THE TRAGEDY OF MISPLACED FAITH

Faith can destroy you!

As residents of Chicago, my wife and I clearly remember the Tylenol tampering episode that happened here years ago. You might remember that someone bent on random murder put cyanide in a few capsules. The poison did its work very well. One woman who bought her Tylenol from a drugstore near our church died within minutes after taking a single capsule. In all, seven unsuspecting people died.

Two unforgettable lessons emerged from this tragedy. First, faith does not in itself have any special merit; it does not have the power to change the nature of a drug from harmful to helpful. Seven people firmly believed they were taking medicine, not poison. But their faith did not save them. In fact, their faith killed them.

Faith is only as good as the object in which it is placed. Or, to put it differently, what we believe is more important than the fervency of our belief. That old cliché, "It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are sincere," just isn't true, as the victims of the Tylenol episode proved. Better to believe the truth with trembling hands than to believe error with steady confidence. What you believe really matters.

A second lesson we must learn from the Tylenol episode is scary indeed: Sometimes a false belief resembles a true one. To the casual observer, the cyanide looked just like the Tylenol powder. The label had all the earmarks of being authentic, so there seemed to be no need to distrust the contents. The promise was that these pills would relieve pain, yet taking a single one brought death.

Christ taught that many people who have a strong and abiding faith will someday discover that their faith cannot save them. To their everlasting chagrin, they will live to see the door of heaven slammed in their faces. They will spend eternity on the wrong side of the celestial entrance.

Maybe we can best capture the feeling if we use a story from this side of heaven's gates. Imagine standing in a swamp while a rescue plane flies overhead. You wave your weary arms and moan, but you know that the pilot does not see you. You do not have the strength to walk to civilization, and because your sense of direction is confused, you would not know where to walk if you could. Since the other members of your party died when your plane went down in the swamp three days ago, you are completely alone.

You stare into the night, knowing that you must simply lie down in the mud to die. You long for someone to be with you, but you must bear your despair alone. Waves of fear dissipate the courageous thoughts you had yesterday. You have a burning fever, and now you hysterically wait for the end.

Translate that feeling into cosmic proportions. You see the inside of heaven, catch a glimpse of some of your friends, but are told by Christ that you are permanently disqualified. There is no second chance, no opportunity to return the next day with the right documents in your hands. You can't reroute your travel plans. You turn away, never to see heaven again. You stare into the darkness ahead of you, conscious that you are entering the realm of moral chaos, loneliness, and darkness.

The words of Dante, long since forgotten, flash into your mind: "All hope abandon, ye who enter here!"

I wish it weren't so. And I know you do too. Yet Christ taught that many who expect the gate of heaven to swing wide open will be shocked to see it swing shut on them. Their exclusion from His presence is final, personal, and eternal. The words of rejection that they hear from Christ will ring in their ears forever.

Let us hear it from the lips of Christ Himself:

Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?" And then will I declare to them, "I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness." (Matthew 7:21–23)

These people never dreamed that they would be banished by Christ. After all, they acknowledged Him to be Lord and served Him. They had a whole bag of spiritual experiences that ordinary people like you and me could envy. I get chills when I visualize their contorted faces.

These religious types did not lack faith; if anything, they had too much of it! They had the confidence that they would enter into heaven. To hear them tell it, you would think they had a reserved seat in the front row of the balcony in the celestial cathedral. And now this!

If you did a personal inventory, their profiles would prove that these were not halfhearted souls who mouthed a commitment to God on Sunday and then did their own thing during the week. They were the dependable people who kept the church doors open year after year. They did miracles in the name of Christ. They even cast out demons and performed a litany of wonderful works. They thought of Christ as their Savior, not their judge. These good people were fooled into accepting cyanide in a Tylenol capsule.

Of course, it's easy for us to think we know who the people are that Christ was talking about. The other day I heard a preacher on television talk as though God didn't do anything unless He consulted with him first (that's an exaggeration, but you get my point). He told glowing stories about his work among the poor. He described all of the miracles God seemed to be doing through him. Maybe it was all true; maybe it was all false; or more likely it was a bit of both. Safe to say, God is His judge.

Let's not misread Christ's point: He does not want us to think that only those who make extravagant religious claims will be deceived. His warning is more basic: If the people who seem the most likely to make it will be shut out of heaven, then plenty of other ordinary people will have the same frightful experience.

Many sincere people who are devoted to their faith, many who would never brag about their relationship with God, and many who just quietly believe and have good works to prove it—these, too, just might miss the heavenly kingdom.

I'm glad that Christ didn't leave us confused about why some people will find themselves on the wrong side of heaven's door. To keep us wondering would not have been kind, but would have left us with our doubts to brood over our uncertain future. What we need is light to find the right path.

I once read about a very tired man who checked himself into a motel late at night. He peered out of the darkened window as he closed the shades, then sank into a deep sleep. When he awoke and pulled back the shades, he saw majestic Mount Rainier through the motel window. The mountain had been there all the time; it was there even in the darkness. But he couldn't see it until the light of the sun showed him where he was.

That's the way truth is. We can't make it up. We can't create it by sleight of hand. All we can do is discover it in the...