Discussing
The boy who cried heaven – and the belief industry that encouraged him

The admission that The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven was fiction should remind us what it means to speak about God.

"Publishers and authors have higher responsibilities to what that truth is and to bearing it with the imagination it deserves."


This is the best, most concise statement I've yet seen of the high calling of Christian communications ministry. The stewardship of the Word of God is both a tremendous privilege and an awesome responsibility.

Thanks for the sober reminder.

Thanks for the kind words! Glad it was helpful!

I'd add that readers and booksellers need to exercise discernment. It's one thing if pop-religionists want to sell and read stuff like this, but for Christians it's inexplicable. Seriously, if you've read the Bible and then you read one of these I-went-to-heaven-and-now-I'm-back books it's clear the Bible has the real deal in it.

I have had to sit with several people and carefully pick apart the “heaven tourism” wheat from the chaff. This sensationalist propoganda isn't nearly as ‘sensational’ as what’s in the Bible, but the way it’s presented plays on our sentimentality more than it does on God’s holiness and righteousness. When a family member in another congregation (or with a good Kindle account) gets sucked into the sentimental claims of children ‘sitting on David’s lap playing harps in Heaven’s music room’, I have to pastorally clean up the pieces of the argument that ensues over that commercialized sentimentality. Indeed, ‘what is allowed is not always beneficial.’