The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has responded to Professor Stephen Hawking’s recent claim that Heaven is a ‘fairy story’ made up by people who are afraid of dying.
“Heaven is not just some kind of place for retired Christians where they’re going to be enjoying their retirement,” the Bishop told BBC’s Toby Foster during an interview. “Heaven is where God’s will is being done. In fact, the Lord’s Prayer talks about ‘your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’. So God is very much on earth as He is in Heaven.”
When the Anglican leader was asked directly about Hawking’s declaration that “there is no Heaven or afterlife” and that it is all “a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,” he responded by making it clear, “I’m not afraid of dying. Bring it on any day.”
Sentamu then continued, “[Hawking] shouldn’t paint a picture of some kind of sky stuff up there because the faith of God is not that kind of faith. The coming of Jesus in human flesh on earth was actually trying to say, ‘when I look at you ... you should be telling me more about what God is and about what it is to be human'.”
The second most senior cleric in the Anglican church then smiled as he observed that he would inform “that wonderful professor” not to picture another image which most people do not have at all.
Sentamu was then asked what he believed the challenge was for Christian believers in a world filled with differing points of view.
“The challenge really seems to me is not to try and think that we’re in the marketplace where we’re all looking for an easy bargain,” the Bishop stated.
“Where we are is that, God becoming human in Christ was trying to say if you want to know the authentic human life it is lived in a man called Jesus and if you want to know God, it’s not some kind of imaginary power out there.
“[God] actually takes upon our own nature so that we would become more loving, more caring and in the end, God for me is Christ-like.”
“If we do the will of loving and caring, of supporting, of rejoicing in the fact that human beings are made in God’s image and likeness, I think that’s a great thing to be done,” he added.
“So living with people with other faiths, I’m not so much pushing my idea to them, I’m more called to be loving, to be caring.
"It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t tell them about God by the way [but] I should be caring that in what I’m saying, I myself completely believe in the reality of the God that I’ve seen in the face of Jesus Christ.”