Monday, December 13, 2010

So I Guess We Won't Be Going in First After All...

'"A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw... a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of... trash... and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. [But at the] end was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right... They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away... In a moment the vision faded... In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah."

'What a radical idea! The 'freaks and lunatics' going to heaven before the morally upright tribe? But Jesus said the same thing, when he announced to the shocked religious leaders of his day, 'I tell you the truth, the tax collectors, and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God ahead of you.' (Matt. 21:31)"

-Tim Keller, The Reason for God

No comments: