There’s a little feel good meme floating about that declares the Apostle Paul arrived in heaven to the applause of those he martyred. It just doesn’t sit right with me. I ain’t buying it.
Paper towels are an analogy I came up with long ago, because my loved ones had a propensity to make a mess and just lay a paper towel over it. Out of sight, out of mind. Amusing, because I would find a broken egg dripping down the counter, but it’s all good, I cleaned it up….by carefully draping a paper towel over it? By the time we got to piles of little napkins laid across dog poop in the yard, I was ready to just surrender all and descend into hysterics.
Equally silly are these bright pink PLASTIC doggy bags carefully filled with poo and just left strewn about the pathways like little virtue signaling markers of environmental love. Trust me, the secular world loves it ridiculous legalism too, and lives in that place where the spirit of the law is completely forgotten, if it ever really existed at all.
So….if God wants to save the soul of Paul and those he martyred, and have a happy reunion where everyone holds hands and signs kumbaya, that’s cool. God is God, He knows best, and His mercy and grace endures forever. Absolutely, those who have murdered others will be in heaven. The blood of Jesus is powerful.
But I just can’t help but think of those pink poopy bags and draped paper towels, and how memes like this help us Christians feel good, holy, virtuous, by “pretending” there is no mess beneath the surface, no justice required. Just forgive and forget, just shake hands and be friends.
This just doesn’t jibe with, “The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed…”
The poor, oppressed, brokenhearted, often cry out for justice. Not reconciliation, justice. We don’t want to learn how to feel good about our bondage! We don’t want to feel virtuous and holy, we want the bad guys stopped and we want somebody to say, killing people and stealing their stuff is wrong. Stop it.
I love “The Time Machine,” HG Wells, 1895. He paints a beautiful analogy between the Eloi and the Morlocks, and how the Eloi just live in the light, draping paper towels over anything negative, like the fact that the Morlocks sometimes come to the surface to enslave or eat them. There’s a powerful scene where someone is drowning and no one helps, everyone just looks away, so as not to have to intervene or even to feel the distress vicariously. They cover their eyes…and their emotions and the scene just ceases to exist. Out of sight, out of mind.
It’s a morally confusing situation because you realize the utopian paradise of the Eloi is as dark and foreboding as that of the Morlocks underground, because it is a world without justice, a world that refuses to acknowledge darkness. It is not “good.”
I dont have any great theological answers or peace for anyone’s soul, but I can tell you I have spent a good half century wrestling rather fiercely against a church at large far more interested in teaching people how to feel good about their bondage, rather then setting the captives free.
All I know for certain is that truth matters, justice matters, and without them you really do wind up with Christians too heavenly minded to do any earthly good.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
I haven’t thought this out too carefully, so you might just want to cover it with a paper towel; however, no matter that a murderer is forgiven by God, victims, Christians, all who matter. He still lives with the consequences of his actions. Law of the land still has to be followed. Part of his consequences might be prison and or restitution. (Some places he might donate a heart to the medical lab, without consent.) Back to Paul, the Bible does not say so but I doubt Paul ever forgave himself for persecuting (and at least sanctioning murders, surely he did while standing by the stoning of Steven.) Maybe that is why he still called himself the greatest of sinners while he was working and suffering for Christ; maybe that is the motivation to preach with the zeal and determination; maybe that was his “thorn in the flesh.” I doubt there are many murderers in prison today who do not have nightmares about what they have done, outside those extreme cases where the person has no conscience. Do I get a paper towel? One without doggie poo on it?
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Lol! You always get the finest paper towel, Oneta, the one with all the fancy flowers embossed on it.
I think you are right, I think Paul still carried that weight, I think it may have been one of his thorns in his side, but God did use it for good!
Paul, bless his heart, is also the one who speaks of grace not being an excuse to sin. I have a feeling he would understand besy just what I am trying to say. 😊
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I think Paul would understand your frustration and tendency to see what is under every paper towel just in case it is something you need to clean up.
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That is such a good point, Oneta. I’m laughing because that really describes me perfectly. 🙂
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Maybe the applause does happen,though, when we are given our crowns, we realize that all the rewards are for what the Holy Spirit did through us, and that, we realize like Paul that we didn’t deserve rewards either.
It may he much easier to forgive when we realize what our martyrdom brought us to. . . .
Heaven is a wonderful place. . . I wanna go there
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Maybe you are right, maybe it’s easier to forgive once we get to heaven and see what our martyrdom brought us to? I’ve certainly had bad things happen that much later in life I was actually grateful for. God does good work in the midst of our bad things and if enough time passes, all you can see when you look back is His good work.
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All I know is that we’ll have a different perspective in heaven. Or I hope for that. I just want to understand things I don’t understand now.
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Amen, Jill! I think that’s true, I think in heaven we will see things we don’t understand with some new eyes.
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We’re just all practicing so that we can be good Eloi when the time comes.
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That is very funny!
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Thanks.
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In the case of Paul justice was served by the fact that Jesus took his guilt and atoned for it by his death on the cross. Those he murdered certainly recognized that fact and so I believe that they welcomed him as a brother when he entered Heaven.
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Yes, but what do we do with that knowledge? Do we use it to say since Jesus atoned for sin there is now no need for us to care about justice here on earth? Do we now condone or tolerate lawlessness?
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I think many are right we tend to think of things from a human perspective at least while on earth. As you said we tend as humans though to cover our messes with paper towels. Out of sight out of mind or we try to cover them with some pretty poo bag.
God did punish Paul while on earth with a “thorn” in his side and maybe that doesn’t seem to be much of a punishment, but it was bad enough that Paul asked for it to be removed more than once and God refused. As a person that suffers from chronic pain, it wears on you sometimes to your very soul. I can no longer really remember what it is like to not be in pain. I cannot remember sleeping all night ( I sleep in 2 to 4-hour intervals)
I now rely on the Lord to give me peace, but the pin is always present always in the back of my mind. I don’t know how old Paul was when he was given this “thorn” but it likely felt like an eternity to him.
Those that were martyred would understand that God’s justice for their spilled blood was just and right and I do think they would rejoice when he entered heaven that he had been saved for the church and kingdom. I believe our minds will be changed upon entering heaven in ways we cannot even imagine in the here and now. I don’t believe we will forget things, but our perspective about those things will be. I know there are those in my past that I have hurt not killed but harmed and scarred that if I meet them in heaven I would hope they would rejoice my being there as I will rejoice at any of my enemies being there.
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Good comment. I like what you said about how in heaven we won’t forget things, but our perspective will be different. It really will be beyond our imagination.
I think memes like this bother me because grace actually means to absorb the cost, to pay the bill, to forgive a debt. We’re living in a world where many people dont seem to see cause and effect, don’t seem to understand that our behavior has consequences. We also don’t seem to understand that the bill must still be paid. It’s great if you are forgiven for breaking a window, but someone else still has to buy a new window and put in the labor to replace it.
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Thank you and I definitely get why memes like this bother you. Most memes about Christianity bother me on some level. The ones you see on Facebook that try to guilt people into making a certain response makes me bristle like a porcupine.
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