FoxNews is running a story about a Seattle-based company selling a "ticket to heaven" package that apparantly has garnered some pretty nasty reactions from Christians. However, I found this response a bit more worthy and thought-provoking: And Fuller Theological Seminary's film and religion think tank Reel Spirituality believes that a business like Reserve A Spot In Heaven can promote healthy dialogue about spirituality and faith.
"Christianity at its worst has often characterized salvation as a transaction that guarantees heaven rather than the initiation of a relationship with a loving God forever," said Robert K. Johnston, a professor and the group's co-director. "The Web site is a humorous spoof on some of Christianity's tool kits for salvation. It's probably all in good fun."
I don't find it all that surprising that someone would come up with an idea like a "ticket to heaven" package. Too much in church culture today focuses on (as Dallas Willard puts it) getting people into heaven rather than heaven into people. I’m really saddened by the slide in modern church culture that treats Jesus like a ticket to heaven rather than the remarkable freedom and new life he is and spills out on us. Jesus cuts through all the crap and brokenness and wrongness and bents within and without us and opens up a chance to bask, live and breathe in the Love and Life of God. We’re broken people with the incredible chance to be healed and whole--and a chance to work with God in healing and making whole the world around us. We have the chance to be and become what we each and every one of us was created to be: a people of Life who Love because we are loved so brilliantly. To see that Life and Love and Power reduced to a ticket to heaven and a pew on Sunday makes me weep.
I agree with Johnston, this is definately something worth thinking and talking about.