"Heaven is For Real" (2014) movie review

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Little boy, near death experience
"Heaven is For Real" website.
IMDB
Based on the #1 New York Times best-selling book of the same name, HEAVEN IS FOR REAL brings to the screen the true story of a small-town father who must find the courage and conviction to share his son's extraordinary, life-changing experience with the world. The film stars Academy Award® nominee and Emmy® award winning actor Greg Kinnear as Todd Burpo and co-stars Kelly Reilly as Sonja Burpo, the real-life couple whose son Colton (newcomer Connor Corum) claims to have visited Heaven during a near death experience. Colton recounts the details of his amazing journey with childlike innocence and speaks matter-of-factly about things that happened before his birth ... things he couldn't possibly know. Todd and his family are then challenged to examine the meaning from this remarkable event. Written by Sony Pictures Publicity.

Quotations from the book

page 103
Todd asked, “What does God look like? God the Holy Spirit?”
Colton replied, “Hmm, that’s kind of a hard one…he’s kind of blue.”
page 125
Talking to his mom and bedtime, he related, “I’ve seen power shot down to Daddy. Jesus shoots down power for Daddy when he’s talking. Yeah, at church. When he’s telling Bible stories to people.”
page 126
The next morning, Todd asked him about it, “What’s the power like?”
Colton replied, “It’s the Holy Spirit. I watched him. He showed me.”
Todd asked, “The Holy Spirit?” Colton said, “Yeah. He shoots down power for you when you’re talking in church.”
page 138.
[What do we fight with?].
“You either get a sword or a bow and arrow, but I don’t remember which.”

Reflections

Benedict Groeschel, A Still Small Voice: A Practical Guide on Reported Revelations.
St. John of the Cross, the mystical Doctor of the Church, ... warned people to assume that extraordinary experiences came from the forces of evil unless the opposite could be proved.
This is not an infallible guideline, but I do think it has some relevance here.
From a review of Groeschel's book:
Fr. Groeschel's book has been extremely illuminating and helpful. He cautions skepticism toward all claims of divine revelations, noting that the Vatican itself is very careful in certifying them. He divides bogus claims into various types: some are outright frauds; some are psychologically disturbed; still others are simply self-deluded because of their strong need & desire to believe.
  • "Picture-thinking": thrones, wings, animals, colors, songs, swords, bows-and-arrows.
  • The imagery in the book seems appropriate for a four-year old, but it can't be distinguished from a drug-induced dream: Jesus' rainbow-colored horse, the pink diamond in his crown, wings on everybody, both angels and saints, homework given to Colton by his grandfather, seeing the Trinity in three distinct forms (definitely not the Beatific Vision), angelic hosts fighting demons with swords, bows, and arrows, watching God shoot Holy Spirit power down on his dad while he preaches, seeing everyone in heaven with halos, Jesus going up and down "like an elevator," sitting beside the Holy Spirit on a little chair, etc., etc.
  • The preternatural knowledge shown by the boy (immortality of a sister lost in a miscarriage and encounters with a grandfather and great-grandfather) does not require divine activity. Evil spirits could also know and communicate these facts to him.
  • Protestant theology.
  • Gnosticism--revelation comes from personal experiences.
  • Preternatural powers (gift of knowledge) at work: not necessarily good angels. Evil angels also have knowledge of human history and can communicate that to "prophets" (cf. Edgar Cayce).
  • Our faith is based in Jesus' resurrection from the dead, not from any number of near-death experiences. Many near-deathers preach New Age religion based on their experiences. I don't want to open the floodgates to that kind of "revelation."
  • The boy's experience has been narrated and interpreted by his father, who is a Wesleyan Methodist preacher.
  • "They market the book as if the kid died and came back. That's not the case. The kid went under general anesthesia and seems to have had some sort of vision. The heaven he visited definitely seems to be the American Evangelical heaven."
  • "Be ready … there is a coming last battle."[1]
We won't be able to judge the truth of this prophecy in Colton's father's lifetime. If it is true, the truth will be revealed by the last battle, and the world will have come to an end. If it is false, those who accepted it as true will be misled by the prophecy until Colton's father dies without the final battle taking place.
The bottom line

This is the kind of book and movie about which reasonable and faithful people may reasonably and faithfully disagree. God certainly might have taken Colton to Heaven and revealed Himself under these images, but I don't find them especially edifying myself. I believe in the reality of Heaven because I believe in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Others find Colton's story consoling and encouraging. They might believe that little children can only tell the truth and could never be used by evil spirits to mislead the faithful, or they may simply trust Colton's story as organized and recorded by his parents.

References

  1. "He learned that the righteous, including his father, would fight in a coming last battle" "My Son Went to Heaven, and All I Got Was a No. 1 Best Seller."

Links

  • Peter Kreeft books and podcasts ...