Ep. 244: Heaven & “The Good Place”

Isaac Dagneau:

Hey, welcome to indoubt. My name is Isaac, I’m one of the hosts at indoubt, as well as a pastor at North Valley Baptist Church in Mission, British Columbia. Well, on the show today, we have our friend, Steve Kim, from Apologetics Canada. Steve is a follower of Jesus. He’s a husband, he’s a father. He’s also the Alberta Director of Apologetics Canada. So, it’s so good to have you back on the show again, Steve.

Steve Kim:

Hey, thanks for having me back.

Isaac Dagneau:

Many of our listeners, in fact, if you have been listening to indoubt for the last, let’s say probably a month, a couple of months, you’ve probably just heard a conversation I had with Steve already, but for those, Steve, who maybe are just jumping on for the first time, maybe they’re interested in The Good Place, and they saw this podcast about The Good Place, and I just want to… Just jumping in. So yeah, just maybe fill us in a little bit more about who you are.

Steve Kim:

Yeah. I am a husband and a father to two wonderful kids, six and four, Maya and Tavin. I used to live in the promised land, called Abbotsford, BC, up until somewhat recently. A couple of years ago, we moved closer to family in the Edmonton area, so that’s where I serve, and that’s partly why I am Alberta Director for Apologetics Canada. In my early 20s, I had something of a faith crisis. My story with my faith, it’s not unique, but it is actually quite common, right? So I grew up in a Christian home. I inherited my faith, but there came a time when I actually had to own it for myself. It had to become my faith at one point. And I had this whole thing where I walked away from the faith and then I came back, started studying apologetics, and then I just got hooked. And so, what I saw in all of that was that I was experiencing a case of intellectual malnourishment when it came to my faith, and so when I look at apologetics, more than just making a case for the Christian worldview, and that is certainly that, but I also see it as this intellectual care for the soul, and so that’s why I do what I do. My last name, as you might have kind of guessed from my last name, I am Korean. In fact, I come from an immigrant background. I was born and raised in South Korea, came over to Canada when I was about 14 years of age, been living here ever since, and been loving every year of it. So that’s a little bit about who I am.

Isaac Dagneau:

Okay. That’s awesome. Two questions from that. Number one, if Abbotsford is the promised land, what is Edmonton? And the second question is, is apologetics for everyone?

Steve Kim:

Yeah. Okay. So as to your first question, if Abbotsford is the promised land, Edmonton, well, I was certainly in a state of shock when I first experienced my first -40 degree weather, and I told myself, surely, this land is deserted by God, right? But people live here, people make things work. And so, I was just telling Isaac earlier that ironically, this kind of a harsh weather, it kind of breeds a sense of community. People look out for each other a little bit more, because if you see a car kind of pulled over to the side of the road, somebody’s going to stop very soon to help you out because they know if this person doesn’t get help, likely this person’s going to freeze to death.  So there is a greater sense of kind of community I find here, which I enjoy. Your second question was, is apologetics for everyone, is that correct? My short answer is 100% yes. E very Christian is an apologist, and in fact, everybody who believes in anything is in a sense, an apologist, because whether you’re an atheist, a naturalist, or pantheist, you believe what you believe, hopefully for reasons. And I think as believers in Christ, yeah, we are actually commanded by Apostle Peter to always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you, but do it with gentleness and respect.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s really good, yeah. And hopefully, well, I shouldn’t say hopefully, this conversation will help us all in our apologetics as well. So we’ll jump in here. Today’s conversation, it revolves around some themes that grow out of a Netflix series that’s called The Good Place, or at least it’s on Netflix. Now, if you’re listening and if you haven’t had a chance to watch it, that’s totally okay. We’re only kind of using it as a launching pad, I guess you could say, to talk about the important, and sometimes I would say even neglected topics of heaven and hell, or the afterlife. So Steve, I was telling you earlier that my wife and I, we watched just the first episode last night, okay? So in preparation for this conversation. It’s a very interesting, very intriguing show, but perhaps for those who are unfamiliar, even myself, I’ve only seen the first episode, which gives a lot, but could you just share with us just sort of the main, the basic premise of this show called The Good Place?

