Warning - this blog may cause constipation.

Welcome to another blog that hopes to stretch thinking and cause rethinking.

Will we poop in heaven?

Let’s start with heaven.
Let’s start with asking will Osama Bin Laden be in heaven?

Bin Laden believed so …….. being met at the gate by 72 vegans!
(Sadly there was a screw up in the paperwork and the virgins he’d hoped for didn’t show up.)

But could he be in heaven?
Some of you might think that he’s the poop.

Now in case I am misunderstood, I am not in any way minimizing the violent and hate-filled atrocities Bin Laden perpetrated over the past 15 years including the bombing in Nairobi, Kenya where 224 died and over 5000 injured; and the tragic events of 9/11 and the over 3000 killed and countless victims injured.
Bin Laden lived a life of violence and murderous hate.

But could he be in heaven?

Is he beyond God’s grace?

The difficulty with celebrating anyone death is the sense that we are celebrating someone receiving God’s punishment of hell …..as if they deserve it and we (those celebrating) don’t deserve such.
If Bin Laden had been captured and as a war criminal now faced justice being done to him that might be a more celebratory outcome. But, celebrating his death - and by all accounts people celebrating are assuming he is now in hell receiving due justice – seems to suggest he is getting what he deserves ….and we will also get what we deserve but we will get heaven.

Really?

The core of Christian teaching is that no-one deserves heaven. Heaven is an act of God’s free gift of grace. No one deserves it but all can receive it.

Now I’m not suggesting that I know Bin Laden accepted God’s grace (but he might have); and if he had he would be in heaven!

This for some is the scandal of the Gospel.

The scandal says - no one is beyond God’s grace, and God’s grace is all you need to enter heaven.

The scandal, or perhaps the surprise of heaven, is that it will be full of the unexpected, none more than who is there and who isn’t!

Will there be poop in heaven …that could be unexpected.

Sitting in an airport Chili’s last week I shared the question I was pondering and one person quickly retorted – “Of course we all know there will be, we all say it ‘holy ****!’”

But the original questioner was reflecting on a theological point. If poop is the body’s way of removing impurities, if heaven is void of impurities will we still poop!

Heaven.

Oftentimes we think of heaven as ethereal, intangible, esoteric and immaterial.
To say that an easier way – floaty, dreamy, hazy.

I grew up with the idea that it was a place above earth where we would sing hymns and worship all day long, every day, for ever and ever …like one everlasting church service.
For me that sounded more like hell!

Scriptures teaches that there is a place, a space, a realm beyond the one we currently inhabit.
Scripture teaches that just now we have a body that gets old, weary and eventually will give out on us – but there is a second kind of body one that is ‘imperishable’.
Scripture also teaches that not being here will be better.

In this new place, with a new body, in a better place will we still poop?
I truly don’t know.

BUT, Scripture doesn’t only talk of heaven as being somewhere else, sometime else.
Jesus taught, lived, that heaven had come to earth.
For Jesus heaven was not ‘someday’ but was a present reality.
Scriptures teaches that it is both here, now and yet fully to come.
Eternal life does not start when we die; it starts now.
Jesus’ prayer, our prayer was and is “thy kingdom come”.
Christians are about bringing heaven to earth ….. today.

The original questioner was wondering if in the other reality our bodies will be perfect, sinless and therefore poopless.
But the better way to look at heaven is to see it not as somewhere else, sometime else - but the focus of our attention and purpose now.

If as a Christian you pooped today, if today you have been about what God wants you to be about - bringing heaven to earth, then theologically you pooped in heaven!

Sorry if this blog causes constipation.