Leadingchurch.com

What happens after you die? 

Americans are more inconsistent and all over the map on life after death than well meant comments at a funeral might reveal.

• Many who are vaguely spiritual or religious hold to the tenets of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. “Good people” go to heaven when they die. Definitions of precisely what constitutes”good people” vary. Hell or any kind of afterlife hazard may be a possibility for the worst. Others might embrace annihilation.
• Others will adopt a more skeptical view that wavers between “the big sleep” and the possibility of something good after death. Former CRC pastor John Suk offers such a view. 
• Religious particularists of various kinds propose a multiplicity of arguments such as heaven or bliss or resurrection for those faithful to their sect and judgment for all others or some version of cycles of reincarnation until someone achieves release.

Integral to many of these ideas is an evaluation of one’s moral conduct either by a judging God or gods or by an impersonal force expressed in something like karma.

Jesus and the basis of our future hope

Over the last number of weeks we’ve been look at passages found in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus is commenting on people’s spiritual and moral assumptions.

• Can we evaluate God’s regard of us by favorable or unfavorable circumstance?
• “Lord, will only a few be saved?”

In many of these exchanges Jesus challenges ancient and contemporary assumptions about morality, our ability to evaluate ourselves and secure for ourselves the outcomes we desire. According to Jesus the common assumptions we embrace are often wrong and biased. He invites us to think about these things in a new way.

Most Favored Parable

Among the stories Jesus told one of the favorites is The Prodigal Son. Most people associate the parable with Jesus’ radical message of inclusion yet few people understand the entire story and the radical ideas Jesus conveys regarding right and wrong and life after death.

Jesus’ Audience Continue reading →