This Book Sure Seems 'for Real'

Spirituality Column #242
June 28, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

This Book Sure Seems ‘for Real’
By Bob Walters

My Christian friend Nancy put a book in my hands just recently, wondering if I had read it.

“No,” I said.

“I guess a lot of people have,” she said.

Yeah, I guess so.

Heaven is for Real has been atop various New York Times bestseller lists since March. Published in November 2010 in paperback only, by mid-June with upwards of four million copies in print “for Real” remained the No. 1 title on the Times’ “Combined Print and E-Book Nonfiction,” “Combined Hardcover and Paperback Nonfiction” and “Paperback Nonfiction” lists.

I’ll not spoil the book’s story, except to say that a four-year old boy in small-town Nebraska has surgery and later begins telling his father, a Wesleyan minister, about visiting heaven and, among other things, meeting Jesus.

It’s a short, praiseworthy read; a couple hours of a simple yet magnificent – and dare I say, highly believable – exposition of one of this life’s greatest mysteries: “Is Heaven real?” Little Colton Burpo tells us it is.

There is no shortage of books on the “Heaven” experience. I’ve read some and not read others. I tend not to dwell much on either Creation or Heaven, because I trust God has them both all figured out. I can’t add much to His plan.

No, my routine reading and prayer focuses on my and mankind’s relationship with Christ, understanding the Bible, religion’s place in our culture, and learning and sharing all I can about the real existence of God, and the truth, goodness, knowledge and morality provided to humanity by the eternal Logos Word of God, Jesus Christ.

So, I’m examining our relationship with Christ? Here is a kid who – pretty convincingly – says he met Jesus.

It got my attention in ways other books haven’t.

The Shack was a mature man’s recollection of a dream, or an experience, or fiction, or something. It was charming and made people think; but it shouldn’t make anyone believe. Randy Alcorn’s Heaven was, to me, very unsatisfying (sorry) in its over-literalized attempts to define Heaven. I put it down after a few pages. Ninety Minutes in Heaven was compelling, but the storyteller was a Bible-savvy adult preacher.

Heaven is for Real is a child’s perspective. It smacks of the truth, to me, because it doesn’t smack of fiction. It is Biblically on point and simple enough to be real. I’m obviously not the only one who has noticed.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) notes that Jesus says a lot about children in the Bible. Matthew 19:14; Mark 10:14. For real.