“How We Get to Heaven” 8/29/2025

Speaking about helping to end the war in Ukraine this week, president Trump offered this hope, “I want to try and get to heaven, if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”--Donald Trump in a Fox News “Fox and Friends” Interview, August 19.

With cynicism and sarcasm, some will mock the President’s words, others his sincerity, others his track record. But I won’t. I welcome them. To me it is somehow refreshing to hear one of the most significant figures on the world stage talk about transcendent things—ultimate things—things that really matter. According to USA Today, the president’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, “was asked whether Trump was joking in his comments or if there was a spiritual motivation behind his peace efforts. ‘I think the president was serious,’ Leavitt said. ‘I think the president wants to get to heaven as I hope we all do in this room as well.’

I’m reminded here of another New Yorker about seventy years ago who was walking down the street in Greenwich village. He was a new convert to the Catholic church, and was walking with his friend Robert Lax. Lax asked the young man—a graduate student at Columbia--“What do you want to be, anyway?” He replied, “I don’t know. I guess what I want is to be a good Catholic.” Lax was not pleased. He told the young man, “What you should say is that you want to be a saint.” The young man was shocked, and said, “How do you expect me to be a saint?’ ‘By wanting to,’ Lax said. ‘Don’t you believe that God will make you what he created you to be, if you consent to let him do it? All you have to do is desire it.’

Which raises the question, “How Do We ‘Get to Heaven’?” The answer is, by becoming a saint. President Trump used to describe himself as a Presbyterian, but now a non-denominational Christian. Either way, in their historic teachings, Christians have affirmed these things about ‘how we get to heaven’ or, 'how do we ‘become a saint.’

1. The first affirmation is that we become saints by the call and declaration of God. “Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. Sainthood is a call to holiness, which means being set apart by God, in his son Jesus Christ, for salvation and service. Holiness comes from belonging to Jesus Christ. Jesus himself said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” (John 14:6). Not Moses, not Mohammad, not Materialism. Not Buddha, not Krishna, not Odin, not Osiris. Not Marx, not Darwin, not Freud. And especially not me (I’ll come back to this in a moment). Speaking of Christ, the Apostle Peter said “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to humanity by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12). The Apostle Paul said, “There is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:5).

Some people view this as “exclusivity” and in one way it is. Much as gravity is “exclusive” for the cliff diver. There are natural laws, and there are spiritual laws. God has ordained that the way home to him is through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ for the sins of the whole world. And Jesus is available to all. His invitation is utterly inclusive, “God wishes that no one should perish, but that everyone should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9).

2. The second affirmation is that our sainthood is pure gift. It is a gift called grace. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve. We don’t deserve to go to heaven, and we don’t deserve to be saints. All of it is pure gift. Paul told the Ephesians, “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this [faith] is not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Even our faith, our capacity to believe, is a gift of grace. We can’t take credit for it. Faith is part of the grace package. We are saints because we have been declared to be by God—because, by the grace of his Spirit, we have come to believe in Jesus as our Savior and Lord.

Here Mr. Trump needs to be very careful indeed. He is confusing roots and fruits. The good work of the blessed peacemaker is the fruit of salvation, not its root. It’s root is faith anchored in the grace of God revealed in Jesus. If he thinks that helping to end the Ukrainian war will in any way earn or merit his sainthood or heaven he is dead wrong. Paul also wrote that “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, [doing good works] then Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:21). The whole point of our salvation in Christ, of sainthood and heaven, is that it comes to us through the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. It comes, as my pastor likes to say, “from Jesus plus nothing.” It was necessary for Jesus to act on our behalf, because we are powerless in the face of sin and death (Romans 5:6). Apart from him, we are spiritually dead. Not sick, not disabled, but dead. (Ephesians 2:1). As the saying goes, “Jesus didn’t come to make bad people better, he came to make dead people live.”

At this point, President Trump’s background as a deal maker does him a disservice. We don’t make deals with God. We do not bargain with God. Mr. Trump is thinking like the sons in the story of the Prodigal (Luke 15). What they have in common, and in error, is that they see their relationship with their father as transactional. The Younger Son thinks he hasn’t done enough, the older son thinks he's done more than enough. They are both measuring the love of their father as the result of their behavior. But this is not how the Father is. He loves both his sons. Period. That is Jesus’ message. We are not loved because we measure up. We are not unloved because we don’t. We are loved either way. Period. We are loved because that is who God is. If Mr. Trump (and we) want to become sons and daughters of God—saints—and if we want to go to heaven—we need to leave behind the illusion of “the deal.” There is no deal and there is no totem pole. As the old Puritan once said, “The only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary.” Our salvation is a pure gift of love.

3. The third affirmation of Christians historically is that sainthood, or ‘going to heaven’ requires us to receive the gift of God’s love in salvation. The Apostle John wrote, “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. (John 1:12). We must stop trying to save ourselves, and let him save us. We must recognize and affirm his Lordship. We must get off the throne of our lives where we have lived as pretenders, and joyfully acknowledge that he is “King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.” We must open our hands and hearts and receive the gift of the love of God in Jesus Christ. To receive the gift is to receive him. He is the gift.

I’m glad President Trump is thinking about “going to heaven” and how we get there. We all should. But his efforts to bring peace to Ukraine, while admirable and important, will have nothing to do with that. Rather, like the young Thomas Merton who became the legendary Trappist monk and writer learned in his conversation with Robert Lax that night in Greenwich Village, President Trump will need to become a saint, because that is what God created him to be. And its true for Donald Trump and its true for all of us. This is our vocation as human beings--to become like Christ. Paul wrote, ^"And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3:18). This happens only when we are able to say with the Apostle, and the millions of others through the ages, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is now no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me. And the life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me. (Galatians 2:20-21). President Trump is no exception. And neither are we.