Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven...

One of the primary areas of my law practice is bankruptcy.  As there are no Federal courthouses in Vincennes, I travel fairly often.  It is at least an hour's drive to either Terre Haute or Evansville, the nearest Bankruptcy courts.  As a result, I am afforded some free thought, music or prayer time.  On occasion this is the most enjoyable hour of the work day.


Today, while driving to Evansville and after returning client calls, I was listening to David Crowder's "Collision."  The disc begins with a scratchy, muted and effected cover of the gospel classic, "Everybody Wants to go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die."  I'm not a fan of the song.  Never liked it.  Not even the Crowder version.  Nonetheless, I am compelled by some mild and benign form of obsessive compulsive disorder to listen to albums in full listing as the artist intended for them to be heard.  Track order is an art and I appreciate it.  Now then... I am aware that the wit and cleverness of this song lies in the irony of the title as sung by the artist.  That is, you can't get to heaven without dying, regardless of whether you have a pair of roller skates or a rocking chair, etc.  However, when I heard the song this morning, I heard it like this:


Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die (to self)... or,


Everybody wants the good stuff but nobody wants to work to ensure it... or,


Everybody wants something for having done nothing.


Everybody wants Something for Nothing...


Strange, I know.  But for some odd reason I heard, for the first time, the song in terms of wanting the rewards of Christ without having to be obedient; dying to self in order to live to him.  We want a spiritual something for nothing.  Now I know that salvation (and heaven as a result) is the "gift of God," and is not earned from works.  I'm not suggesting that you can earn redemption.  I also understand that we are saved by grace through faith (see Eph. 2:8).  However, and I'll paraphrase, there is also a scriptural truth that while good works do not produce salvation, salvation does indeed produce good works.  They are a necessary by-product of your new nature.  It is a spiritual law that has been effected by "nature's God."  (For more on "the law of nature and of nature's God" please read Blackstone's Commentaries on the English Law.)  James 2:20 is pretty straight forward about this principle.  Faith without attendant, resulting works is dead.  Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die...


I have a friend who was my former law school professor.  At the time I was under his tutelage I suspected he was a very smart guy.  Now I know he is brilliant.  His name is Michael Schutt and he wrote a book called, "Redeeming Law:  Christian Calling and the Legal Profession."  On page 43 of this important work he writes that this something for nothing attitude is in fact spiritual apathy:  "a sluggishness about the pursuit of the first things, about the pursuit of ultimate goodness, truth and beauty.  Medieval scholars used the Latin term acedia for this spiritual sloth."  He continues, "We are created to pursue the One who is good, who is the truth, and who is beauty.  Our chief end, according to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, is to glorify him and enjoy him forever."  The something we want (salvation/heaven) should produce a counterpart something in us (obedience/good works).


The modern meaning of "sloth" is not what is meant by elder scholars when they use the word, although there is something of a relation between the two.  They do not mean mere laziness or sluggishness - the sort of thing that might bring to our minds the animals called sloths. The vice known as sloth "is sadness about one's spiritual good, on account of the attendant bodily labor.”  I won't put in the physical man work to see spiritual man growth.  Acedia.  So sloth isn't simple laziness - a vice in itself - but rather, it is a sorrow or sluggishness about doing good that prevents one from doing it.  But we still want to go to heaven.


Regarding acedia, Thomas Aquinas wrote, "The fact that a man considers an arduous good impossible to obtain, either by himself or by another, is due to his being downcast...[I]t seems to him that he will never be able to rise to any good.  And since acedia is a sadness that casts down the spirit, in this way despair is born of acedia."  Schutt summarizes, "In other words acedia arises when we look at some worthwhile good thing as impossible to achieve."  If a thief wants to quit stealing, but he thinks to himself that it would be too hard to give up his larcenous ways and get a real job to provide for his needs...that's sloth (acedia).  Something for nothing.  Or at least that's what we often want.  Heaven through sloth.  The rewards of obedience without the labors of conviction.  We both know it doesn't work like that...


You can't get to heaven unless you die and you can't have heaven on earth through sloth.  You don't get the blessings of obedience without walking it out. You don't get spiritual growth with a free pass on physical work (being compelled to action by the love of Christ immediately comes to mind) and you don't get something for nothing.  I think the fact that we often want something for nothing is strong evidence that we never really committed ourselves to the something.  It's simply not possible to commit to a something and want to offer nothing.  It is definitionally impossible.  Commitment means offering something to the Something.  As the Apostle Paul wrote in Phil. 2:12-16, "12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed--not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence--continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. 14 Do everything without complaining or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe 16 as you hold out the word of life--in order that I may boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing."  That's commitment.  That's something.  Something for SOMETHING (Some-ONE).  I want to go to heaven...and I'm willing to die.


Amen.