Do mentally challenged people go to Heaven?

Q: Do mentally challenged people who can't understand the concept of God go to heaven?

You asked if mentally challenged people who can't understand the concept of God can go to heaven. The simple answer is, “yes.”

I think there is a misunderstanding among some regarding faith – that faith is the acceptance of a truth proposition.  Yes, God reveals truth.  But more importantly, God reveals Himself in a personal way and invites us to know Him.  The Gospel story is one of love, centered on the cross, where the God who loves us looked at our helpless state and chose to bear the penalty of our sins so that we would know eternal life with Him.  The love of God is central to faith and it is the biblical message that is proclaimed from the first chapter of Genesis through the promise of a New Earth in Revelation.

You may be familiar with the passage in the Bible about children coming to Jesus.  It is in Matthew 19.  In it, Jesus blesses some little children.  It goes like this:

Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people, but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”  (Matthew 19:13-14 - ESV)

I think you would agree with me that mentally challenged people frequently express a child-like kind of love.  Note that the response of the children was not from their understanding of concepts, but of their love of Jesus.  What is interesting about this little story is that it is surrounded by stories of learned men coming to Jesus to ask about what He was teaching.  The Pharisees wanted to quibble over various understandings of the law.  The rich man wanted to know how to earn his way to Heaven through his behavior.  Even his own disciples didn’t understand the significance of the children’s’ response to Jesus – these children were the kinds of people to whom belong the kingdom of God!  The children simply desired to be in His presence and to enjoy Him.  We still need to share Christ with the mentally challenged and to take seriously their ability to respond to God’s love.  We should never underestimate the ability of the Holy Spirit to speak through the disabled mind and into the fully responsive heart.  There may be situations where the impairment is extreme – and you might wonder if even the love of God can be felt.  This is where we pray and trust God and remember our own faith in the good Creator who protects the innocent and charges us with the same.  

This is a personal question for me since my own son is a mentally challenged adult.  He cannot comprehend things many people take for granted.  But he knows what it means to be loved and what it means to love.  We teach concepts he can understand, but more importantly, we introduced him to Jesus so that he would know Him as we do.  In fact, as his love for Jesus is unfettered and secure, he is frequently the one teaching us.  I say with all humility that I sometimes wonder who has the mental challenge. Who among us can comprehend all there is to know about God?  Perhaps the best answer to your question about whether the mentally challenged go to Heaven is, “yes, we do.”  


Thank you for your question.  Feel free to contact me if you’d like to have more discussion about this.

Why doesn't God answer prayer right away?

Q: Why does God not answer our prayers right away?

It can be hard to understand when we pray and have to wait for an answer. However I don’t think that it is necessarily accurate to say that he doesn’t answer right away. I would follow up you question with another question: What makes you think that he hasn’t answered your question? By what matrix are you judging whether he has answered or not? If we expect God to do what we want and he doesn’t do it and we are still waiting for it to be done it would appear that he hasn’t answered, that he hasn’t come through for us. We have all probably been in that place at one time or another.

It may be helpful to consider what God’s loving, wise, answer to our prayer might be. There are at least three different answers possible:

• Yes
• No
• Not yet.

What would each of these answers look like in your situation? Take some time to consider this, even writing out your answer. Are you still sure he hasn’t answered?

All three of the responses above are answers to prayer, but sometimes if it is not an immediate “Yes” we might think that he hasn’t answered. In those times when it seems that what we asked was according to God’s will, but has not come to pass yet, we need to default back to the character of God. He is always good, holy, loving, faithful, wise, and powerful. We can praise Him for who he is, even and especially, when we are still waiting for deliverance, healing, and vindication. I love the Psalms because they show us how to communicate honestly with God, and how to trust in his character even when we don’t see his answer yet.

Once you finish answering the question above, if you want I would like to see your answer. Then I will add my annotation to the Yes, No, Not yet.

What About "The Shack?"

Q: What's your opinion on the book The Shack? I understand it's written by an author who is a Christian but I've heard stuff that is critical.

I assume from your question that you have read it. What did you think? How did you respond? I have asked many people about The Shack and to a person if they have read the book then they were profoundly moved by the love of God, even though the most horrific tragedies and traumas of life. And to a person, if they have read the critiques and not the book they were incensed at the perceived theological liberties taken.

William Paul Young is a gifted writer who wrote a moving book about a man who encountered the living Triune God at the worst point of pain imaginable and he discovered God’s love, care and forgiveness. At a time when Christianity is being generally maligned by our culture as insensitive and condemning, this book has impacted people who long to know God as a loving and forgiving Father. For those who have suffered pain that has left them unable to resolve their world with the thought of such a loving Father, the book is a Godsend.

Yes, there are a number of things to critique if you were reading The Shack as a book of theology, which it isn't. It is a fictional novel. Just as in the Narnia series by CS Lewis, if it was held to the standard of a theological treatise, it would be found wanting. The most obvious theological issue of the book is that of presenting God the Father as a human. In doing so, Young emphasizes the personal nature of the Father – characterized by grace, mercy and love – without including any portrayal of the righteousness of the Father – characterized by holiness, justice and even wrath. To the person who does not know the God of the Bible, that leads to a misunderstanding regarding the seriousness of God’s plan for mankind and the reason Jesus came to die a substitutionary death on the cross. The demands of God’s righteousness met the provision of his personal care at the cross, where God Himself did what we could not. The cross, the central revelation of Scripture, is where the love of God meets the wrath of God. And we can learn this all in the Bible.

Which brings up another important issue regarding Young’s book: the relative absence of direct Scriptural quotes from the Bible. Young puts words into God’s mouth, but they are rarely directly from the one source that we understand to be God’s revelation of Himself. It would have been helpful if Sarayu (the Holy Spirit) had made clear the connection between how “she” peaks into the spirit of a man and the Word where that interaction takes place – the Bible.

Having said that, in our opinion, many of the criticisms leveled against The Shack are out of step with the tone of the book, which is fictional and not theological. Though there are some legitimate concerns, it really is a good story and a good read. Story can be very powerful and effective at importing a message into the heart, and for many people, The Shack has been a doorway to a re-engagement with God. I encourage people to read it and then talk about it. And remember, that author (Young) wrote about another Author (God). If you liked The Shack, you really need to read the book by the Author of whom Young wrote, the Bible. Then you can have your own encounter with the living Triune God!