This afternoon I enjoyed a wonderful meal of salad and Provino's pizza with my parents and grandparents. We polished off our main course and over dessert grandpa told us about the novel he recently finished by Randy Alcorn, a Christian author who specializes in the eternal. Our conversation soon spun into an "I wonder what heaven's going to be like" speculation where everyone more or less defends what he or she believes. I'll be honest, it was pretty heavy stuff for my grandparent's breakfast nook table.
Randy Alcorn has become a best-selling author by speculating on the after-life from a Christian perspective. The consensus is that Alcorn spent 25 years researching his book, Heaven. What followed is, according to my grandpa, a detailed description of heaven, including explanations of its social and cosmological workings. All Alcorn's concepts are derived from scripture, with certain "narrative" liberties taken.
Alcorn is an American Protestant minister and founder of Eternal Perspectives Ministry, which serves those without physical and spiritual protection. He was also one of 150 religious leaders to sign the Manhattan Declaration: a Call of Christian Conscience. This document is a pro-life, traditional marriage sanction. Similarly Alcorn's description of heaven is largely based on traditional views of the Christian heaven.
I've been trying to crack the code of the Christian market for a little while now. Why is there a chain Christian bookstore next to the largest mall in Tennessee, but nowhere else in Chattanooga--and believe me, I'd know--is there a bookstore for any other literary genre? At a recent visit to Lifeway Christian Bookstores I left my last stop, the CDs, and looked to my left before getting to the door. There were displays of Christian wedding paraphenalia, stationary, nic-nacs--everything short of a turn-style of greek fish bumper stickers. Lifeway obviously has found a market in the Southern Christian lifestyle.
When I was young it was easy to read a book with eternal implications. I gobbled up Frank Peretti's Cooper Adventure Series, entertained by their Indiana Jones-like antics, but also because his presentation of the supernatural gave my spine a pleasant chill. Through the medium of fiction, Christian writers have found success presenting the eternal in ways that is linked to suspense, mystery, destiny.
Heaven is a very popular topic in Christian literature today, but it's not only Christians who are fascinated by the idea of heaven. Many of us suspect the afterlife will either consist of all the purist things we can think of, or all the darkest and most disgusting. What makes such a speculation perpetually popular is it can never be solved. There are those who share near-death experiences, but they often sound more like a wonderful dream or horrible nightmare than an actual experience of the afterlife. The only way to know what happens in the next life is to go there. And at that point, will we even care?
Anticipation is the key for heaven's intrigue. Heaven provides a reward to undergo life's troubles and gives them purpose. It's something to look forward to, for those who are into streets of gold. What I believe to be equally fascinating, and equally unsolvable, is the question of where we were before conception? Inconveniantly, the Bible has little to say about it. Perhaps I've found the material for my first novel.
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