys, which then gave us the freedom to do likewise.
The reason I share this is to encourage you as parents to think, if you are not already, of ways to create an environment for your children to share these kinds of questions. Maybe it’s the dinner table. Or maybe it’s the car. But wherever, whenever, or whatever you choose to do, my encouragement is just to try and create space for your kids to hear you being vulnerable, so they can feel the freedom to be vulnerable too. You don’t have to know the answers—in fact it can often be beneficial to not know the answers. What matters—and what helps your kids develop a lasting faith—is the freedom and space to talk and think about their faith. If you already have created this environment, great job! If you have not, that is okay! Doing so is hard, but the payoff (while often not visible in the moment) is worth it. But it takes you modeling vulnerability and openness about your own life, faith, and trust in God.