Steve Kim:

Yeah. So just for the sake of giving our audience, our listeners, just a broad feel for it, this one is produced by NBC, and if you like the humor in a show like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, you will certainly love this. In fact, one of the executive producers, Michael Schur, is the one who helped create The Good Place. So it has very much of the same kind of humor, very witty, very quick, so it’s just a delight to watch for some good humor. Now, the basic premise of it is the show starts off with this young woman by the name of Eleanor Shellstrop. She opens her eyes, and she’s in this place, she doesn’t know where she is. This guy, Michael, calls her into his office, and that’s where she finds out that she’s actually dead, and this is the afterlife. Thankfully, Michael informs her that she’s in the Good Place. What’s interesting about this show, is that they don’t really use the terms heaven and hell. In fact, right at the beginning, they kind of go over that a little bit, and so they say, “Well, we don’t really use those terms. It’s not heaven and hell like we typically understand it, but this is the Good Place, and you’re in the Good Place, you made it.” But quickly, what you discover by the end of the first episode, is that Eleanor Shellstrop is actually a very rotten specimen of a human being. She is just nasty, she’s selfish, she has no morals whatsoever, and now she has to kind of figure her way out. So she’s trying to find ways not to be sent to the Bad Place. And then along the way, she also discovers that there are a few others like her in the Good Place, and together with these people, they try to find ways to make things work, and that’s basically the premise of the show.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yes, yes. And I agree with you on just some of the points about its humor and everything too. It has a very American cultural understanding, maybe I could say, of heaven and hell? And then if yes or no, then what is the North American kind of cultural understanding of heaven and hell, just kind of on the basic level?

Steve Kim:

Yeah, and I think that is sort of the basic understanding. What you see in the show is very close to our understanding of heaven and hell. And so here, what you see is… Well, let’s put it this way. If you’re like me, that kind of grew up in the church, me, especially, I grew up in the Catholic church, so I encountered a lot of the medieval paintings of heaven and hell, all those kinds of things. And so, I had this pictures of angels that are dressed in togas with feathered wings, and with the halo above their heads or something like that, or when it comes to hell, this is a place where these grotesque looking monsters chew on people, or red guys with horns, with pitchforks, jabbing at you or something like that, right? These are some of the images that I grew up with, and almost inevitably, when you talk to people who may not have a very good theological grasp in terms of the Christian understanding of heaven and hell, the idea is you do enough good, and you’ll get in there. Nobody’s perfect, but you do enough good things, if you’re a sort of a decent person. Now, I’m not sure what the standard is when they’re measuring what counts as a decent person, as opposed to not so decent person, but they have some kind of a vague standard, and if you’re decent enough, more decent than not, then you get into heaven. And that is sort of the picture that you get, although it’s a bit different, like in this show, the requirements for getting into the Good Place is actually a lot more strict. You have to be the cream of the crop to actually get in there, but that is sort of generally the idea, do enough good things and you’ll make it into heaven, or the Good Place.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah.

Steve Kim:

Yeah.

Isaac Dagneau:

So when we think about then the understanding of what heaven is, so maybe people, the cultural understanding is “okay, I got to be a good person, and then I get to go to heaven or the good place.” What Is there?

Steve Kim:

Yeah, and that’s a very good question because what you see in the show, is there are a lot of pleasant things. You see gardens, you see wonderful houses to live in, people are nice. It basically looks like the place that we live in, but cleaner, and you have all the conveniences that you would want, and then every now and then, you throw in some extra bonus things like you have days when you get to fly around for a bit, or different things like that. Good food, good company, very much sort of the earthly pleasures that perhaps you missed out on, because you were busy being good, sort of a thing. Right?  Me, certainly my understanding of heaven, even though I knew this wasn’t true, somehow got impacted by this cream cheese commercial, where you have feathered angels sitting on clouds, playing harps, and eating cream cheese. And so, I mean, I know that’s not the real picture of heaven, but somehow whenever somebody says the word heaven, that’s the first thing that pops up in my mind, and I have to just kind of brush it aside, but that is our view of heaven. In fact, I have so many people, even Christians that I talk to sometimes, who are actually afraid of heaven because their view of heaven is this 24/7 nonstop worship service. And they’re like, “It’s hard enough for me to sit through church for like an hour and a half on Sundays. I don’t want to do that forever.” Right? And those kinds of things. And so, yeah, we do have some skewed views on… At least from the Christian perspective, that is not what heaven is supposed to be.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah, no, that’s a good point. Before we jump to sort of more of the biblical understanding of heaven and hell, and obviously, I mean, our conversation is going to be so short, so we’re only getting a snippet here, but I was interested, and I know asking for percentages is always hard because we don’t know exactly everyone. But just from your standpoint, what do you think, when it comes to people believing, Christians believing that, “If I’m a good person, I will go to heaven,” just from your conversations, from the work that you do, is that a high percentage of Christians that kind of believe that?

