Every October, as the days grow shorter and the hills light up with color, talk in East Tennessee revolves around two things: football and soul-saving. While communities across the region open corn mazes and host bluegrass festivals to draw tourists from the city, churches in Dayton and nearby towns prepare their annual Judgment Day houses. In contrast to regular haunted houses designed to scare teenagers into one another’s arms with trap doors, fake blood, and mirrored hallways, Judgment Day houses are designed for a higher purpose: to scare people into getting saved.
Judgment Day committees spend months planning such events. Signs outside churches count down the days, “Ten Days until Judgment: Are You Ready?” As the various opening nights draw near, congregations transform the inside of their buildings into elaborate sets designed for walk-through dramas about heaven and hell. Heaven is generally located in the sanctuary, where Christmas lights strung across the ceiling represent stars and white sheets draped over the pews represent clouds. Hell often occupies the basement, its dark, narrow hallways leading to a fellowship hall lined with red and orange bulletin-board paper shaped like flames.
Making the annual pilgrimage to the local Judgment Day house was as much a part of my high school experience as home-coming or prom. The Sunday before Halloween, my friends and I joined hundreds of our classmates at a nearby church, where the drama, though slightly different each year, played out in essentially the same three acts.
Act 1 takes place in the sanctuary, which will later be transformed into heaven while the rest of us are in hell. The lights dim, and a spotlight shines on one corner of the stage, where four actors (usually members of the youth group) sit in a car without windows or doors for the classic “driving back from prom” skit.
The driver (the partier) informs the group of his intentions to get high and have sex with his girlfriend. His girlfriend (the airhead) giggles and agrees that this is a splendid idea. The guy in the back seat (the moral kid) objects, saying he can’t indulge in sex and drugs because he intends to earn his way into heaven through works of righteousness. His girlfriend (the born-again Christian) agrees but explains that if you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, you will have everlasting life, regardless of good works. Unfortunately, before she can lead her friends down the Romans Road, we hear a loud car-crash, and the spotlight suddenly goes out. We shift nervously in our seats, waiting for the next scene.
The spotlight then shines on four caskets (generously donated by the local mortician), which are surrounded by the teens’ friends and families, who spend the next few minutes discussing the fragility of life and marveling about how something so terrible could happen on prom night. The light cuts out again, and a disembodied voice instructs us to head downstairs for act 2.
We leave the sanctuary quietly and follow a solemn deacon into the basement. The church must spend a fortune on heating each October, because the whole place is always burning-hot for effect. The deacon introduces us to the Angel of Death (the local orthodontist), who is dressed in black pants, a black turtleneck, and a black fedora. The Angel of Death leads us silently through dark hallways, where strobe lights make everything move in slow motion. Youth group members wearing ski masks are hiding behind the doorways of Sunday school classrooms, waiting to jump out and startle us. “Satan’s legions welcome you!” they shout. A Halloween sound-effects CD, complete with screams, organ music, and maniacal laughter, plays in the background.
Somehow we all manage to cram into an incredibly warm fellowship hall, which is glowing like a lava lamp from all the red filters placed over the lights. In the center of the room is a raised platform, where we see three of the four teenagers from act 1 — the partier, the airhead, and the moral kid. The moral kid is, of course, shocked to find himself there, seeing as he’d done so many good works in life. A bunch of demons circle the three and taunt them. Then one of the demons points her finger dramatically to the back of the room and says, “Behold! The Prince of Darkness!” Satan (usually the church youth leader) makes his grand entrance. Wearing a pinstriped suit, leather gloves, and a black trench coat, he glides toward the platform, nudging demons and audience members with an ornate cane (generously donated by a local antiques collector).
“Please!” shouts the airhead as he approaches. “Let us out of here!”
“I can’t do that,” Satan says in a sinister voice. “You’ve already made your choice.”
He joins the three onstage.
“But what about all the works of righteousness that I did in the name of God?” asks the moral kid. “Don’t they count for anything?”
Satan laughs hysterically. “That’s one of my favorite tricks,” he says, eyeing the audience carefully, “convincing people that they are saved by good works.”
“Then how can I be saved?” asks the moral kid.
“It’s too late now,” Satan says before calling on his legion to take the three away and throw them into the lake of fire (a curtained puppet stage in the corner of the fellowship hall). Each teen is pushed into the flames until only their hands remain visible, reaching out toward the audience in desperation. The demons dance around and celebrate their demise. It’s quite dramatic.
