By Tracey Dann
Purgatory, Parousia, and Getting
LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!
Real estate in the afterlife is a lot like real estate here.What are the three most important things?
Most of us in the wrong location end up Lost. H I G H E R T H I N G S _ 6
For those of you unfamiliar with the show, Lost is a primetime drama recounting the warped and uncanny lives of the survivors of Oceanic flight 815. In its fourth season, the usual smoke monster and polar bear laden antics became insufficiently weird for the Lost fan base, so the writers killed off the entire cast. Well, they are only mostly dead, but they’ve been mostly dead all season! Recent insinuations in the Lost plotlines suggest that the entire cast died in the original plane crash and are now stuck in an inescapable jungle purgatory. It is here that we as Lutherans must take out our theological GPS. Purgatory, like suntanned polar bears or a portable island, is fictional. Purgatory, as a concept, has been around for less than a thousand years.The theory is this: you are stuck in purgatory because your good works on earth were unable to gain you entrance into heaven. Sounds okay so far. After all, we know our good works will not get us into heaven. According to Paul in his letter to the Romans, we are justified by one thing alone: our faith in Christ.
