{"id":218,"date":"2013-01-11T18:20:44","date_gmt":"2013-01-11T23:20:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godscomic\/?p=218"},"modified":"2013-01-11T18:20:44","modified_gmt":"2013-01-11T23:20:44","slug":"heaven-help-us-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/01\/heaven-help-us-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Heaven help us!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My daughter sat me down the other day and was in tears. \u201cDaddy I don\u2019t want to go to heaven\u201d What, I said, but why? Here I was ready to hear her impassioned plea that she wasn\u2019t worthy to stand before a righteous God. <\/p>\n<p>Or perhaps she saw the plight of so many who would never see the pearly gates and, like Paul, would rather go to Hell if she could save all the lost souls.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly my romanticizing of my daughters plight was soon to be dashed by the concept only a child born in a post modern, media driven culture could conjure up. She was afraid; being there for eternity that she would get\u2026bored.<\/p>\n<p>Yes this is what heaven has become to the modern man. What once was a place of eternal refuge from the pains of earthly existence has become a territory of tedium where it will be difficult to be perpetually entertained. <\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s right my fellow Christian parents, apparently heaven has lost its appeal once the kids found out there was no texting there.<br \/>\nOf course it hasn\u2019t helped things that heaven is normally depicted as a place where we all get wings and harps and play dirges to the Lord who one would think with all His omnipotent power would have provided more instruments at our disposal than an archaic one we don\u2019t even play on earth.<\/p>\n<p>Wings were another element that seemed a little unnecessary in heaven. Do we even breathe air in heaven, and if we want to get around do we really need to rely on the law of lift to get us there?<\/p>\n<p>There is also this unsettling idea that we no longer belong to our earthly family but in fact have all become one in an eternal commune of togetherness. Suddenly Moses, Paul, AND Benny Hinn are my brothers?<br \/>\nSounds like a bad Thanksgiving with the relatives your not good enough for, and the crazy uncle you have to invite every year but you pray he stays out of the cooking sherry!<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t really have a good answer for my daughter as to how time would be spent in heaven, but I took some solace in the fact that she is contemplating the incomprehensible and wondering about eternity.<\/p>\n<p>If more Christians would begin the hard journey of nurturing their intellect, and facing the hard problems of faith without fear that some answers are difficult to grasp, perhaps more secular humanist would give us a listen.<\/p>\n<p>There is nothing more harmful to our faith than the Christian who says all they need is faith and the idea that our intellectual exploration is not of God. Gee, wonder why more and more \u201csmart\u201d people find God less and less compelling?<br \/>\nThe Bible says if we don\u2019t study, and meditate, and be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks, we should be ashamed of ourselves. I for one am grateful to my daughter for reminding me that she is made in Gods image, the hard things of God are worth exploring, and that my faith is strengthened by my rational and logical pursuits of Gods Truth!<\/p>\n<p>Still not crazy about harp music though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My daughter sat me down the other day and was in tears. \u201cDaddy I don\u2019t want to go to heaven\u201d What, I said, but why? Here I was ready to hear her impassioned plea that she wasn\u2019t worthy to stand before a righteous God. Or perhaps she saw the plight of so many who would&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[66],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","tag-god-rational-intellectual-eternity-childs-thoughts"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Heaven help us! - God&#039;s Comic<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/01\/heaven-help-us-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Heaven help us! - God&#039;s Comic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My daughter sat me down the other day and was in tears. \u201cDaddy I don\u2019t want to go to heaven\u201d What, I said, but why? 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Or perhaps she saw the plight of so many who would&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/01\/heaven-help-us-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God&#039;s Comic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-01-11T23:20:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Brad Stine\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Heaven help us! - God&#039;s Comic","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2013\/01\/heaven-help-us-2.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Heaven help us! - God&#039;s Comic","og_description":"My daughter sat me down the other day and was in tears. \u201cDaddy I don\u2019t want to go to heaven\u201d What, I said, but why? 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From his Nashville stronghold, Stine is mounting his crusade against these hypocrisies, all of which are explored in his highly anticipated 4th album\/DVD, aptly titled \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWUSSIFICATION!' \"You know what offends me?... Offended people,\" says Stine. A staunch supporter of first amendment rights and foe of political correctness, Stine asserts that rights should be universally applied. \"In a country with guaranteed rights to freedom of religion, its citizens are constantly trying to make faith in public spheres illegal, I am offended by that contradiction and want to talk about it as a comic.\" The strength of his conviction about our freedoms can be found in many places on WUSSIFICATION \u00e2\u20ac\u201c from \"Merry Christmas Too!\" (the right to celebrate religion) to \"At Least We're Not France!\" (the responsibility to take action as a country) to \"Spank\" (the ability to discipline our children the way we see fit). What would cause the wussification of Brad Stine? \"I hope that nothing ever wussifies me to deny my own personal beliefs,\" he says. \"Brainwashed wussies have been taught that standing up for yourself and defending your personal point of view makes you a close-minded hate monger.\" Stine stops short of defending his point of view as the ONLY one, adding \"...one must also be respectful of dissenting belief while supporting their own.\" He is, after all, an inclusive figure who trains his comedy to attack ideas, not the people who embrace them. Stine's faith forces him to acknowledge the respect and dignity of all\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 even the wussies with whom he disagrees! Stine models his approach to comedy after legendary practitioners that he has known and loved over the years. Despite George Carlin's disdain for theistic beliefs, he has been a big influence on Stine. \"I always enjoyed Carlin for turning the tables on culture. He is an excellent writer that has endured for decades.\" More current comedic touchstones are Brian Reagan, Paula Poundstone, Jim Gaffigan and Monty Python, among others. Fear not, true believers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c with his brand new album, Brad Stine is here to save the world from WUSSIFICATION \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one politically-correct, offended person at a time!\"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/author\/bstine"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}