How young Colton Burpo’s visit to Heaven became a word-of-mouth best seller, and what it means to a writer raised fundamentalist:
When I was not quite 4 — about the same age as Colton Burpo — my own newly born-again parents sat me down to impart the good news about Jesus, the son of God, who was born in a manger surrounded by sheep and donkeys and ended up being nailed to a cross on a hill and dying there. On the third day, he rose from the grave (you could tell it was he from the nail holes), and he did all of this to pay for my sins. If I accepted him into my heart, I would be rewarded with everlasting life in heaven. Otherwise, I would burn eternally with the Devil in hell. So we needed, urgently, to pray.
‘Right now?’ I said, or something like that. I remember not feeling 100 percent ready to ask this undead man, with his holey extremities, to dwell inside me.
“My Son Went to Heaven, and All I Got Was a No. 1 Best Seller.” — Maud Newton, New York Times
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