Heaven, the Heart's Deepest Longing by Kreeft Peter

Author:Kreeft, Peter [Kreeft, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898702286
Published: 2013-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

Is It True?

The first and simplest answer to the charge that belief in heaven is escapism is that the first question is not whether it is escapist but whether it is true. We cannot find out whether it is true simply by finding out whether it is escapist. “There is a tunnel under this prison” may be an escapist idea, but it may also be true.

If an idea is true, we want to believe it simply because it is true, whether it is escapist or not. If it is false, we want to reject it simply because it is false, whether it is escapist or not. The only honest reason for anyone ever accepting any idea is its truth. To say, “I don’t care if it’s true or false, I accept it because . . . ” is simply deliberate dishonesty, no matter what reasons follow the “because”.

This is so even if the reason is happiness. Suppose the truth would make you unhappy and believing a lie would make you happy (or you think it would), is it so bad to believe the lie? Yes. Truth is prior to happiness because a happiness without truth is not true happiness. George MacDonald says, “I would not favor a fiction to keep a whole world out of hell. The hell that a lie would keep any man out of is doubtless the very best place for him to go. It is truth . . . that saves the world.”4 It is better to be an honest atheist than a dishonest theist, for honesty seeks truth and when the honest atheist sees that God is the truth, the atheist will embrace him and be embraced. But deliberate dishonesty is the locking of the soul’s door against the light, the refusal of reality. It is better to reject God than to reject truth; for the truth sought by honestly though mistakenly rejecting God is in fact a divine attribute (“When me they fly, I am the wings”5), but the God sought by rejecting truth is not the true God.

Judged by this standard, dishonesty is frightfully popular. Seldom do you hear the naive question, “But is it true?” Ideas are accepted because they are relevant, dynamic, viable, radical, traditional, nontraditional, useful, comforting, challenging, or for a hundred other reasons or rejected because they are abstract, unfashionable, unworkable, irrelevant, upsetting, traditional, nontraditional, and the like.6 Our civilization seems to echo Pilate’s indifference: “Truth? What’s that?”7

To care for truth is especially crucial in religion, where we seek the divine Other, the true God (unless we are those who call on the mountains to fall on us and hide us from his presence).8 It is especially crucial in regard to heaven: “We are very shy nowadays of even mentioning heaven. We are afraid of the jeer about ‘pie in the sky’ and of being told that we are trying to ‘escape’ from the duty of making a happy world here and now into dreams of a happy world elsewhere.

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