strangers in heaven

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Mahatma Gandhi

Christ. we call Him brother. we are even a joint heir with Him. and the Bible teaches that the Lord God of all is to be known by us as “Father”.

that’s family. adopted family, but family. the adoption is legal, binding and eternal.

and like any family (yes, even those bound by a seal on a document and not just those bound by blood and genetics) there are resemblances. if not physical, then certainly behavioral. temperament. ideals and humor. it’s learned and shared. you spend enough time with someone and you inevitably pick up on some habits or character traits. it’s why ‘best friends forever’ have private jokes and why spouses can finish each other’s sentences.

clusters of people have their own accents and styles, their own pace of life and sometimes even political leanings.

there’s probably even a scientific term for it or has been studied by psychology students. it’s just an accepted and understood practice. as we adopt into each others lives, we adopt each other’s ways of living.

it stands to reason then, wouldn’t it, that we would look like Christ to our world? that as we become part of the family of God, that we would begin to take on familial characteristics?

but i thought one day: what would the rest of our lives look like, if we didn’t? i’m not talking about this life, either. i’m talking about the eternity kind of rest of our lives.

if we failed to take off the old and put on the new, if we squelch spiritual seeds so that they never blossom into fruit, if we cling to the world and conform to it.. how much of that – no! how much of us – will remain in our empty grave after we have left it for the glory of our final home?

i’m just dreamin’ here. i don’t know what heaven will be like. but pretend with me for a moment that as a place with no pain, no fear, no heartache, and no sin.. in a place like that, where will there be room for all the things we are stocking up right now? like,.. pride. self-exaltation. oh, that whole laundry list of sinful desires! let’s say from death we get to heaven through a sieve, filtering out the gunk and allowing in only what is pure. how much of the me i’ve built will actually make it in?

or what if we do travel an upward path? but we’re so quiet about it, so private and tight-lipped that no one really knows the heart God is molding in you? if your entire spiritual experience is kept at bay and people know you in this life as a great person, but spiritually... blank. not good not bad. just.. not known. that heart inside you would make it through the sieve. but if no one ever saw it on earth, would they recognize it as yours in heaven?

would we wind up a stranger to our dear ones because we failed to become like Christ in this world, or simply neglected to display the work He’s doing in us?

this concept of strangers in heaven is disturbing, because i fear the truth of it. i fear that most unbelievers and maybe even fellow Christ-followers see what gandhi saw: a family that just didn’t act like it.

my adoption is eternal. i know where i’m going to spend the rest of my life. but i want more than eternal life insurance. i want to walk through that sieve and everyone to see me and know it’s me and call out my name just like they yell “Norm” in the Cheers bar whenever he walks in. because i lived a life that looks like Christ. such a life that everything about me that i’ve become is pure and will make it through. that nothing is undesirable, nothing is filtered, that i was open and honest and loving and giving and fruit-bearing and God-honoring, that people knew me as all those things, so when they see me enter those gates – i’m still all those things they knew me as before. and that the only thing different about me is that my body is now glorified. and maybe a little taller.

let it be said that “your christians are so like your Christ”. and that we will live on earth such that we won’t become strangers in heaven.