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Are Christians narrow minded for insisting that faith in Christ is the only way to heaven?

I hear this question a lot these days. I think that a lot of the confusion which leads to this question is the fault of the Church. We have become lazy and have fallen into preaching what I call the “trick dog” method of salvation.

What I mean by that is that when you train a dog to do tricks, you do so by offering it arbitrary rewards which have nothing to do with the trick you are teaching them. For instance, you tell Rover to sit and, when he does, you give him a treat. Now sitting would not normally lead to a treat had it not been for the fact that you, the trainer, set the rules.

Too often, the Church is lazy and gives the impression that faith and heaven work the same way. We preach faith as if it were a decision to believe in certain facts and heaven as if it were mostly just a really nice place to live, kind of a sedate, eternal amusement park. Now logically speaking, those two things don’t naturally fit together. What does choosing to believe in certain facts have to do with what kind of real-estate we will inhabit for eternity? Essentially, we send the message that, because we could not keep the whole law, God set an easier task for us, “just believe and I’ll let you in to my beautiful, landscaped park with the golden sidewalks.” We tend to present heaven as a reward and faith as an action.

But let’s take a look at what faith and heaven really mean in the Bible and see if that changes how we look at the question.

It is true that faith involves believing certain facts. For instance, Hebrews 11:1 says “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

But there is more to faith than belief. John 14:1 says, ““Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.” In Greek the word “trust” is the same as the word “faith.” And, indeed, trust is the better translation in this verse because Jesus wa speaking of the relationship we have with God and He with us.

Faith is more than belief. it is trusting in another person and their love or affection for you. We believe that Christ died on the cross to forgive our sins. Therefore, we trust Him, that He will keep His promises, that He has put aside all anger and that He loves us.

This becomes even more clear when we look at the Old Testament where our relationship with God is more often described with the word “hope” as in Psalm 25, “No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame.”

What faith and hope have in common is trust.

OK, so faith really means having a relationship with God in which we trust that He loves us.

Now let’s look at heaven. The physical descriptions of heaven vary. It is described as a mansion, a city or a banquet. But what remains constant through all the descriptions of heaven is the presence of God.

In John 14 Jesus promised the disciples that they would go where He was going and would live with Him.

In Revelation 21, the promise is that God will live with us and be our God and wipe every tear from our eyes.

The heart of heaven, what truly makes heaven a paradise, is the experience and enjoyment of a close and loving relationship with God.

Now wait a minute, did you see a common thread between faith and heaven? The heart of faith is a relationship with God in which we trust in His love through Christ. The heart of heaven is a direct experience of a loving relationship with God.

Faith and heaven are two sides of the same coin. A relationship with God is the center and heart of both. You can’t have one without the other because if you have one, you have the other.

Faith is not something we do in order to get to heaven. Christ already took care of that on the cross. There is nothing we need to do to have a loving relationship with God.

When He invites us to have faith, He is inviting us to begin to experience that relationship now. Faith is heaven entering our life here on earth.

So, no we are not narrow-minded to say you have to have faith to get to heaven.

To say you could have heaven without faith would be like saying you could eat without food. It’s silly. You can’t have one without the other because they are the same thing.

Nor is it narrow-minded to say that our faith has to be in Christ rather than some other religion. To say you could get to heaven by having faith in another god is like saying you could build your relationship with your wife by making love to another woman. It’s silly. Relationships just don’t work that way.

We are not narrow-minded when we say faith in Christ is the only way to heaven; we’re just refusing to be silly.