First, God became “if any,” only an idea, and a disposable idea at that.

Next, hell died. The afterlife, “if any,” became, for everybody, a morally unserious paradise, a post-mortem utopia of bliss.

Finally—as feedback from the de-moralized afterlife--this life became morally unserious, a matter of taste rather than of truth, of opinion rather than of judgment. Religion had already become privatized. Now morals and ethics retreated from the public square.

Conclusion: Ideas function as real—as facts--no matter their relationship to any theory of reality. Both beliefs and their denial have consequences for both personal and societal life. “Pragmatism” is philosophy’s word for our human obligation to anticipate consequences and make here-and-now on-the-ground decisions in their light.

IDEAS are born, evolve, get sick--but don’t die. In sickness and in health, they hang around within our human grasp. As we grab them, we sort them, and the ones we hang onto determine how we see-and-live-in the world—that is, our religion.

Well, what idea of personal destiny are you hanging onto, and why?

Here are the four options:

a) There’s no afterlife, we die like dogs. Let’s call this “naturalism” and see its value in narrowing the gap between us and our fellow-creatures. It promotes dogs, who (in my opinion) deserve promotion.

b) There’s a good afterlife for everybody. Let’s call this “universalism.” I’ve already illustrated its sick forms. It’s healthy form is the conviction of love’s total victory over hate and indifference. Cover to cover, through a riot of stories, the Bible tells the Story that the holy and righteous God is love, “not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (in the New Testament, Second Peter 3:9).

c) Once you’re born, you’re stuck with unending consciousness. When you die, you go either to the Good Place or the Bad Place and stay there forever and ever. Let’s call this “eternalism.” It assumes the Greek idea that each human being has an everlasting “soul” separable at death from the body. The West’s basic mind—in and beyond the Bible—strands together the Hebrew and the Greek minds. The Hebrew mind holds to the integrity of the outer-vislble life (basar) and the inner-invisible life (lev)—so sometime after death, “body” and “soul” must come together—as in Jesus’ resurrection, and the final resurrection of all the dead for judgment. This point of view is the ultimate in ethical seriousness, and it honors the Greek doctrine of the immortality of the soul. As it has the most rhetorical power, it’s favored by evangelists “preaching for souls.” But it is blasphemous in viewing God as an eternal torturer. In the words of a 19th-century contrarian woman, George Eliot, “Father, I choose. I will not have a heaven haunted by far-off cries from hell. My heart has grown too big with things that might be.” I can still hear the quiet defiance of those words as they were on more than one occasion quoted (his white beard shaking) by my long-ago tennis partner at the University of Chicago, the Rev. Dr .E. E. Carr, a Christian Marxist, first editor (near the beginning of the 20th century) of THE CHRISTIAN SOCIALIST. That woman and that man had hearts so humane, so compassionate as to be enraged by the very idea of torture as ever an appropriate punishment, to say nothing of endless torture.

d) Life is a gift of God, and gifts may be turned down. That Greek notion that you get born and are stuck with consciousness forever and ever violates the nature of gift. That fisherman’s son came to say “No thanks” to God’s gift of life: he committed suicide. After we die, some of us may say “Enough, I want out of here, out of consciousness.” So, to the breaking of God’s heart, some fade away from the light off into the darkness of nonexistence. Let’s call this “conditional immortality” or “annihilationism.” It seems to have been the most common view among the early Christians (as in the Gospel of John 3:16). This point of view is the ultimate in religious seriousness, and it honors the Hebrew and Christian doctrine that life is—on both sides of death—a gift from God. (Adam and Eve were ejected from Eden lest, on their own and against the will of God, they eat of the tree of life and attain immortality [“live forever”: Genesis 3:22].) (Yes, this is my point of view, though all views of life’s ultimates should be held with humility in the presence of mystery.)

Our heaven/hell question this week is a good question, but is it the right question? Daily, we Christians pray what Jesus taught us, “the Lord’s Prayer”—and it doesn’t even mention heaven and hell. It’s not about our selfish anxiety to enter into heaven. It’s about unselfish entry into the needs of the earth—everybody’s need of “daily bread,” everybody’s need of “forgiveness” (the outer and inner conditions of peace). And it premises all—all life and thought and action—on the sovereignty, providence, and promise of God (my translation): “Our Father in heaven, may our lives honor your holy name. Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” In and as Jesus, God came to earth. He preached and lived “the kingdom [rule] of God” “on earth as…in heaven.” In the ancient baptismal phrase, he died to save us from “sin, death, and the devil.” He was “bodily” resurrected, looking forward to our “bodily” resurrections. (The earthiness of all this is splendidly spelled out in this week's first published response, by Tom Wright, the most eminent living scholar of the New Testament.)