So… which dogs go to heaven?
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
Sunday, September 29, 2024
Reading: Revelation 21:22-26
We blessed pets earlier in the first service. So, if your pew has a bit of dog hair in it, a discarded snakeskin, some whale teeth, an ostrich egg or two, it’s because things got a little wild this morning. Preparing for it got me thinking about the cutesy claim that all dogs go to heaven. You might have heard the ruder question: how come I like people’s dogs so much more than I like their owners? Mark Twain said this: human beings are the only animal that blushes. Or needs to. So okay, do all dogs go to heaven? Or more worryingly, all people?
In the church we used to spend a lot of time on heaven. Some of you tell me every sermon used to be about heaven. Now it’s rare. Billy Graham used to tell a story of coming into a town for a revival, asking a kid on a bike where the post office was. Got the directions and said “say, come to the revival tonight, I’ll tell you how to go to heaven.”
And the kid said, “Mister, if you don’t know where the post office is, I’m not sure I should trust you to get me to heaven.”
Maybe we don’t know enough about heaven to talk about it all on and on. All we know is it’s Jesus, and all his weird friends.
Most visions of heaven tend to be pastoral. Rural. Peaceful landscapes. That may come from a time when cities in Britain were hellscapes: the industrial revolution with no environmental safeguards. Cities full of gloom and darkness. But in scripture, the city of God is, well, a city. A place full of people nearby making life together. The Bible starts in a garden with vegetation and animals. But it ends in a city. With kings of all the nations. Beautiful gates and streets. I know lots of you escape Toronto as often as you can for Muskoka or Florida: places with water and sun far from cities. The Bible escapes from the rural to go to a city (granted: traffic wasn’t as bad in biblical times). When I ask you what you love about Toronto, you’re quick to say how international it is, how cosmopolitan. That’s good—a glimpse of heaven according to Revelation 24 “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.” Our ultimate hope is God’s own city.
In Tuesday Bible study I asked folks who goes to heaven. Those who have accepted Jesus into their hearts and follow him with their lives, one said. Good answer. It’s the one I would have said for most of my life. But wait, someone asked, what about infants who die before they get a chance? Someone else: what about other religions who never hear about Jesus, or hear only a corrupt version of Jesus? Someone else: what about those who accept Jesus and then live no differently than if they hadn’t? Here’s my main worry. In Christian theology we teach that salvation is a gift. You can’t earn it any more than you can earn the colour of your eyes or the name of your grandmother or a lunar eclipse. So, if we say those who accept Christ go to heaven, it looks like a reward: say this prayer, do this thing, and God dispenses salvation like a vending machine. We turn a gift into a rote exchange.
The story is told of an indigenous tribe in North America that hears the gospel from Europeans for the first time. They ask a question: what happens to our ancestors who never heard about this? The missionaries discuss and come back and say well, God is merciful, he wouldn’t send people to hell who’ve never heard. You’ve heard the gospel though, so which will it be, heaven or hell? The indigenous confer and come back and say, “it seems you have put us in terrible danger.”
The gospel is good news. Life changing world upending uproarious good news. Christ is raised. All creation is renewed. That’s true whether you believe it or not. We’ve often taken that good news and made it a deal or a threat. It’s good news if you believe, if you’re baptized, if you’re in the right church, if your doctrine is correct, if if if if. No, Christ’s resurrection means salvation is given. The battle won. There’s nothing you or I can do or not do to change that. So, our missionary forebears should have said to our indigenous forebears: rejoice, the God of Israel has raised Jesus and is drawing all nations. They might have heard in response, who’s Israel? Let’s all get comfortable for a long conversation.
But what if, at the end of it, they don’t accept? Who could blame them with how the missionaries defaced the good news? What if we don’t accept it? Well, the church has pondered this, and said perhaps it’s only the… elect who are saved. God chooses some before all time to be saved, and others to be condemned. There is scripture that sounds like this, and my guy Augustine believes it. The elect show God’s mercy. The reprobate show God’s justice. I have to say sometimes my faith in hell is restored. Scamming money out of the elderly and the naïve was a $3 billion industry in North America in 2021, likely much more since it’s underreported. One such scam is to contact a grandparent as a grandchild in jail or stuck on the side of the road needing money. To play on an elderly person’s fear is about the worst thing you can do. We might still need a hell, right?
