HEAVEN How to get there and what to expect: a personal view by Tony CunliffeMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Tony Cunliffe’s book begins with these questions: ‘Have you ever wondered… What is Heaven really going to be like? What will we look like? What will we do? Won’t Heaven get boring after a while?’ For me the immediate answers were ‘No’ to all of the questions since I see Heaven as some kind of fantasy world that some people seek as a comfort in their fears about the inevitable end to a life, to one’s existence.
Consequently I found it extremely difficult to review this short book that would appear to be a very sincere tribute not only to the author’s mother, to whom it is dedicated, but also to a long list of friends and associates who have been influential in helping him to find and confirm his Christian faith. The problem for me was not in recognising and respecting Tony Cunliffe’s sincerity in his belief that the Christian God is the One God and the Father of Jesus Christ, as well as the Holy Spirit, all of which becomes all too evident after reading very few pages of his book. The problem was attempting to approach it fairly as an atheist and trained scientist who looks for irrefutable evidence whenever possible behind someone’s stated ‘facts’. I think that a very special man named Jesus Christ did once exist and that much of his guidance and very many of his pronouncements were good and provide a foundation for living a kind and useful life. But was he the Son of God? I doubt it.
The book goes on to distinguish between being a Real Christian and the author’s previous faith as an everyday (ordinary?) Christian. This fundamentally seems to mean that the only way into Heaven is by becoming a Real Christian and regularly attending an evangelical church. There is a short autobiographical story, told of course by the author, about his earlier and recent experiences on the pathway to Cunliffe’s ‘conversion’, if that is what it was. The whole book is told in the first person and becomes a sort of handy travel guide describing what one would need and expect, and even find on your journey to Heaven. There are lots of helpful footnotes and references, with many quotes from the Holy Bible, the New International Version, which the author states to be literally true.
When I contrast this approach with the belief that a book – i.e. any book - of stories is merely full of another person’s opinions and/or imagination etc, at that particular time, and that some of them may not be accurate or even true, then I lose interest because logic has flown away! For me religious ‘faith’, no matter how profound or sincere, is simply a matter of another person’s belief in a set of concepts that provide a prop in times of need or fear. And good luck to them if it provides comfort because my beliefs include the methodology of science and the statistical likelihood of a conclusion being true. How can I therefore recommend this book to anyone else? I was left with the thought that it could be helpful to someone who is struggling with their own beliefs or faith - so read it and make up your mind later. But maybe try reading another book as well, one that is more pragmatic and less metaphysical?
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