The Angel of Death then leads the hushed crowd back upstairs and into the sanctuary again for act 3. The rush of cool air provides a welcome relief after the 85-degree hell, with its strobe lights and bad sound effects. Contemporary Christian music hums in the background as volunteers wearing white sheets line us up to form a big circle around the church. Pretty much everything in the auditorium is covered up with white sheets — the pews, the communion table, the baptismal font, even the lectern. Yellow bulletin-board paper lines the aisles to symbolize streets of gold, but it sticks to the bottom of our shoes, which seems to stress out some of the angels who had so painstakingly laid it down before we got there. Candelabras (generously donated by the local wedding supply shop) adorn the stage, where we see the born-again Christian standing with Jesus. You know he’s Jesus because he’s wearing the most professional costume of the night, a white robe with bell sleeves and an attached crimson shoulder drape. You also know he’s Jesus because the same deacon plays Jesus every year, probably on account of his stunning blue eyes.
Jesus holds an enormous unabridged dictionary, which is meant to be the Book of Life. He looks for the born-again Christian’s name, and sure enough, there it is.
“Well done, my good and faithful servant,” Jesus says loudly, so everyone can hear. “Welcome to the kingdom of heaven.”
Someone turns the music up louder as Jesus goes down the line and pats each one of us on the back, saying, “Well done, my good and faithful servant,” his breath smelling of Tic Tacs. At this point, the adult chaperones start to cry, making us all feel a little embarrassed and awkward. The room starts to feel too cold, and my friends and I shift uncomfortably on our tired legs, tearing little holes in the streets of gold. This part always seemed to take forever, and I remember wondering once if I really wanted to spend the sweet by-and-by shivering and listening to Avalon.
Finally, the pastor arrives to present the plan of salvation and conduct an altar call.
“The Bible says that God wants to save you from hell,” he says at the conclusion of his remarks. “All you have to do is believe in Jesus as your Savior and you can go to heaven. It’s that simple.”
Usually, several hundred kids committed (or recommitted or re-recommitted) their lives to Jesus as a result of the Judgment Day house. Unfortunately, most of them turned into what my friends and I came to call “Judgment Day Christians,” new believers who spent about a week dutifully abstaining from sex and alcohol but inevitably returned to their previous lifestyles without much change in their behavior or outlook on life. I can’t say I blame them. After all, the pastor had gone to great lengths to remind everyone that good works don’t really count for anything, that choosing to live like Jesus did was something we could do for extra credit but didn’t matter much in the long run. Living like Jesus was important, but it had no saving power.
Most Christians I know have had some kind of Judgment Day experience. It might have been a skit at summer camp, a puppet show at vacation Bible school, or a dramatic encounter with someone like Mark in a chapel service or on a street corner. When you grow up in church, however, these events tend to lose their impact over time, as the thrill of making your reservations for eternity wears off and you start to wonder what being a Christian means for the day-to-day. Even those of us who tried to “walk the walk” by going to discipleship groups, starting Bibles studies, and evangelizing got bored with our Christianity every now and then. Sometimes it just seemed like all we were doing was killing time.
The first thing I learned about heaven was that you can’t get there in roller skates. According to the song we sang in children’s church, you’ll roll right by the pearly gates doing something crazy like that. Don’t try a limousine, a car, or a boat either, because as it turns out, the only way to get to heaven is through Jesus.
This seemed simple enough to me as a child. Jesus was a part of everyday life. We talked to him at lunch and dinner and before bed, sang songs about him in children’s church, watched cartoons about him getting born in the manger, and colored pictures of him rising from the dead. It never occurred to me not to believe in Jesus. It would be like not believing in Abraham Lincoln or gravity. As soon as I was old enough to be aware of death, I was certain of eternal security. I knew that Jesus had given me a ticket to heaven, and I intended to cash it in someday. In fact, my mother used to tease Amanda and me by singing, “Heaven is a wonderful place, filled with joy and grace,” tickling us when we recognized our middle names: Amanda Joy and Rachel Grace. Heaven indeed sounded like a wonderful place, where, I imagined, I would stroll the streets of gold without having to look both ways, where, I imagined, no one ever cried or got sick or had bad skin.
Like a lot of kids who grew up in church, my salvation was of no concern to me until I learned about hell. The first thing I learned about hell was that it is a terrible place. The second thing I learned was that a lot of people are going to be surprised to find themselves there. I learned all of this by accident one Wednesday night when I was about six years old. All the other kids were at AWANA, but I stayed back with my parents for “Big Church” because I had a stomachache. Mom let me rest my head on her lap, and I listened to our pastor explain how important it was to know for sure that you trusted Jesus for your salvation, because if you didn’t, you would spend eternity separated from God, in hell: a place of fire, torment, and despair. He said that because we are all sinners, we deserve to go to hell, but thanks to Jesus’ dying on the cross, we could go to heaven anyway. We just had to accept his death as atonement for our sins.
So that was the top-secret information they discussed in Big Church while the rest of us snacked blissfully on apple juice and animal crackers! I knew that I was a sinner, and I knew that Jesus had died on the cross to save me from my sins, but I had no idea that getting saved from my sins meant getting saved from this place called hell. Suddenly, simply coloring Jesus in a coloring book didn’t seem like enough. I needed to be sure that I got this thing right. I needed to be certain that my ticket into heaven was valid, because the last thing I wanted was to go to hell when I died.
