Heaven and Hell

Before I came to Taylor I had grown up in the same church my whole life and been taught the same theology and beliefs my whole life. I'd never really experienced developing my own faith and wrestling with topics on my own. I guess I kind of believed whatever my parents believed, and I thought every other Christian believed the same thing. Once at Taylor I realized how wrong I was in that thinking. Christianity and the Bible is all about believing core values that the Bible preaches, then taking everything else and developing your own faith and what you believe in.

Growing up my church and my parents taught me all about heaven and hell. They taught me that when you die if you are Christian you go to this place called heaven, where there are streets of gold and pearly gates. Where everyone is made perfect in God's eyes and we can live with him in paradise for eternity. They taught me that if you die without God's saving grace you go to a place called hell, where there is eternal suffering with satan and his demons.

Although I think that you can have different interpretations about what heaven and hell will look like, I do believe that when God talks about the two places in the Bible that he is speaking of literal places that our souls will live in for eternity. I could be naive in saying that most Christians believe in this idea of literal heaven and hell, but I do believe that to be a true Christian is to interpret the Bible as heaven and hell being very real places. The struggle with this idea comes for me in the form of my idea of heaven and hell. I ask myself questions all the time about heaven like "will I know my parents in heaven?" That is where I believe Christians struggle with the idea of heaven and hell. Although we will never gain a full understanding of eternity, our job as believers is to wrestle with these things and pray over them.