Where is Heaven?

Where is Heaven?  By Phil Bowie

I debated whether or not to even include this one in my blog.  Not only was this book awful, but it was awfully written as well.  A note to Kindle users everywhere: Beware of “free” books, or books offered very cheap.  They’re probably heavily discounted for a reason.

I thought this book would be a nice read.  The tag of this book describes it as written by a man who is a skeptic about faith, yet has a Near Death Experience and now believes in God.  I’ve always been interested in so-called Near Death Experiences (especially as I get older, and death isn’t quite as far away as it once was!)  Are these experiences “real”?  Or are they result of a dying brain not getting enough oxygen?

Let’s just say that this book has absolutely nothing to do with any Near Death Experience.  The author basically fills up the pages with his own personal tirade against religion.  He talks about a lot of “good things” that he sees in churches and in religion, yet also the “bad things”.  The bad far outweigh the good in his mind, so he goes on and on and on.  This book is basically just a rant.

The frustrating thing is that he refuses to expound on any of his observations.  Example: He easily dismisses Jesus’ “water into wine” miracle because it’s (get this) “only in one of the four gospels”.  Yes.  He actually wrote that.  He doesn’t spend any time talking about the reason for this miracle, and what the true meaning behind it was.  He seems to think that Jesus was simply putting on a “magic show” and since people enjoy drinking wine more than they do water – he’ll just pull a rabbit out of his hat and improve the beverage selection.  Now, to be fair, there are a lot of Christians that don’t understand the point of this miracle either (I would recommend a Google search or two), but this is simply lazy writing.  In fact, he purposely avoids a bibliography because he states that anyone can “look up this information on the internet or on Wikipedia”.  

O-kaaayyy.

So what, then, is the answer to the question in the title of his book?  You know, the one about where Heaven is?   According to this author (and he spends very little time discussing this) is that there is no real heaven.  Not a place, anyway.  I mean, if there was, how come we can’t see it with the Hubble telescope?  Heaven is merely in our hearts and in the memories we leave others.  Same with Hell.

Now, even though I don’t agree with this author’s beliefs, that’s not why I hated the book so much.  I think the main reason was, again, the description of the book, and the fact that it was highly misleading.  Although I got it for free, I noticed that the very next day the price of this book was now $4.99.

Please don’t spend $4.99 on this book.  If you do, I can promise you that you will then be in “Hell” - according to how this author describes it.