Steve Kim:

The short answer is yes, and while I can’t give you the exact sort of percentage, in my experience, at least half the people that I talk to, at least half, seem to have that kind of an understanding, if not like, it’s probably in my experience, is closer to like three out of four people that I’ve come across, their understanding is that you just kind of go there if you’re a good enough person. And it depends on the context too, like in certain church sort of settings, right? There are more people who are a little bit more theologically astute than that. So it differs from place to place, but I would say just overall, I would say at least half, if not three out of four people.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah, yeah. Okay let’s jump into heaven and hell, in terms of the biblical standpoint of it, because I think, Steve, at least for myself, it’s kind of thrown around, doesn’t the Bible say that we’re going to be walking on golden bricks? You see all this stuff, so it can sort of lend its way into this idea of there’s this really big, nice city that’s going to be fun, you can kind of do whatever you want, there’s no tears. It’s like, “Oh, this is going to be the place.” So I can understand how The Good Place’s depiction can be something that Christians can understand to be. So, yeah. How does the Bible describe heaven, though? What is the true description, in obviously a shorter-

Steve Kim:

In a short way. Yeah, as we get there, maybe it might help first to sort of explain why the Bible might have all these different imageries. So often, the illustration that I use is, okay, let’s say you developed a time machine and you go back to the times of say, Early Church Fathers, right? And you’re trying to explain to people what electricity is, right? How are you going to do that? They have no concept of this, right? I mean, apparently, the ancient Greeks, they had some kind of an understanding of… They had experiences with electricity, even though they didn’t exactly know what to call it or what to do with it even. But electricity as we use it today, how are you going to explain it to them, right? You’re going to have to explain it to them in terms that they understand. So for example, it’d be like, “Imagine if you could capture a little bit of the lightning in a bottle, in a little vessel, and you can somehow use that to keep your lamp going all night long. Wouldn’t that be awesome?” Right? Those kinds of things. And so, what I think is happening when we look at the Bible, you have the Son of God coming down to earth, now he’s telling us about hell, heaven. These are realities that we only have just the faintest glimpse of, but if Jesus were to explain it to us, how would he do that? Right? Or how would John, with these images that he’s seeing, let’s say he’s seeing heaven, how he’s going to describe it to us. Those kinds of things. And so, let’s talk about hell first, because maybe that’s a little bit easier, because our listeners might be surprised to know that more than anybody else in the Bible, Jesus talked about hell the most, and he described it in various ways, and the other New Testament writers too, but Jesus described it as the place where there’s unquenchable fire, and the worms do not die, and you’re getting eaten up. And then it is also described as a place of darkness, it is talked about in terms of exclusion. So you’re excluded from this feast that’s happening, and there’s wailing, and gnashing of teeth, which by the way, just as a quick side note, that gnashing of teeth, people often misunderstand that to be a sign of pain.

