I'm reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It's very well done. He's a good writer, though I don't trust him.
But he mentions the idea that Sartre spoke about hell being other people, and he says "and purgatory is airports."
So I jumped online and looked around to see if anyone realized what I did... that hell is INDEED other people, but so is heaven.
It all depends on whether I've got love inside of me or not. Hell is other people without love. Heaven is other people with love.
I found this blog on the subject. And it says some interesting things, some of which you will find in my book when it comes out.
But the take home thought I had was the simple one... that if we are full of the love of God, then heaven is other people. When you leave a job, people sometimes ask "Do you miss it?" and invariably, people tell me the answer to that question is "I miss the people."
Yet if you ask anyone why they hated their day at work, they will 99 times out of 100 tell you the story of a person who did something stupid to them.
So hell and heaven kind of depend on how we view things, doesn't it seem? I guess that's why Jesus tells us to love and forgive others... because that ushers us into heaven, into eternal life rather than eternal death, in the here and now.
Will you live in a little heaven or a little hell today? I guess it depends on how you see your fellow humans.
Don't get me wrong (are you getting me wrong? well don't!) ... heaven and hell are real places. But if you listen closely to the things Jesus says, He makes it pretty clear that going to one or the other depends greatly on whether we forgive other people, and whether we love them. So in the little hells and heavens (so few inches apart, as Rich Mullins would say) of our earthly lives, the difference is loving those around us. And, ultimately, in the actual heaven and actual hell, it seems to be an amplification of that same concept.
Let's choose love, and go from heaven to heaven.
1 comment:
Amen
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