Karl Barth in the 20th century heard Augustine and Calvin on predestination and asked a question. Okay, you got the elect over here, the reprobate over here, one shows God’s mercy, the other God’s justice, got it. Where’s Jesus Christ in that scenario? He’s not there. Barth asked, what if election works this way? God chooses damnation for himself in Jesus: the cross, death, hell. And chooses election for humanity. Who don’t deserve it, aren’t even asking for it. Some of the New Testament sounds ungenerous about hell. Broad is the way, Jesus says, to destruction. Narrow the path that leads to life. But other parts sound positively effusive about salvation. Paul imagines Christ as Adam done right this time. Who doesn’t have Adam as an ancestor? No one! Paul insists, “God has locked up all in disobedience in order to have mercy on all.” Who escapes from that “all”?
Now, there’s a kind of common sense about hell. There has to be one, because where else would Hitler go? Or Stalin? Or Mao? Or Pol Pot? Each of those guys had minions by the millions who helped them murder. A daily reading of the newspaper will restore your faith in hell. This innocent person slain. This whole people group under threat. Leaders seeking their own good while people sleep on streets and go hungry. This is not how God intends creation. Dante imagines hell with a sign above it: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Hell as a place without hope. Sounds like a lot of lives right now.
But see here’s a problem. Christian faith has never taught that heaven is a reward for doing good. Some religions teach that. Our ersatz common culture assumes that. But in Christian faith we don’t get what we deserve. We get what we don’t deserve. God looks at us in judgment and sees only his Son Jesus. In most religion we’re evaluated on our merits. But in Christianity we’re evaluated on mercy. The scales are all rigged in our favour. Good thing too: we always overstate our merits, anyway, underplay our demerits. God sees clearly where we lie to ourselves. And the God who knows all judges us not with harshness but with tenderness. You see why this is such good news?
Okay, but what about those who still say, no thanks. CS Lewis imagines that at the end either we say to God “thy will be done” or God says to us “thy will be done.” Either we respond to Jesus with love in return or God says fine, you don’t have to be with me. I like this—it suggests God doesn’t force relationship, doesn’t make anybody love who doesn’t care to. But we don’t know what we’re talking about, do we? We’re trying to imagine the dark side of the moon here.
Maybe the mistake is speaking of going to heaven at all, like going to Mars or to Thunder Bay (which is nearly as far away as Mars, isn’t it? I saw a sign north of here that said Thunder Bay 1774 clicks). In Revelation we learn of God coming down to us. And transfiguring this whole creation into the one God wants. The New Testament only rarely sounds like someone dies and goes up. Here’s the heart of the New Testament: God comes down and brings all heaven with him. God teaches Israel to walk like a toddler. God gets born of Mary, and drinks in life from her. God undoes the grave and hell. God is present in bread and wine, the body of Christ and the enemy and especially in the poor. Revelation imagines the world so thoroughly transformed that there is no church. I’m out of a job, most of you will still be employed. There’s no sun or moon, no need of lamp or electricity, for the glory of God is its light. In the city of God all nations are represented, bringing their glory. This isn’t just for a religious or cultural in-group, it’s for all. And its gates can never be shut. In the City of God every good thing we’ve ever done is established and completed. Every ill is undone and forgotten. Heaven is not the rejection of creation. It’s its perfection. God doesn’t say “behold I make all new things.” God says, “behold I make all things new.” You hear the difference, right? One writer puts it this way:
Every ditch dug, every brick laid, every vote cast, every committee decision that has contributed to the decency of human life is preserved and built into the eternal city.
Here’s what I try to do with unbelief. Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t even take it too seriously. Whoever doesn’t believe in God, don’t worry, God believes in them. God made them. Stamped the divine image on them. Rose from the dead for them. Everything good in them is from God. Everything ill will be burned away. Flannery O’Connor imagines that even our virtues will be burned away. God’s glory is such that we’re made altogether new. And God is very, very patient. Time is no obstacle for the God who makes all time. Whoever you’re worried about, my hunch is God will get to them eventually. It’d be weird for God not to.
Here’s how I think about heaven and hell now. Heaven is wherever Jesus is. Hell, well, that’s the deluded belief that you can get away from Jesus. Think of Psalm 139: “If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.”
There is no place where God is not. So, if there’s a hell, God is sustaining it mercifully in existence. Images of hell in Christian history are of Christ liberating the place. He’s breaking every lock, making a raid, taking people with him. If the gates of the City of God cannot be shut the gates of hell can’t be locked anymore either. Christ smashed them with his cross.