Steve Kim:

In the ancient Hebrew culture, Jewish culture, gnashing of teeth is not a sign of pain, it is a sign of anger. In fact, we had that growing up in my country, right? When you grind your teeth, that is a sign of just seething anger. In fact, I did that once, and my brother got really upset at me, he was like, “Don’t do that! That is so vengeful of a thing to do!” But anyway, that is kind of the images that we see there. And then heaven is, of course, we read more about that in the Book of Revelation, when everything is restored, we talk about the river of life, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is no more, but there’s tree of life that you have access to. It also talks about how God dwells there. This is a new Jerusalem that has come down from heaven, and that’s where we live. Streets of gold, those kinds of things that we’re, as Christians, typically familiar with. So those are some of the images that are used. Of course, once you start digging into the descriptions of heaven and hell, there happen to be way more than that.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah, no, that’s good. And I think when you were sending over some of your notes to us, you wrote down that the key element is God’s presence in heaven, which I think is so fascinating too, because you can correct me if I’m wrong, because I think you’ll know this more than I do, but I’ve always thought that, just to jump into Islam for just one moment, that paradise, which is the Muslims’ heaven, you could say, it’s not really a place where Allah is, but rather just a place where he just gets to enjoy earthly delights, which almost makes more sense in terms of… That sounds like what The Good Place is kind of talking about more, than the Christian worldview.

Steve Kim:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, in Islam, the idea of paradise includes kind of the… It’s almost cliche, but you have 72 virgins, rivers of wine, it’s described in those terms, although there are a couple places where it talks about sort of the spiritual blessings of it all. But there is a tradition in Islam where there will be a day in heaven when everybody is assembled together, and the most righteous of them all will sort of have the front row seat, and way over there, about a bowshot away, you see Allah pass by, and that’s as close to God as you will get in Islam. That’s how it was kind of explained to me. And yeah, so whereas the Christian understanding of heaven is all centered around the presence of God, and so it makes a lot more sense when you look at the whole picture of the Bible. I think as Christians, we often read bits and pieces of the Bible, maybe we read the Gospel of John, maybe we read sections of the Book of James, and we don’t read the old Testament a whole lot, those kinds of things. But when you actually put everything together, especially if you believe in the doctrine of inspiration and that there is one divine author behind all of this, then why is it that we don’t look at the overall picture of it? So, typically, how I explain it is this, let’s start at the beginning of the book, in the Book of Genesis. So God creates the world, and God creates humanity in a very special way, so as to have this relationship with them, this spiritual relationship with them. And so Adam and Eve, representative of humanity, they are in the presence of God. This is very much heaven, right? Nobody’s going to look at the Garden of Eden and go, “Well, that’s not heaven. That’s whatever.” I mean, that is very much a paradise, very much a heavenly place. Now, things go wrong, and so Adam and Eve rebel against God, and so they get kicked out of the Garden of Eden because I mean, can you imagine the angels watching? So Adam and Eve just disobeyed God, and they took this fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and now they are kind of in a place where they can basically determine what’s right or wrong, and their nature is now corrupt. Now, if I were an angel standing there, I’d be like, “God, you need to kill them and you need to kill them right now, before they start spreading.” And in the Bible, it says like, they can’t take from the tree of life and eat it now. Because then basically, what happens is we’re stuck in our state of sin forever. So God, in an act of mercy, drives them out. Now, this is where human exile starts, and the entire Bible is a story of how God reached out to humanity to redeem them from their human exile. And so, then God comes to, right? God selects a particular family, let’s start with Abraham. God chooses a family, creates a nation, through which the Messiah comes. Now, think about this. What made the nation of Israel special? It is the presence of God. That’s what made them special. In fact, Moses, when he was talking to God, by this time, they’re out of Egypt, but the people are complaining and they’re rebelling against God again, and so God is like, “I’m going to wipe them out,” and Moses is pleading with them, right? And he’s like “You know what, we’re not going to go anywhere, unless you come with us. If you don’t come with us, what makes us any different from any other peoples on the planet?”, basically. And so, it kind of goes on like that, and so then eventually they have the tabernacle, which later becomes the temple. They build this temple to God, God’s presence dwells, and that’s what makes God’s people special, is God being with them. And then because of continued disobedience, there’s that very dramatic moment in the Book of Ezekiel where God’s presence actually departs. And then later, Jesus comes. Now, do you remember the name that Jesus was given? There was a different kind of a title or a name, Emmanuel, which means, God with us. So God’s presence has come to us. Now, this is a big deal, right? And so Jesus comes, fulfills the Old Testament, he carries out his earthly ministry, he departs and who comes? The Holy Spirit. The spirit of God comes to dwell inside of every one of us. And so, then now this, Paul says, is the down payment of what is to come. So in other words, God marks his people. The people that belong to him, he marks them with his spirit, and then at the end of days, God’s going to sift them all out, right? So, “These are the people that belong to me, you come with me. The rest of you, you are now excluded from me. You didn’t want me, you’ll get what you want.” And so then you read in the Book of Revelation, Revelation 20 or 21, where you see this picture, everything is completed now. And this angel says, “Now everything is done.” What does it say? “Now God’s dwelling place is with people. They will be his people, and he will be their God.” That is the completed picture. So we started in God’s presence, we were in exile, we come back to God’s presence, right? So that is the picture. Now, you look at all of this, so then what you get is this idea of heaven that is centered around, we got to be with God. Now, if that is the core of heaven, guess what hell is, right? It is when you are excluded from God’s presence. So no matter what other imageries that you might see about hell, the core of it is now you are removed from God’s presence forever. And so, that is the core of the Christian understanding of heaven and hell.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s so good, the Good Place, it has this mathematical algorithm to see if people get in, right? All these points are put to a person if they’ve done something really well. If you save someone from getting hit by a car, you might get a thousand points or whatever. And so, if that’s how people from that show go to the Good Place, how do we then, if that’s not the same for us as Christians, how do we get into heaven the normal way?

