My wife and I recently bought Disneyland passes.  It was the big gift we hoped for at the top of our Christmas wish list this year.   Though she and I have had them at various times, we have never had them together in our 9 or so years of knowing each other.  I remember as a kid going to Disneyland and feeling happy.  Disneyland has this kind of happiness in spades, built from the ground up not on thrilling rides, but instead on nostalgia and environment.  Everything in the park exists to make you smile and be entertaining.  It is my child self’s version of paradise.

Yet, after visiting the park over and over again (a luxury I surely don’t mean to diminish), there are times when the tricks of the park begin to lose steam.  This is true of any number of life’s pleasures – yearly holiday traditions, visits to favorite locations, or favorite films that may initially be funny but lose charm with repeated viewings (I’m looking at you “Elf”)

Fall may have arrived in some parts of the country, but it still seems far off here in Orange County, California. I have to admit, I enjoy the return of the Pumpkin Spice Latte each fall whether the leaves change or not. In fact, one day this week I woke up thinking about the delightful latte and planned out my day around when I would get one before I even got out of bed. Clearly I was excited about the latte’s grand return!

The excitement got to my head though in unexpected ways. I started thinking about what might happen if I woke up anticipating serving others each day with the same excitement I had over a cup of pumpkin goodness? Or what my day might look like if I planned it around ways I could encourage my co-workers or be salt and light in a dry and dark world? Here’s the kicker thought I had that day: what would my life look like if every day I woke up thinking that today I would meet Jesus?!

Of course I didn’t expect to ponder such heavy thoughts while in route to a cup of sweet pumpkin joy.

Francis Chan 2009 Interview – The Start of Great Things

Given that Francis is out there again fighting a great fight, I thought I would post my full interview with him from 2009.  There is a lot left on the cutting room floor from this interview, but both during the interview and in spending some time with him since my book came out, I have found Francis to be present, focused, and compassionate beyond expectation.  Of all the “big” Christian leaders I have met, he is the one that surprised me the most because he was self involved the least.

Whether you like Francis or not it is good that he is out there.  And as far has hell goes, to quote myself as only a jerk can do – it either hangs in the balance or we should all go home.

Ten years ago, when I was a senior at Oak Hill Academy, I thought I would never attend a Christian university. But because I was young in the faith, I decided that I needed to grow. So I enrolled in a Christian university where I could grow in my knowledge of God and study the Scriptures.

Liberty University holds chapel services three times a week. I didn’t always pay attention in chapel, but I remember one particular meeting just before Easter break. Dr. Gary Habermas stood in front of thousands of students to present the historical evidence for the resurrection.

After presenting a convincing argument for our faith in the bodily resurrection, he shared a personal story of how the resurrection of Jesus got him through one of the most difficult times in his own life. Habermas told us:

If you believe in an immortal and immaterial being beyond our ability to measure, it's not such a stretch to believe there is such a thing as immortaity.  To put it another way, if you have good reasons to believe that an immortal God exists, then you also have good reasons to believe that immortality exists.

The arguments from God's existence (which we considered in our last column) are great if you already believe in God.  But what if you don't buy into Christian theism?  Or what if you just have doubts about an eternal life with God in heaven beyond this mortal life?  Is there any empirical evidence for such a belief?

In their book, Beyond Death, J.P. Moreland and Gary Habermas consider several pieces of evidence, moving from experiential to philosophical to empirical evidence.  In the category of experiential evidence for immortality, Moreland and Habermas cite documented cases of near death experiences (NDEs), such as the vivid description offered by Don Piper in his book, 90 Minutes in Heaven.  Honestly, we're not big fans of this category of evidence because it's based on the experience of the person having the NDE.

Immortality is in the news this week with the release of Dinesh D'Souza's newest book, Life After Death: The Evidence.  Everyone from Rick Warren to Dallas Willard is endorsing the book, which attempts to build a case on empirical grounds for life after death.  Even the atheist Christopher Hitchens, who has debated D'Souza, calls him a "formidable opponent." 

