Ok, so the new CW show 'Reaper' didn't make my list of New TV shows I'm watching this season, but my husband is a big Kevin Smith fan (he's a producer of the show), so naturally he watched it this evening.
The show revolves around a guy whose parents sell his soul to the devil.
The devil, in turn, wants the guy to retrieve souls that have escaped hell and return them.
Ironically, his efforts actually produce good for the community. Tonight's escaped soul was starting fires around town and destroying homes. Once he was retrieved, the fires stopped.
This brings up a bunch of theological questions:
1. How good do you have to be to get into heaven?
2. How bad do you have to be to get into hell?
3. Who decides what is good and what is bad?
4. If you do some really bad stuff, could you ever do enough good stuff to redeem yourself?
5. Why would the devil want to bring evil souls back into hell instead of letting them wreak havoc on the earth?
I'm a Christian, and so I believe that Jesus saves us from hell and leads us to heaven (for those who believe).
But I don't believe it blindly. I've given considerable time to thinking about each of these questions. The thing is, we're not good enough to get into heaven. And that's more a statement of how good God is.
C.S. Lewis compared it to men trying to jump to the moon. Sure, some people will jump higher than others, but when we're talking in terms of the moon - then no one is really jumping all that high.
In the same way, no human can really be good enough to get to heaven. But God didn't leave us hanging. He lets us go to heaven if we believe in him.
Now, it's tempting to think that you just have to believe in God. It could be Judaism or Islam or Buddhism. But that's not so. When you dig deeper into any other religion, you realize that it's all about what humans can do to make humans good. But humans can't achieve the God- level of good.
Christianity is different. It's solely based on faith in Jesus. The church doesn't always paint a clear picture of this. It can seem like Bible studies and prayer meetings and communion and all the rest are rituals that make us good. But no one makes us good but God.
By the way, another interesting aspect of the devil in this show is how nice he can be. It's hard to be deceitful without being attractive first. You have to draw people in. And that's why we have to be careful with what we're told and taught. It could be a wolf cloaked in sheep's clothing.
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