We went to a Bible church, so we never had any altar calls like the Baptists, but I don’t think I would have gone forward had there been one. I felt embarrassed, as if I’d just learned a dirty word: hell. I imagined it as a long, hot tunnel of darkness with sticky linoleum floors where people constantly wept and where children were offered candy by sinister strangers who smoked and used the Lord’s name in vain.
I waited until later that night, when my parents came into my room to pray with me, to make my move. I told them that I didn’t want to go to hell and that I wanted to be sure I was a Christian. They told me not to be afraid and talked with me for a while about Jesus. I told God that I accepted the forgiveness of Jesus, adding at the end of my prayer, “And thank you for letting me go to heaven,” just to make sure we were square. I suppose this was the moment of my conversion, although it didn’t seem to me that much had changed. I didn’t love Jesus any more than I already had loved him, and I suspected that he had always loved me too. But I felt better now that I’d crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s when it came to something as important as eternity.
By age ten, I was well acquainted with the conversion process. I knew that when my Sunday school teacher asked me and my fellow students to bow our heads and close our eyes, souls were about to be won to Jesus. I was thankful that I’d asked Jesus into my heart in the safety of my own bedroom, because most of the other kids had to raise their hands while the rest of us pretended not to look. I always peeked through my fingers to see who would be joining me in heaven. That’s how I discovered that Mr. Andrews, my AWANA leader, said, “God bless you,” even when no one raised their hand.
Some of my friends weren’t as confident as I, which led to a host of rededications during Bible camp in the summer. I remember that poor Sammy Martin rededicated his life to Jesus every single year, and I felt so sorry for him, because he didn’t need to be afraid of losing his salvation. Once your name was written in the Book of Life, Satan couldn’t just come along with some giant eraser and take it out. “Once saved, always saved,” we liked to say. But Sammy was one of those kids who lived in constant terror of getting unsaved, so every year, he marched his way to the front of the rustic little chapel at Bible camp and rededicated himself to Jesus, while the rest of us pretended to keep our eyes closed.
Christians have been obsessed with the afterlife for centuries. From the weird, teeming landscapes of Bosch’s triptychs to Michelangelo’s glorious tones of light and flesh and sky, artists have spent ages trying to capture the horror and splendor of the afterlife of popular imagination. Dante envisioned nine concentric circles of hell, where the damned are tortured in accordance with their sins, a “Mountain of Purgatory” that had seven terraces corresponding to the seven deadly sins, and nine celestial spheres of heaven. Today, books describing near-death experiences that include firsthand encounters with bright lights and beautiful music, hellfire and the scent of sulfur, soar to the bestseller list. Mercy Me’s hit song “I Can Only Imagine,” which celebrates the hope of eternal worship before the throne of God, became one of the most requested songs of the year in 2003. My own doubts about Christianity centered around conflicted feelings about heaven and hell as I struggled to reconcile God’s goodness with his wrath.
It hasn’t always been this way. In fact, for the writers of the Jewish Scriptures, details concerning the afterlife were murky. Solomon wrote that “the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten” (Eccl. 9:5). Job knew only that after death, “the wicked cease from turmoil, and . . . the weary are at rest” (Job 3:17). He later asked, “If a man dies, will he live again?” (Job 14:14). Although David claimed that God would redeem him from the power of sheol, he had no promise of mansions, pearly gates, or a crystal sea in return for faithfulness. For the children of Israel, the essence of religion was experiencing God to the fullest during this lifetime, not merely preparing for the next.
Sometimes I try to imagine what my life would be like if I had grown up assuming that I could experience God only within the parameters of this present world. I wonder if I would look more closely for him in the simple, everyday things, if I would ask more questions and search harder for the answers, if I would be seized by a sense of wonder and carpe diem, if I would live more deliberately and love more recklessly. Sometimes I wonder if this is why the Bible talks about Seth, Methuselah, and Jared living for more than eight hundred years. Maybe they just wanted more time with God.
By the time Jesus came along, most Jews had embraced the concept of resurrection, and by this they envisioned a physical resurrection of the body, not some floating away of a disembodied soul. Most anticipated the resurrection of God’s people into a future kingdom of justice and peace. Jesus didn’t say much to change this perspective. However, his own resurrection provided a powerful, tangible example of the future bodily resurrection of all, a phenomenon the apostle Paul described as “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20). In other words, Jesus set the stage for what was to come.
Consequently, the focus of the early church was not on the state of one’s soul immediately after death but rather on preparing for a new kingdom here on earth, a kingdom that Jesus had embodied and talked about and shown them how to create, a kingdom to which God’s people would someday be resurrected, a kingdom in which the veil between the physical world and the spiritual world would evaporate to make every space a “thin space.” The seeds for this kingdom were already being planted among the poor, the peacemakers, the merciful, and the gentle, and one day Jesus would return to bring it to fruition.
