Review of Snatched Up to Heaven!

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Liola
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Latest Review: Snatched Up to Heaven! by Jemima Paul and Arvind Paul

Review of Snatched Up to Heaven!

Post by Liola »

[Following is a volunteer review of "Snatched Up to Heaven!" by Jemima Paul and Arvind Paul.]
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1 out of 5 stars
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When I started reading Snatched Up to Heaven! I expected a book about children's perceptions of faith, what we can learn from them, but also what this tells about how we reproduce and teach religion. My expectations somewhat correlated with the book, but not entirely.
In 10 chapters about each heaven and hell the author recounts dreams her children aged 2 and 4 years had and connects them to Bible verses in a so-called "interpretation" which however does not interpret anything but simply quotes Bible passages according to those dreams.
Throughout the book, a very literal understanding of the Bible and God is shown. The descriptions of heaven and hell do not extend beyond the most stereotypical and childish imaginations of a house in the clouds versus a fiery dungeon. The book does not take into account even the possibility of metaphors or hidden meanings in the Bible (thus, there is no allegorical interpretation) but instead understands each and every sentence as an unvarnished description, completely ignoring a historical-critical approach. Especially God and Jesus are portrayed in an earthly manner as two physical, separate men, which not only seems to be a misunderstanding of Trinity, but completely ignores the transcendence of religion and reduces it to an immanent phenomenon.
Furthermore, the relevance or even the credibility of the children's dreams must be questioned. The author presents those dreams as "heavenly visions" and tries to prove this by showing all the similarities between her daughters' dreams and biblical descriptions of heaven and hell. Even though there are certainly many of those similarities, the inconsistencies are even more numerous. Most importantly, the Bible itself repeatedly criticizes immanent understandings of God, e.g. in Exodus 33:20 ("You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.") or Colossians 1:15 ("The Son is the image of the invisible God."). Additionally, one girl askes to see Jesus's scars in the dream, which the author connects to Thomas asking the same question. However, Jesus answered this request in John 20:29: "Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not yet seen and yet have believed." If the author's daughter ist part of the group who only believe because they have seen, then why would she have been "blessed" with a "godly vision" (provided that one wants to understand the Bible as literal as it is done in the book)?
The alleged correspondences with biblical descriptions even go as far as irrelevant details like the colour of the godly throne and a sash worn by Jesus - the latter being described as white in the "vision" but as golden in Revelation 1:12, which only goes to show that - if you want to - you can present a lot of things as "in accordance with the Bible", given one's willingness to ignore all discrepancies.
Moreover, it is questionable whether or not the girls really dreamed all of this, seeing as they "were arguing between themselves about who was sitting on God's lap and who was sitting on Jesus's lap" while recounting their dream. This suggests that at least parts of the "vision" were childish fantasies that they made up as they went along.
Another "sign" that the girls' dreams were visions is that they described heaven and hell much like they are described in the Bible, without having had the possibility to have learned about those descriptions in school, given their age (or at least so the author claims), yet on page 28 it is mentioned that her daughters do in fact attend Sunday school. And at another point, the author even admits that the vast majority of her children's recounts are common stereotypes ("That even seemed contrary to common stereotypes" - refering to the descriptions of angels wearing red and green as one of the very few things that are contrary to common stereotypes).
When it comes to the depiction of hell, the amount of stereotypes seemed - and I'm sorry, but there really isn't any other word - utterly ridiculous. According to Snatched up to heaven , hell is a horror movie come alive, with burning fires, dungeons and demons. It is a real-world (or rather real, but other-worldly) Halloween - and Halloween itself is considered "desensitizing children to demons" or a satanic celebration. Factually, this is not correct. Historically speaking, Halloween does have a spiritual background, first as a sort of Celtic thanksgiving and later on as a Christian day of remembrance for the dead which was turned into a sort of carnival by pop culture, but never as a satanic celebration.
Even if one shares the literal and immanent understanding of faith, reading Snatched up to Heaven! provides little to no use. The so-called visions only repeat what's already in the Bible and do not present any new or helpful ideas about Christian faith, let alone any application for daily life in form of ethical guidelines, orientation or coping with contingency. Concerning spiritual questions, the book mentions theodicy, but does not offer any thoughts or solutions, as well as contradictory Bible verses debating whether or not God loves the people in hell, but apart from quoting them, there is no helpful comment made.
One of the only messages the book does mediate is to trust God with a childlike faith and to live for God. This message is not only one that has been preached over and over again throughout history and is (in my personal opinion) not up-to-date or supportable while living in a secularised and pluralistic society, but also seems to be a misunderstanding of Jesus's teachings. According to Snatched up to Heaven! "it [all acts of religion] is all for the pleasure of our Lord alone." However, in Mark 2:27, Jesus stated: " The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath", explaining that it is not humanity's sole purpose to worship God, but that religion is also supposed to satisfy human needs. And 1 Corinthians 14:20 specifies: "Brothers, do not be children in you thinking. [...] In your thinking be mature" while the book advertises the exact opposite.
All of the comments above are made under the presumption that everything in the Bible is factually correct and must not be questioned - a presumption that Snatched up to Heaven! clearly provides, but also a presumption that I personally think has to be questioned, which leads to my last point of critique: some passages of the book have a strong fundamentalist character, for example the claim that "God's word is proven to be always true." Proven when? Proven by whom? Could I please see this proof? Of course, Snatched up to Heaven is not a scientific book, but I still think that some points are presented as facts, at least in the context of Christianity, that should not be presented as facts. Particularly, the author speaks of certain "Wrong Beliefs" and thus claims to have the adequate position to judge which beliefs are right and which are wrong, when the definition of "belief" indicates that it cannot proven to be right or wrong.
Evidently, there are also some very positive aspects of the book that deserve to be mentioned.
First of all, the dreams of the children are recounted in easy and childish language, so the recounts seem to be very close to what they must have actually said. I also checked about a quarter of the Bible quotes and they all seem to be correct.
More importantly, the book also advocates for more diversity in Christianity and is a call to not forget our unity as human beings in face of differences in religion, race or political belief. On that note, the book also criticized racist exegeses of Christianity. Lastly, it favours freedom of religion for children and unconditional parental love.
In conclusion, Snatched up to Heaven does not provide any spiritual value and rather leads to a more simplistic, childish faith. It also has some fundamentalist tendencies while luckily not being as harmful as many other fundamentalist oeuvres, seeing as it stills advocates for charity.
[1 out of 5 stars]

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Snatched Up to Heaven!
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