What I liked and didn’t like about "Heaven Is for Real"

Why a Christianity that’s overly-focused on heaven misses the point 

Heaven Is for Real is a well-done movie. By that, I don’t mean it is “epic” or grip-your-seat exciting, but that it does what it sets out to do: it brings to the screen pretty faithfully something that actually happened. What’s more, the story is about a religious experience, which makes it a “Christian movie”, and those aren’t easy. Christian movies, while dealing with something inherently un-believeable (because it’s supernatural) nonetheless have to be believable. And, because they deal with Christian subject matter, they have to be biblically faithful. And with Heaven Is for Real, that’s the rub.

When movie making began, people made a lot of Bible movies. It's one reason we "know" that Moses looked like Charlton Heston, for instance. Of course, there was invented dialogue, because most Bible accounts don't give enough detail for a full movie script, and the special effects were schlocky, but the mission of these movies was clear: to bring to life a story from the Bible.

Those were the days, though, when Bible literacy was much more widespread than it is today. There was a market for Christian-themed movies simply because most of the people in the movie market were Christians. We can't imagine a Hollywood studio taking on the story of Esther today, or Ruth, or the prophet Jeremiah. Jesus proves a good subject for a blockbuster now and then, but the rest of the characters aren't widely-enough known to draw a crowd.

So now, Christian movies largely get watched by Christians, on Christian TV channels and through direct distribution on DVD at Christian bookstores. And let's be honest, Christians can be pretty brutal critics. Because we love the Bible and are loyal to the truth it contains, we're sensitive about anything that threatens to compromise the accuracy of the stories that get retold. This is the unique challenge of bringing the Bible to the screen: cast your movie with compelling characters and write contemporary-sounding dialogue and you just might grip a non-Christian who is captured by the story, but you'll run the risk of being savaged on Christian blogs for being unfaithful to scripture. We have a certain loyalty even to folk elements of Christianity that are not specified in the Bible, so Jesus has to be born in a stable and not a cave and there have to be three wisemen (the Bible doesn't actually say how many) and all of Jesus' miracles have to "look" like we'd imagined them to look or we're unhappy.

But what do we do with a movie like Heaven Is For Real?

When there is no Biblical plumbline against which to measure it, how do we begin to talk about a movie like this to people who will ask the inevitable questions like, "Did he really go to heaven?" and "Is that what heaven is like?"

The answer, unsatisfying as it is, is "We don't know."

It's unsatisfying because Christians are answer people and the Bible is our answer source, but when it comes to this little boy's experience, the Bible neither confirms nor refutes what he saw. And how can it? There's no book of the Bible called "Heaven", no description of near-death experiences, no counsel for us on what we'll see and do. Much of heaven is left to our imagination, and we've imagined some things that we'll fiercely defend as true. But whether they are our not, they don't answer people's question: Is that what it's like?

Some people have made an industry of heaven. Randy Alcorn and Mitch Albom wrote books about it. Highway to Heaven and, later, Touched by an Angel played on our curiosity about angels. Akiane Kramarik paints about it. But any medium ultimately falls short in its ability to depict heaven because all of them are inadequate for describing the most important thing about heaven: God.

Do I want people to believe in heaven? Yes I do. But I fear that movies like Heaven Is For Real and the dialogue it sparks drive people into an unhelpful speculation about heaven, a "how-good-is-it-gonna-be-for-me?" wondering, that makes them the focus. We speak of people dying and going to their "eternal reward", like heaven is the ultimate retirement village. Of course, being in heaven is rewarding, but the reward is not the things in heaven. It is God.

Movies like Heaven Is For Real can drive us to the Bible in a vain attempt to answer questions like "Who will we see there?" and "How old will we be there?" and "What will we do there?" when in reality, we are not the most important thing in heaven.

So here's a thought: Maybe the presence of God, in heaven, will be such a game-changer for us that the rest of the stuff won't matter.

The minutiae of life seems to matter now - because we're not currently experiencing the fullness of the presence of God. But you know those moments in life - a near-car accident, a benign biopsy, being separated from your kid in a crowd, the death of someone close to you - where everyday problems shrink into the background and you chill way out because you've been given a glimpse of what's really important? Now imagine heaven being and endless string of those moments.

Are there streets of gold in heaven? Maybe. Or maybe Revelation depicts streets of gold because that communicates "ultimate value" to our limited human minds, which apart from God cannot fathom the value that he, alone, actually has. The point is, if we pursue heaven for the things we believe are there or the feelings we imagine it will produce in us, we are banking our eternal hope on those things. We are loving what we imagine is in heaven instead of loving heaven for what it is about, which is God. And that's idolatry.

I want to believe with all my heart that Colton Burpo went to heaven, because if he did, it ratifies the existence of heaven. And it supports the idea that even kids can experience God. But any sort of speculation on the nature of heaven that doesn't circle back to being speculation on the nature of God is misguided.

Furthermore, when we focus on heaven, we are focusing on something "out there" and in the future. But to focus on God forces us to recognize that He - and His goodness, and His presence - exist in the now. The point of your life is not to die so that you can get to heaven. The point of your life is to experience the richness of God even in this fallen world, bursting forth in the most desperate circumstances, bringing light into darkness. That is redemption, and the miracle of God-in-us/us-in-God is what fuels our passion for more of the One who brings redemption (as opposed to passion for a self-indulgent heaven of our own imagining).

Last weekend, a 4th grade boy asked in our class, "Why will we be happy forever in heaven?" I think the answer is hinted at in Revelation 5. Not only will Jesus be in heaven, but our awareness of His sacrifice and His greatness will be so strong that it will dwarf any other consideration or care. The question is, what if (somehow) a person got to heaven and knew nothing of Jesus? And the answer is, they'd have nothing to celebrate! By extension then, the more our Christianity is bound up in Christ, the more we experience in this life what we will ultimately experience in heaven. But the more our Christianity revolves around security and creature comfort in this world, the further from truth of heaven we stray.

It's natural to wonder about the afterlife, about God's ways, about the time-before-there-was-time. But whatever Colton Burpo's experience was, or anyone who's had a near-death experience, we can be sure that if they were in heaven, they would have been encountering the fullness of God. Since we now see through a glass darkly, but then we will see face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12), it means any description or depiction of heaven this side of heaven will fall short.