Have you ever wondered: “What if I get to heaven and don’t like it?” I remember wondering this as a kid growing up. Of course some descriptions of heaven – floating around with harps – are objectively uninspiring to most of us, or at least we’d expect it to get boring after a thousand years or so. But even though that’s a caricature that doesn’t get heaven right, it’s still hard to imagine what it’s going to be like, and we typically just think of whatever we like or long for in this world and magnify that to epic proportions. (“Every cast hooks a monster!” “No more lower back pain! I can fly!”) And these things aren’t necessarily bad in themselves, but how often do they leave God himself out of the picture?
There’s an idea, expressed in the Bible and developed by Christians for a very long time, that in order for us to be prepared to enjoy whatever heaven and resurrection is going to be like, we must be changed. If we are not transformed, we are not prepared to love and appreciate what is good and beautiful – whether the heavenly realm, the heavenized earth, or even God’s own presence.
A few years ago, I read The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Most of us have at least heard of his (in)famous Inferno, which is part one of three in a journey that takes Dante into Hell, up through Purgatory, and out into Paradise. The book that struck me the most was the second, Purgatory. In it, he climbs a mountain on his way to heaven, and along the way he sees Christians being painfully made holier at each tier of the mountain. These Christians died without having finished the process of growing to be more like Jesus, and so on their way to Paradise they are given additional formation and training to put the old self to death and to put on the new man in Jesus Christ. So, for example, those who were particularly prideful and died in great pride – yet forgiven in Christ – are given the task of walking up a mountain, bent over with large boulders on their backs, so that they can develop humility. The reason for this is that these Christians are not yet ready to enter God’s presence until they’ve become humble. A man who is still proud will not bear to look into the face of the one who shatters all human pride.
Now, before you get too nervous, as Protestants we don’t believe in a place or time called “Purgatory” where we make up for our own sins and inadequacies, and we certainly don’t believe in Roman Catholic doctrines like the possibility of doing good works or offering money to shorten the time our family and friends spend in Purgatory. That being said, there is something to learn from Purgatory, even if we believe that what Dante believed happened after death, we believe happens in this life – our transformation and sanctification in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. The term ‘purgatory’, from ‘purgation’ is just another word for purification or cleansing, the removal of sin and the power of our old way of life, and the putting on of the new self. The idea is this – the Bible tells us that when we were sinners, our desires were not for God or for his truth, they were directed towards our own sin and lust and self-exaltation. Before God graciously changes our hearts and turns us towards him, we do not want to have anything to do with him. And apart from God changing us, we would still be dead in our sins, allies with Satan. As it says in John 3:19, we would be men who “loved darkness rather than the Light.” In Christ we are forgiven and made right with God – called “Justification” – but the Bible teaches that being made right with God is the doorway into the transforming and transformed life of God, which changes us to be like him. To love what he loves, hate what he hates, do what he does. The Christian life is a process of dying to ourselves, carrying our own crosses, putting off the old self and putting on the new – what’s called “Sanctification.”
All this means that in many ways, the substance that Dante and others are getting at when they explain their beliefs about Purgatory is simply a misguided belief about exactly how and when we are transformed to become like Jesus. Perhaps the real Purgatory – the hike up the mountain where we are changed day by day, is just another way of describing the life of a forgiven saint; a pilgrim’s progress. And it’s possible that we’ll only be ready to love heaven, to truly enjoy the holy presence of God, once we are holy as he is Holy.
Scott Limkeman
