Cathedrale Notre Dame de ParisNorth Rose Window which dates from 1250-60

WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?

I’ve been wondering lately what would happen to church attendance if all allusions and direct references to heaven as a physical place after death were to be removed from Christian texts and thought?

Christianity emerged in human history when most people in the Greek and Roman worlds except epicureans and stoics believed in a place where gods live apart from mortals. It is no surprise that a concept of Heaven, of Paradise, figured so definitely in the early development of the Christian religion, especially in the institutions, the churches, that formed around it.

First Century residents of the Mediterranean region would not have known about Siddhartha, Gautama Buddha, who had lived six centuries earlier, nor would they have known about the philosophy-religion that was seeded by his teachings, a way of right living that didn’t rely on a promise of Paradise as a reward. It’s interesting that the teachings of the Buddha, like those of the Hebrew sect called the Sadducees, didn’t depend on the existence of an afterlife. The Pharisees were the Hebrew religious group who believed in a doctrine of resurrection of the dead. Jesus was a Jew. He nor his followers had especially good things to say about either group; but he surely knew all about both of them. Could it be that those who reported Jesus’ life, the short life of a Jewish rabbi, tried to find some middle ground between the Sadducees and the Pharisees but ended up leaning more in the direction of Pharisaic Judaism and their Talmud, the core literature of Rabbinic Judaism, hence we get their concept of afterlife. The Sadducees were more aloof than the Pharisees, especially distant from the poor and suffering people. It would not have been consistent with his teachings for Jesus to actually have preferred the Sadducees world view, but it would be a gross oversimplification and misunderstanding to suggest that he didn’t take their point of view into his consideration. Could it be that the Gospel writers interjected more talk of heaven and the afterlife into the Jesus story than Jesus himself actually intended.

Jesus emphasis is remarkably like that of the Buddha. The reward for right living is temporal, earthly. Heaven...Paradise seems at times to be a kind of afterthought. It seems as if it might have been added to stories for effect..to make a point. Take, for example the stories of the crucifixion. John mentions one thief, Barrabas. Matthew and Mark don’t report an actual conversation between Jesus and the thieves who were crucified with him. They say the bandits taunted him the way spectators and soldiers around the crosses were taunting him. Luke (Luke 23: 39-43)reports a conversation between Jesus and the two thieves. “One of the criminals who hung there with him taunted him: ‘Are not you the Messiah? Save yourself, and us.’ But the other answered sharply, ‘Have you no fear of God? You are under the same sentence as he. For us it is plain justice; we are paying the price for our misdeeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’ And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come to your throne.’” He answered, ‘I tell you this: today you shall be with me in paradise.’ The differing accounts of the crucifixion are not blatant contradictions. They do, however, point to confusion even among those closest to Jesus about what he actually said on the occasions that are reported in the Bible.

The Jesus that I find most appealing is the one who tells us that we find in ourselves the reward for doing right. We find the Kingdom of God in ourselves. It seems to me that much of the heaven talk in the Gospels might have been sprinkled on later. Perhaps it might have been added to get the attention of First Century people for the same reasons that it may appeal to people now two thousand years later. Perhaps I am being cynical to suggest that it’s an easy answer to the glib, unspoken question that people then and now often ask: “What’s in it for me?”

Holding out Paradise as the reward for right living seems inconsistent with the central theme of the Gospel. It bothers me not as much as the alleged promise in Islam of seventy-two virgins waiting in Paradise to please the man who has sacrificed himself to kill infidels. I don’t know much about Islamic theology, but I doubt that it is actually so unsophisticated and juvenile. On the other hand, the Koran came along six hundred years after the time of Jesus. Christianity was the religion that invented the idea of paradise as reward in the first place. Perhaps Muhammed was just making sure his picture of Paradise trumped the Christian picture of streets of gold and angels hanging around playing harps. Does throwing seventy-two virgins into the arrangement make it so much more outrageous. "Pie in the sky by and by" obviously wasn't what Jesus had in mind when he laid out a design for living in relationship on this earth.Mission San Diego de Alcala