9. The Fall from Heaven

I returned from heaven with a renewed commitment to Christ and His mission. I think by not letting me see my parents or anyone else I had known personally I was made to realize that Jesus might have meant it when He said, “You must be perfect” and “The way is very narrow and few find it.” The highway to heaven theory must be wrong, where all a person has to do is the very same thing that demons do, that is to know that Jesus is the Son of God who came to earth to free-up Hades and restore the bridge to God that was demolished after Adam and Eve were evicted from Eden. Demons don’t go to heaven; I now know that for a fact.

Lying in my very own comfy bed, I pondered the advent of the New Year, the one that begins in September, when it is believed that God first created earth, when schools from east and west start to teach students anew. How could I become a better disciple? Does the word discipline have anything to do with discipleship? I wondered if the words disciple and discipline had that uncanny relationship in the Greek language too.

Then I remembered how sad Jesus was when He told me that people worship Him with their mouths and not their hearts because someday and forever after they will not be with Him as they fantasize they are now. It is so easy to make Christ in our image and likeness. He is as pliable as our imaginations make Him. The unspoken theory seems to be that when we get to heaven we will suddenly be changed, all of our faults and weaknesses, i.e. our self indulgences will instantly disappear. Who would want that? If people refuse to conform to the image and likeness of God here and now, when it is entirely their own free will to do so, where people love and die for freedom, who thinks it is a good idea to be forced into the mindset of God in order to live peacefully with the martyrs and saints? That would be murder!

Dying to self is one thing, a good thing, at least Saint Paul thought so when he said in Corinthians 15:31 that he dies every day. Martyrs were willing to die when they were given a choice between death and renouncing Christ. But does anyone want to be murdered? Would God even want to murder any one, to hold them up at gunpoint and force them to change their minds and hearts, or would He change His rules to accommodate hypocrites and liars because they meant well, and believed they would get in?

Just to be safe, I thought I had better enroll anew in the army of Christ. To be a Christian soldier is to be disciplined just like any other kind of soldier. Every day soldiers wake up to a life of doing what they don’t want to do, for a cause that they want very much. Soldiers freely relinquish their wills to their superiors because they trust in their wisdom and mission.

It was then that I had this funny feeling that meant first I needed to get out of bed early, and so I did. It was time to go to back work.