Walls in Heaven

It amazes me sometimes the things that must occupy the minds of right-wing fundamentalist preachers. Here is a case where one of the local ayatollahs apparently got in trouble with his flock because of a misperception that he might be suggesting that maybe, just maybe, all the Jews in the world aren’t going to hell in a handbasket.

Neither San Antonio televangelist John Hagee nor the Rev. Jerry Falwell has expressed a belief in a "dual covenant theology" as reported Wednesday in the Jerusalem Post, Hagee and a local rabbi said Thursday.
"Dual covenant theology" refers to a belief that Jews can be saved without believing in Jesus Christ — as Christians do — because of God's covenant with the ancient Israelites....
Falwell, in a statement posted on his Web site, www.falwell.com, said he stands "on the foundational biblical principle that all people — Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Jews, Muslims, etc. — must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to enter heaven."

To tell the truth, I don’t believe in a "dual covenant theology" either. I believe in a single covenant that God has with the entire human race - each and every person individually - regardless of whether they are Israelites, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics or atheists.

But it is sad to see these supposed leaders of Christianity today dithering over whether they think God arbitrarily condemns trillions and billions and billions of people to eternal damnation or maybe just trillions and billions and millions of people. All because they were born into a culture where they weren’t taught to repeat the magic phrase that automatically unlocks the doors to heaven to them while keeping them sealed shut to everyone else.

The Catholic theologian Hans Kung once said it would probably be necessary for God to put up walls in Heaven to keep certain groups of people from knowing that other groups are up there too.