Friday Night Theology

I wrote this blog for the Evangelical Alliance a few months ago and re-posting it here so I can find it in future.  The original is: http://www.eauk.org/culture/friday-night-theology/to-die-is-gain.cfm

At the Pearly Gates

What state do you want to be in when you meet St Peter at the Pearly Gates?

It seems to me that the goal of much western Christianity is to arrive in style.  The physical style of the most relevant hairstyles and inculturated clothes.  The emotional style of the most ‘chillax-ed’ horizontal hippie you might hope to never imagine.  The spiritual style of the expensive-suit-wearing, bearer of glazed eyes – the pastor in a mid-life crisis extending their adolescence so that they might be ‘attractive’ to their generation.

Arriving in style might be in vogue but it’s not my style.

I don’t exactly believe in the image of the pearly gates and St Peter with a silky white gown and a shiny golden halo – but even if I did I wouldn’t want to match his style on arrival.