N. T. Wright, the bishop of Durham for the Church of England, has written extensively on this subject, and his books were influential in helping me rethink my approach to heaven. In Surprised by Hope, he writes, “God’s kingdom in the preaching of Jesus refers not to postmortem destiny, not to our escape from this world into another one, but God’s sovereign rule coming ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’ . . . Heaven, in the Bible, is not a future destiny but the other, hidden dimension of our ordinary life — God’s dimension, if you like. God made heaven and earth; at the last he will remake both and join them together forever.”12
According to Wright, participants in the early church understood that the ultimate goal wasn’t to die, leave their bodies behind, and float around like ghosts in heaven forever but rather to embody, anticipate, and work toward a new kingdom. What happened to a person in between death and resurrection remained a bit of a mystery, although the apostle Paul assured his fellow Christians that “to be absent from the body” is “to be present with the Lord.”
N. T. Wright made me wonder if perhaps I’d missed the point. Perhaps being a Christian isn’t about experiencing the kingdom of heaven someday but about experiencing the kingdom of heaven every day. Perhaps I could get a little taste of what the Old Testament saints thought was worth sticking around for.
I used to think that being saved from my sins meant being saved from hell. Salvation was something that kicked in after death, like a gift that had “Do not open until eternity” on the tag. To “get saved” meant to make an intellectual commitment to the deity of Christ and the theology of substitutionary atonement in order to avoid the wrath of hell. It was something that happened once but applied for all of eternity — once saved, always saved.
From this perspective, Jesus was little more than a theological deus ex machina, a vehicle through which my eternal security was attained. As my Sunday school teacher used to say, “Jesus was born to die.” The whole point was for Jesus to act as a sacrifice on my behalf. Everything that happened between the manger and the cross was interesting but not necessary. It had no inherent saving value. Jesus was like the conductor who handed me my ticket for heaven but left me alone for the ride.
I think this is why people always ask me, “If non-Christians can receive salvation, then what is the point of Jesus? Why did he die on the cross, and why should we bother to share the gospel?” They assume that the gospel is important only when it saves people from hell. They assume that Jesus’ purpose was simply to alter the afterlife.
Laxmi is a good example of why the gospel matters regardless of one’s position on religious pluralism. When Laxmi encountered Jesus Christ through the kindness and compassion of his followers, it wasn’t just her eternal destiny that changed; her entire life was transformed into something new. She found relationship with God. She found a community. She found hope and peace. When Laxmi encountered Jesus, she was saved not just from the eternal ramifications of sin but from the ugly everyday ramifications of sin: the caste system, poverty, despair, anger, victimization, worry, and fear. Just because I think God will be merciful when he judges doesn’t mean I think the gospel is pointless. I believe the gospel is the most important thing in the world! It should be shared no matter what.
Jesus came to offer more than just salvation from hell. I realized this when I encountered Jesus the radical rabbi and reexamined my life in light of his teachings. When I imagined what it would be like to give generously without wondering what is in it for me, to give up my grudges and learn to diffuse hatred with love, to stop judging other people once and for all, to care for the poor and seek out the downtrodden, to finally believe that stuff can’t make me happy, to give up my urge to gossip and manipulate, to worry less about what other people think, to refuse to retaliate no matter the cost, to be capable of forgiving to the point of death, to live as Jesus lived and love as Jesus loved, one word came to mind: liberation. Following Jesus would mean liberation from my bitterness, my worry, my self-righteousness, my prejudices, my selfishness, my materialism, and my misplaced loyalties. Following Jesus would mean salvation from my sin.
What I’m trying to say is that while I still believe Jesus died to save us from our sins, I’m beginning to think that Jesus also lived to save us from our sins. The apostle Paul put it more eloquently in his letter to the church in Rome when he said, “For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Rom. 5:10).
If it’s starting to sound like I believe in works-based salvation, it’s because I do. While I don’t for one second think we can earn God’s grace by checking off a to-do list, I do believe that there is liberation in obedience. When we live like Jesus, when we take his teachings seriously and apply them to life, we don’t have to wait until we die to experience freedom from sin. We experience it every day as each step of faith and every good work loosens the chains of sin around our feet. It’s hard, and it’s something that I fail at most of the time, but it’s something I’ve experienced in little fits and starts along the way, enough to know that it’s worth it. Jesus promises that his yoke will be light, because he carries most of the load.
I never know what to say when a street preacher in the parking lot of Shop Rite asks me if I’m saved.
“Saved from what?” I usually ask.
“Saved from your sins,” he will say.
“Well, I guess I’d have to say that Jesus and I are working on that.”
I always leave with extra tracts stuffed in my purse.