Quote:
Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
Well the reason I questioned this was because I wanted my kids to be taught Bible lessons based on the Bible.
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At some level, the reference to "heaven" is correct. If you have a general understanding of "heaven" and "paradise" that is more likely the same — or at least one a part of the other — rather than some nit-picking specificity on something that cannot be considered that important.
If we erroneously describe what Jesus called "paradise" as "heaven," then the complaint cannot be about where you go, but rather what you call it. And that is just a waste of breath. Needing to proof-text whether heaven is the proper term to use turns the focus of teaching from what is important to what is not. When you die, your spirit/soul will go wherever it is that it goes. If we get it wrong in our minds while alive, it does not change what actually happens.
And it does not make anything about our current life need to be lived differently. Unless it is coupled with an erroneous teaching that we can just take our "salvation by faith" card to the bank and walk straight through the "pearly gates" and walk on "streets of gold," etc. I don't buy either the Catholic or LRC version of purgatory. But I don't think that there is no consequence for failure to at least be in the process of transformation in this life. There is something to the idea, but it is not given much more than vague imagery and metaphors.
But if I intend to be pursuing the Christian life, then I have no qualms with terminology about what comes after this life. We only see it darkly. Those who seek certainty are wasting their current life in pursuit of the one to come. And if there is anything to rewards (with or without punishment) the rewards come from what we do rightly here in this life, not how "right" we get our mental theology about the life to come.
But as to the idea of "going to heaven," if I accept that the term "paradise" is
somewhat equivalent to "heaven," then the verse that makes it so would be where Jesus said "today you will be with me in paradise." Arguing against saying that is "heaven" is not arguing a substantive theological problem, but an exercise in muddled terminology of limited importance.