Steve Kim:

Now, this is where Christianity is radically different from other religions. So typically, when people think about religions, they think these are basically different ways of living out your lives ethically, so it’s about being a good person. I was invited to an Apologetics conference in Winnipeg a few years ago, in February, of all times, it was brutal. And one of the topics that I spoke on was, do all religions lead to God? Now what the organizers hadn’t told me was that they were going to have a multi-faith panel just before my session. So they sat down with a Sikh, a Jew, a Buddhist, a secular humanist, and a Muslim, and just kind of talked about religion in general, and their religion specifically. And what I found fascinating was that every single one, including the secular humanist, was talking about being a good person. The Sikh gentleman said, “If you’re first and foremost, a good person, you’re going to be a good Sikh, you’re going to be a good Buddhist, you’re going to be a good Jew, good Christian, whatever.” Right? And it just kind of went on like that. It was all about being a good person. I was like, well, that sets me up perfectly, because what Christianity tells us, is you can’t get there by doing good works.  So to the question, do all religions lead to God? What Christianity says is no, no religion leads to God, God came to us, and he did the work for us that we couldn’t do. So think about it this way. If you break the law, any law, you can’t actually make up for it by doing other good works. So imagine you get pulled over by a police officer for speeding. So he says, “License and registration, please,” and you say, “Oh, but, but, but, but, but officer, you don’t understand how these things work. You see, I help old ladies cross the road. I help out at the soup kitchen every week,” so on and so forth, what’s the officer going to say? “Okay, license and registration, please.” Right? Because if you break the law, all the good things that you do, they’re irrelevant. You have to pay the penalty.  And so, but this is the problem. We can’t pay that penalty, because the penalty for high treason against the divine, against God, is death. So either we pay the penalty, and we all die and receive the death sentence that we’re supposed to receive, or we need grace and mercy. And that’s where Jesus steps in, and he pays the penalty. In other words, the way to heaven is not us doing good works. Whereas other religions, I love the way Frank Turek puts this, whereas other religions say, do, do, do, what Christianity says is done. The work has been done for you. You trust in what Jesus has done. Now, that should lead to, in grateful response to what Jesus has done, it should lead to ethical lives, good lives, but that is not to earn the right to live in the Good Place.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yes, yes. And that’s so good, because if you think about The Good Place, the first episode you’re met with the main character, who is not the best kind of person, did not live a very good life and right away, when she’s in the Good Place, she meets up with this other gentleman who is a very good,  he’s a philosopher of morality and ethics, and very good. But in what you’re saying, if she, right before she died, confessed Jesus as her savior, even after living a life of heinous sins, she would be in the presence of God, whereas this other gentlemen who did all these good things, but rejected Jesus, he wouldn’t, which is sort of the irony in it all.