D'Souza directs his arguments to the skeptic, who generally has trouble believing that God exists.  Discounting the existence of God pretty much gets you off the hook in terms of immortality, because if God doesn't exist, then there's no such things as life after death.

But if immortality doesn't exist, then why do we think about it so much?  Why do even the most skeptical people like to think there's a heaven, especially when someone they love bites the dust?  Christians have a fairly straightforward explanation for this preoccupation, and it's found in the book of Ecclesiastes:  "I have seen the burden God has laid on men," the writer of Ecclesiastes observes.  "He has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set eternity in the hearts of men" (Eccl. 3:10-11).

It seems like a lot of people are dying these days.  In fact, the death rate is pretty constant, about 150,000 people per day worldwide.  But it does seem like an unusual number of famous people are dying, including one whose televised memorial service attracted an audience of around a billion people.  

What do you think about when you think about the death of someone you know, whether a personal acquaintance or a public person?  Probably a variety of things.  You think about death itself, which usually brings out sorrow because the person you know or admire is no longer here.  But you also think about life and all of the good things the person did.  This is where sorrow gives way to joy.

If you're like most people, you also think about life after death, also known as immortality.  Even people with no formalized belief system have this nagging suspicion that there's something beyond this life.  Others are confident that immortality is a given.  But does anyone really know?  How can you possibly prove something that is immaterial and beyond our ability to measure?  To put it another way, is it possible to find evidence for immortality?  Actually, it is. Maybe not hard evidence, but evidence nonetheless.

The death of Jesus on the cross is central to the Christian life, but it is also part of a larger story, one that includes the resurrection. Without the resurrection of Jesus, the cross would be meaningless, because without the resurrection, there would be:

No Messiah. The true Messiah must fulfill the Messianic prophecies found in the Hebrew Scriptures, including the prophecy that the Messiah would die for the sins of the world (Isaiah 53:7,8), and that God would raise Him from the dead (Psalm 16:9,10). If Jesus did not come back to life after dying, then He wasn’t the Messiah. And if Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, then both Jews and Gentiles alike are still waiting for salvation.

No Eternal Life. Jesus didn’t just say that He would be resurrected. He also said that He would be a resurrection for us:  I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again. They are given eternal life for believing in me and will never perish (John 11:25,26).  If Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, then Jesus was a big fat liar, and there’s no hope for us to have eternal life.

No Heaven. Do you think about heaven? There’s no loftier thought we human beings can have. Now think about this: Without the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we’ll never get there. Jesus made it very clear that He is our connection to heaven. Not only is He designing and building a place in heaven for all who believe in Him, but He has also promised to take us there personally (John 14:1-4). As wonderful and amazing as heaven sounds, it doesn’t mean a thing if Jesus is still dead.

No Hope. The bottom line is that without the resurrection, we’re sunk. Oh yeah, we can appreciate the teachings of Jesus, we can do our best to imitate the life of Jesus, and we can feel good about living good lives here on earth. But what good is that if there’s no hope of a life with Jesus beyond this one? If Christians are merely putting their faith in a dead guy, they are just what Ted Turner once called them—a bunch of losers. Or as the apostle Paul put it, we are to be pitied (1 Corinthians 15:19).

Heaven is a wonderful place to think about.  Hell, not so much.  Few people talk about hell these days.  Even fewer take it seriously.  But hell is real.  In his parables, Jesus uses various terms to describe what seems to be hell:  a place of outer darkness (Matt. 8:12); a fiery furnace where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 25:41); and eternal punishment (Matt. 25:46).

And then you have these graphic descriptions  by John in Revelation:  the bottomless pit (9:1); a huge furnace (9:2); fire and burning sulfur (14:10); no relief day or night (14:11); the fiery lake of burning sulfur (21:8); and the second death (21:8).

Sounds pretty grim.  Can you blame people for shying away from the topic of hell, especially people who struggle with a God who seems to allow suffering and evil in this life?  That's bad enough, but it pales in comparison to a God who is evidently (if we take this stuff literally) going to torture people in hell forever in the next life.