Heaven is, indeed, real, but not because a cute 4 year old boy tells a story about going there and petting a rainbow horse.

And, yes, believers should find comfort in the contemplation of the heavenly, eternal state in which we enjoy uninterrupted, unimpeded fellowship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but not because of a sweet story in which a child identifies the “correct” portrait of Jesus.

In Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back (Thomas Nelson, 2010), Todd Burpo tells the story of his son, Colton, who claimed to have visited heaven during a severe illness when he was four years old. Beginning approximately four months after the hospital stay, and continuing until he was about seven years old, Colton leaked out bits and pieces of information about his heavenly trip. Colton’s description touches on matters ranging from the number of colors in heaven, to how big God’s throne is, to meeting a miscarried sister that he did not know he had.

Many — including believers and unbelievers — find great appeal in this and other such stories. But what are we to make of them? My aim is not to discourage anyone from reading Heaven is for Real, but to read with a discerning eye. We must recognize first that our authority on heaven is not the subjective experience of a four year old boy, but the word of God, the Bible.  Furthermore, we must resist the urge to accept, without reservation, the validity of such experiences simply because the one telling it seems sincere. And we must be aware of our own predisposition to find comfort, joy and hope in such stories rather than in the pages of scripture, and why.

My reservation about this particular story extends to several issues.

1). Todd Burpo is a pastor, but continually seems surprised that his son is aware of biblical teaching. This leads him to conclude that Colton’s descriptions must have resulted from direct, personal observation of heaven and its occupants. This even includes his amazement that Colton would know where on his body Jesus received wounds from the crucifixion. Aside from being a poor example of family biblical instruction, it is not a legitimate conclusion to reach.

2). Colton supposedly experienced heaven, rainbows, painted horses, saw prior departed family members, and met Jesus himself, but was apparently so indifferent to the adventure that he didn’t speak of any of it until four months later. Many aspects of his story weren’t told for years.

3). The “comforts” of heaven — the assurances that others derive from Colton’s story — focus primarily on being reunited with friends and family. Our bent is naturally to wonder whether those with whom we spend so much time on earth will be will us in eternity. But the Bible speaks very little of such matters, and presents the glory of heaven not in terms of what humans we will recognize there, but in terms of being able to see the very face of God. Stories like the Burpos’ cater to our natural bent for heaven to be ‘familiar’ on our own terms.

4). The gospel is entirely absent. Worse than that, it is confused in the telling of this story. Nothing is said of whether Colton had expressed repentance and professed faith in Christ, either before his trip to heaven or after. We are left with the picture of a person who has not professed faith as described in scripture gaining access to heaven and then describing for us things that are not in scripture. Nothing is said of sin, judgment, or salvation in Christ alone, except for a general description of the “good guys” fighting “monsters” in the battle of Armageddon. The hope of eternity is presented not in whether a person has repented and believed, trusting Christ alone for salvation, but instead in whether our loved ones will be there.

Perhaps we are collectively so ready to receive stories of heaven like the Burpos’ because we are so unfamiliar with what scripture teaches about it. Perhaps pastors would do well to spend more time preaching on the glories of heaven from the Bible, and where our comforts and hopes lie, so that we aren’t tempted to cling so readily to the subjective experiences of others and to the vicarious hope they provide.

Published in 2004, Don Piper’s book 90 Minutes in Heaven is certainly not new. But with the current popularity of other books that are of the same genre, I thought it prudent to first read it (I had not taken the time) and second to offer some opinion.

Generally I try to avoid comment on books that might amount to mere personal criticism. Here, however, the immediate hurdle that the discerning reader will need to clear is the author’s writing style, which is little more than choppy, repetitive, simplistic phrases thrown together with little organization. It is difficult to plod through the writing in order to mine — and address — the author’s content.

Piper was involved in an auto accident and assessed as dead when paramedics arrived on the scene. An hour and a half later, a passing pastor stopped to render aid, and asked to pray for the ostensibly deceased Piper. While doing so, Piper began to sing “What a Friend we have in Jesus” with the pastor, causing no small amount of consternation and incredulity to bystanders.

The bulk of the book’s volume is taken up with descriptions of events leading up to and following the accident. This includes detailed descriptions of Piper’s recuperation and physical rehabilitation. Much of this detail seems unnecessary to the premise of the book, but could relate to a general theme that Piper’s experience was given him in order to provide a base of sympathy with other undergoing similar rehab.

Piper’s description of his time in heaven (the ninety minutes between the accident and the pastor’s prayer that pulled him back to earth), is brief. As such, his description is fairly useless, filled with superlatives regarding the stimuli that his various senses received, as well as the exceeding emotion he felt, primarily produced by seeing prior departed friends and relatives.

There is much about which to be concerned in Piper’s account. Others have dealt with specific biblical problems (see, for example, Tim Challies’ review), so I will limit my assessment to general concerns.

First, one must question the nature and purpose of prayer offered for visibly dead people. Piper explains that the pastor at the accident scene prayed for the healing of his internal organs, but for what purpose? How does Piper approve of such a practice when the result was that he was removed from heaven and returned to earth to occupy a broken body subject to months of agonizing rehabilitation?

Furthermore, Piper claims that while he had, prior to the accident, preached on the reality of heaven, after his experience he could do so “with authority.” But this is a direct refutation of the Reformation principle of sola scriptura, the sufficiency and authority of Scripture alone. What Piper — and others who teach similar sentiment — is suggesting is that Scripture is validated or confirmed by his personal, subjective, emotional experience. Pastorally, he is supposedly better able to comfort those facing death or those whose loved ones have died by virtue of the fact that he himself died, and that he himself experienced heaven. Yet biblically, this ground of comfort is limited to the One who died and rose again. For the rest of us, our comfort regarding death and the eternal state is derived from the promise of God realized in the person of Jesus Christ and the sustaining ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Additionally, the general nature of Piper’s euphoria while ostensibly in heaven is problematic in that it focuses almost entirely on being reunited with humans that we will recognize when we get there. Piper grants superlative degrees of emotional and tactile experience with departed humans — his “celestial welcoming committee” — that he meets outside literal gates of heaven. Such emphasis only fosters further interest in the human aspect of entering the eternal state; it serves the human desire of seeing loved ones, which while not wicked in itself, can be so when it becomes the primary “selling point” of the goodenss of heaven, rather than audience with God himself.

It is difficult to discern who Piper’s audience is. If it is believers, then he indirectly teaches them not to rely on the teaching of Scripture regarding our understanding of heaven, but on one man’s personal, subjective, emotional experience. If it is unbelievers, it is unclear with what he intends to reach them, because he does not clearly state the gospel of Jesus Christ.

No, not that kind of shepherd.

I’m not talking about the image of a man leading his flock of sheep to greener pasture, or fending off wolves or bears or lions, or pulling a wayward animal out of a ditch, all the while balancing the latest periodical on his arm or scanning the online version on his smart phone for someone’s opinion about a recent book.

I am talking about pastors and their responsibility to guard the flock from bad doctrine posing as popular bestsellers.

Some pastors and bloggers review books simply by giving recommendations: Read or Don’t Read. To be honest, I don’t like reading book reviews (and am not very good at writing them), and generally seek the opinion of someone I trust to give me that summary conclusion: worth reading or not.

But perhaps pastors and others should offer more in such reviews and train the flock to read in a spiritually discerning manner. Which is, incidentally, what I will try to do with my reviews from this point forward. Yet there will still be occasions when the summary “thumbs down” will be apropos.

Do you want to know more about a book that seems to be all the rage, before you read it? Or would you like to have another’s opinion about a book you’ve read? Feel free to submit suggestions for review.