Steve Kim:

Yeah, and that is sort of… Some people think it’s very unfair because again, you think, well, how is it that this rotten specimen of a human being, just because she confesses with her lips, Jesus Lord, all of a sudden, she’s in heaven. That’s too simplistic of a way to look at it. Obviously, you need genuine contrition and remorse for everything and whatnot. And of course, God being just, when somebody is remorseful like that, and he is merciful, then he’ll extend that mercy, not at the cost of justice, because Jesus paid the full price already. So justice, the requirements of justice is already met, and so, we can receive that mercy without compromising God’s justice. And here’s the crazy part. Now, think about what justice is. Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you do deserve, but thank God, goes one step farther, and he actually shows us grace. Now, this is the crazy picture of heaven in Christianity, is that God not only forgives us our debts, he adopts us into his household, the household that bears his name, and scripture tells us that we are actually co-inheritors of his kingdom with Christ. I’m like, what? I mean, I was a rebel who committed high treason, and God extends clemency and then he says, “You know what? I’m going to one up myself here. You are now part of my family, part of my household. You’re going to be a co-inheritor of the kingdom with Christ,” and as Paul tells us in his letter to Timothy, we are going to reign with him. We’re going to rule with him in heaven. Right? This is where my mind goes absolutely berserk, and this is the picture of heaven. This is far from just the sort of dreary, 24/7 nonstop worship service kind of a picture that we sometimes have. And I mean, yes, we will praise God, but it’s not going to be anything that we will dread. It’s going to be a colorful place, it’s going to be a wonderful place of diversity, and we’re going to have meaningful work to do. It is just more than just being a Good Place, it’s going to be a place where love is perfected between humanity and God, and between me and my neighbors, and that’s what we are destined for as Christians.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s so good. Praise God for that. So good. We’re basically out of time here, Steve, but let me just ask one last question. How can a biblical understanding of heaven and hell impact basically, self-professing Christians today in their everyday life?

Steve Kim:

Let me just say this to start with, what’s wonderful about grace, is that because you are not earning salvation, you’re not earning your place in the Good Place or heaven, when you help somebody else, you can actually do that without any strings attached, because you are already receiving the greatest gift of all. You can share that with somebody else, without any strings attached, because if you think about it, in other religions, when you help other people, in a sense, it’s for yourself, because it’s going to be of benefit to you. But under this doctrine of grace, you can’t earn it, so you can actually do this just out of the goodness of your heart without any strings attached. So that is wonderful news, and that should also motivate us to share the gospel with others more readily, because I don’t get anything out of it, but you’re going to get everything out of this. Now, when we want to talk about the gospel, I mean, it’s not like back in the 60s, where you can just open up the Bible and start going through it, and it’s going to mean something to people. We live in this kind of post-Christian, secular kind of a world. Often, we don’t have the same common ground to start with, but one good way to start these kinds of conversations, try this sometime with a friend that you have who doesn’t believe in Jesus. Just ask them, “What do you think is going to happen after we die?” Right? What do you think is going to happen after we die? This is a fantastic question, because it is diagnostic. As your friend tells you what he or she thinks is going to happen in the afterlife, you can sort of figure out where  that person stands.  So, and then you can take the conversation on from there, and often you can also ask another question like, “What do you know about the Christian understanding of heaven and hell?” Right? Now, if you understand the Christian understanding of heaven and hell, what a wonderful way to break out the gospel message, right? This is not a place that we earned, we already have a place. God prepared a place for us, all we need to do is come to him now, and receive the gift of salvation that he has offered us for free, and it’s way more than just clemency, it’s grace. He’s going to adopt us into his family, and we’re going to reign with Christ. Now, that’s some crazy good news to share.

Isaac Dagneau:

Absolutely, absolutely. That’s so good. Yeah, I appreciate that, Steve, so much. That definitely does wrap up our conversation. I know we went a little bit over there, but Steve, thank you so much for chatting with us again, and we look forward to having you back on again soon, because with whatever topics, I’m sure we’ll have a fun talk about any topic that we think about, so yeah. Thank you so much, Steve.

Steve Kim:

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It’s always a blast to be with you, so thanks.