Of Antarctica and Purgatory

I received a most unexpected invitation this morning! Dr Ewe called me and asked if I would be interested to help out with the ground measurements in Antarctica! Of course I would! I couldn’t contain my excitement. Neither could I stop smiling or try to conceal my joy! I was elated. Was I dreaming? Could it really be true? I have always wished that I could one day join some of my colleagues for a trip there. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity! I definitely want to go, and I really hope that I will finally be able to go there. God, please, please let me be able to go to Antarctica. I beg You! I think I will die a happy man if I can go there and experience what it is like there. How many people on this earth get to boast that they have been to Antarctica? I nonchalantly told Dr Ewe that I would be interested. I didn’t want him to know that I was in fact very eager to go! But then, I still wonder if it will all come true. What happens if Dr Ewe suddenly decides to give the place to someone else? What if I get sick? What if something happens that prevents me from going? What if I die before that? God, I want so much to go there. Please let me go! I know things are in Your hands! I feel just like a kid begging his father for this toy that he has wanted all his life. It would be a dream come true for me.

Yesterday, as I was explaining the doctrine of salvation and its three parts (justification, sanctification and consummation), I mentioned that Christians generally believe that when we go to Heaven, we are consummated and made perfect. We then sin no more. Jane asked: You mean we can’t sin anymore when we go to Heaven? I answered: How can there be sin in Heaven? Her reply: But the Devil was there with God in Heaven and he sinned against God in Heaven. She does have a point there. I’m sure we won’t know till we die and actually go to Heaven. I wonder though. Jane also raised other questions, like ‘If we somehow just can’t sin anymore in Heaven, wouldn’t that be restrictive on our freedom? Wouldn’t we be just like robots?’ I wonder too. If we just don’t have the capacity to sin anymore in Heaven, then we are no longer free creatures. Or can we have freedom yet be incapable of sinning, meaning we have the freedom to do what we want except to sin? But if this is the case, why didn’t God make it this way since the beginning when He created the world?

With these questions lingering somewhere in my head, I was a little surprised when I stumbled upon a link on Sivin Kit’s blog to an article on the Purgatory. Could it be possible that there is a place where God continues to sanctify us after we die? Could there be a place where we willingly make choices to change to be more and more like Jesus until we are ready to go to Heaven? This may be able to answer some of the questions Jane raised. So we don’t lose our freedom in Heaven. Rather, we have reached a point where we would choose not to sin anymore. We have been sanctified and consummated, made perfect in Christ. I had an interesting chat with Nick about it today.