Unutterable Splendor

At the First Things blog, Evangel, Hunter Baker offers some reflections on Todd Burpo's popular book, Heaven is for Real.  The book recounts the story of Burpo's son, who (it appeared) nearly died of appendicitis.  Except that some time after the incident, the boy began describing how he had, in fact, died, and visited Heaven, where he encounter Jesus, angels, and dead relatives.

Friends loaned me this book a few months ago and I'd heard many other Christians share their reactions.  I approached the book with a little trepidation, suspicious of any human attempts to describe in words an experience that must be far beyond human imagination.  And while I did find the book hopeful and encouraging in its testimony to a scriptural vision of the afterlife, I was still a bit uncomfortable with the whole thing.  The little boy's description of heaven was just almost too conventional, and I chaffed at certain details like his assertion that Jesus had blue eyes.  I'm not suggesting I know what Jesus looks like in heaven, but I can bet pretty confidently that the historical Jesus did not have blue eyes.

Baker offers a more poetic response to the book than I can muster:

The problem, I think, is that there is something fundamentally wrong with human attempts to describe heaven and/or the things of God. I’m not saying it can’t be done at all, but it seems to me that other than through full-on revelation (as in the book of that name), the sublimeness of heavenly things can only be approached from the side or seen from the corner of the eye. A direct confrontation seems doomed to fall short. I felt that way to some extent about Heaven is for Real (a non-fiction account) and more so about the picture presented of the divine appearing by Jerry Jenkins at the conclusion of the Left Behind novels. When Jesus arrives in the story, he appears to everyone in exactly the same way with exactly the same message. It feels like the description of a heavenly voicemail attached to a hologram.

Baker reminds us of Paul's description of being caught up into paradise ("the third heaven") in 2 Corinthians 12, where "the man...heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter."

Human words - even the sacred words of scripture - surely cannot do proper justice to the splendor, glory, and infinite beauty that is our destiny. 

Lord, quicken in us the hope for eternal life with you and let us be humble and open to all the unimaginable delights that await us.  Amen.