Sam Wells, great writer and vicar in London, makes an argument I think is exactly right. He says around about 1850 people stopped believing in hell. Really believing it. It was still in some church faith statements, but it didn’t motivate anybody anymore. And that might be good. Slavers justified slavery with the chance for Africans to go to heaven. Colonizers of the Americas said the same about indigenous peoples. Some churches became outright universalist, insisting all dogs go to heaven. Some like me play the mystery card and say I don’t know, let’s talk about Jesus again. But whatever stripe we quit worrying about it. Maybe this coincided with the progressive belief that things are getting better. Who needs heaven when you have a decent car and Novocain at the dentist? For a minute we thought we were ushering in heaven on earth with democracy and capitalism and technology. Then the 20th century came, and we showed we can be worse to one another than ever. Almost no one believes we’re just making things better till heaven is here. If you do, ask folks in Gaza, Ukraine, or Sudan. I asked my Tuesday Bible study what an apocalypse is. They all said the end of the world, judgment, destruction. In the Bible an apocalypse is an unveiling. This is really Christ’s world. He’s conquered sin and death. There’s nothing to fear now. Does anyone out there believe the future is good news? We Christians have to. The future includes the return of Christ and the transfiguration of all things. Christ doesn’t make some things new. Most things no. He makes all things new.
But let me suggest hell is still very much out there for now. We live in a very comfortable wealthy west. But every person who experiences violence, hunger, oppression, not just far away, but very near us, that’s still hell. And perhaps our forebears were right: evil’s existence now suggests an afterlife of evil we’d do well to avoid. But that evil is undone by Jesus Christ. It’s on its last legs and soon he’ll come to undo it forever. That’s true whether you believe it or not. I want you to believe it because it’s true and the best way to live is in the truth.
I do have people ask me if their loved one is in heaven. It’s not up to me, is it? I’m not judge of the universe, neither is any other person thank God. But I am armed with the gospel. So, I ask, do they want to be with Jesus? Yes. Then they’re with Jesus. But even if someone thinks they don’t want Jesus in this life, for whatever reason—because we Christians have so misrepresented him or whatever it is—now that they’re in their right mind they do.
So maybe all dogs go to heaven. If you like dogs more than people that sounds pretty good. To suggest that all people do is above my pay grade.
Two more biblical images. In Genesis God is raging mad at Israel: let me at em, Imma kill em! That’s my translation of the Hebrew. And Abraham says uh no God, don’t do that! And saves the people. Same story, God’s in a huff in Exodus, Moses says God if you’re going to kill anybody blot me out of your book, let Israel live. That’s mercy: offering yourself in place of your loved ones. Paul does the same: wishes he could offer himself in place of his fellow Israelites. Abraham, Moses, Paul: that’s a pretty good lineup, asking hell for themselves, heaven for their loved ones. The difference is Jesus has the power to make it happen. He offers himself for his loved ones—and who does Jesus not love?
One desert monk asked who the sheep are at Christ’s right hand, and who the goats are, said the goats are people like me. As for who the sheep are, God alone knows. Isn’t that interesting? We usually fill hell with our enemies and heaven with our friends. The great Anne Lamott says you can be sure you’ve remade God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do. Here’s a prayer from St. Seraphim of Sarov, 19th century Russian monk. Lord, if any are to be lost, let it only be me. That’s a prayer shaped by Jesus. It’s what he does with his cross. Will you be brave to pray it with me? “Lord ...”
So how do you go to heaven? Trust Jesus. That’s it. Now heaven is not a reward for trust. Heaven is already granted to you in Jesus. You don’t have to earn it. It’s a gift. Like every gift there are strings attached. The string is trust.
I was with a friend recently back home in North Carolina, told her about our new puppy. She got quiet. ‘Yeah, we had a new puppy. The neighbour ran her over by accident. She died in my arms. I’m not ready for a new one yet.’ Loving anything risks sorrow. Because we all die. The only way not to sorrow is not to love, and that’s already hell. I asked what she liked about her pup. She was trusting. Good. Snuggly. She smelled good. She teared up. I told her, dear sister, everything good about that beautiful animal is made by God. And if God bothered to make her in the first place, won’t God remake her in the resurrection? You’ll get everything back and more. I don’t know what I’m talking about. No one does. But we trust Jesus. He’s stronger than death. And he’s making all things new.
It’s a stereotype to end a sermon with a poem, forgive me. But here goes, from Scott Cairns:
And when we had invented death,
had severed every soul from life
we made of these our bodies sepulchers.
And as we wandered dying, dim
among the dying multitudes,
He acquiesced to be interred in us.
So when He had descended thus
into our persons and the grave,
He broke the limits, opening the grip,
He shaped of every sepulcher a womb.
He makes of every sepulcher a womb. Every grave is pregnant with resurrection. One day the grave will burst forth with a life that makes this life look like a candle compared to the sun. You’ll see. One day everyone will see. Amen.