Reflections upon Mitch Albom's the five people you meet in heaven

There are two ways to live in relationship to others. You can either be open or closed, grateful or disdainful, gracious or merciless. You can curse the darkness that resides in us all or bless the light concealed within every human heart. You can condemn the works of others because of what is lacking or applaud their efforts for the good that is there.

I choose the way of blessing in regard to Mitch Albom's newest book, the five people you meet in heaven. Albom's follow-up to Tuesdays with Morrie currently holds the number three position on the New York Times Bestseller list. Obviously, Albom's story has struck a chord with American readers.

The story revolves around Eddie, "a grizzled war veteran who feels trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park� [whose] days are a dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret" (bookflap). On his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident while trying to save a young girl from a falling cart. Eddie quickly discovers that death is not the end, but a new beginning. He awakes in heaven where he meets the Blue Man, a circus freak Eddie knew from his childhood. The Blue Man is the first of five people from Eddie's earthly life that he meets in heaven. The Blue Man explains, "There are five people you meet in heaven� Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth" (p. 35). According to the Blue Man, each person Eddie will meet is someone who "crossed [his] path before they died" and "altered it forever" (p. 35). Accordingly, each of the five people will teach Eddie a lesson about life (p. 47).

Most of Albom's book takes place in heaven and yet God is noticeably absent. At best, God lurks in the background - ever present, but strangely silent. Though many readers may be unhappy with this - rejecting the book on the grounds of "theological inexactness" - I am not. I believe the absence of dogma concerning God makes the book accessible to all who are interested in working through major life issues without the controversy, conflict, and division that usually arises in regard to one's doctrine of God. Certainly, our view of God is important, impacting everything in our lives. Yet, the one thing we all - believer, agnostic, or atheist - have in common is our questions concerning life, death, and the afterlife. Along with these prominent themes, meaning, suffering, love, hate, and forgiveness are also examined. These important topics are vital inroads into our reflections about God. We have to begin somewhere in our search for God, truth, and meaning, and most people (if not all) begin at the level of human experience and the questions that arise from normal everyday life. To reject this book because of what is left unsaid would be to miss the precious value of what actually is communicated in the book.

Albom communicates at least five great truths concerning life, death, and the afterlife. Each of the five truths provides profound starting points for wrestling with God.

One's greatest satisfaction is found in knowing one's life purpose
In Albom's story, one of the main reasons for heaven is to help make sense of one's life on earth. "This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for" (p. 35).

By making this the central purpose of heaven, Albom touches on a fundamental human need - the need to feel significant, to know that one's life matters for something. Heaven is inextricably interlinked to earth. All that happens on earth is explained in heaven. All that heaven explains reveals the deep significance of life on earth.

Unlike many evangelical gospel presentations which tend to divorce the joys of heaven from one's struggles on earth, Albom effectively weaves the two together. Our lives matter and they matter now. We are not in a holding tank until real life begins. Real life begins now with repercussions into eternity.

The greatest need today is to demonstrate to the world that life has meaning, purpose, and significance. The main question that contemporary people wrestle with is not "Is there life after death?" but "Is there life before death?" Does anything really matter? Is it all worth it or should we resign ourselves to an absurd, purposeless universe? Albom gives us a reason to live and assigns the highest value to understanding our created purpose. Our present life is charged with eternal significance that echoes into the future.

No human life is ordinary
Eddie's life is routine, dull, and ordinary. The years have made him cynical, cold, and tired. A lifetime of maintaining and fixing amusement park rides has left him empty, with nothing to say. From his perspective, his life is depressingly ordinary.

In heaven, Eddie discovers that "heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners" (p. 34). He realizes that he never participated in an ordinary event in his life. All of his days were ablaze with glory, with significance and purpose. No event was wasted. Eddie's final vision of heaven reveals that his heavenly "home" had been with him all along. Though he did not realize it at the time, he was never far from heaven while living on earth.

People need to know that there is no ordinary life. Everything is charged with mystery and significance. God is transcendantly immanent and immanently transcendent. The Great Story that encompasses and embraces every individual human story guarantees that no life is ordinary and that every event is supercharged with the transcendant.

One overarching story connects us all
The first lesson Eddie learns from the Blue Man is that "there are no random acts - we are all connected - you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind" (p. 48). The final lesson Eddie discovers is "the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one" (p. 196).

Though Eddie's heaven is radically individual - custom-designed to his deepest desires - he discovers that his life is radically communal. Everything and everyone is related, not in the monistic sense of absorption into one ultimate reality with the resulting loss of individuality, but in the Christian sense that all are connected.

The Christian doctrine of original sin states that the actions of others reverberate throughout the cosmos, impacting us all. This same relational truth is the very reason that Jesus' action on the cross can impact the entire cosmos. Everything and everyone is connected: "each affects the other and the other affects the next."

Ultimately, there is only one story - one great drama - and we are all players. Each person is important, because each individual impacts the whole. This is not only true of the body of Christ, but also the entire world. The more we emphasize our interrelatedness, the more we can highlight the importance of community, acceptance, love, and forgiveness. Whether we like it or not we share a story - with God, with the church, with the world. There is no other story. Every person plays a part in it.

Every human life is valuable
There are characters in Albom's book that die tragic deaths at young ages. In the end, we discover that even these deaths are not without meaning and purpose in the overall scheme of human existence. The final person Eddie meets is just such a victim. Even though her life was tragically cut short, she is given the privilege of revealing to Eddie the ultimate secret of heaven. From an earth-bound perspective, her life appears to be wasted. From a heavenly perspective, her short life qualifies her to be the bearer of ultimate truth.

The length of one's life is not the arbiter of the value of one's life. Even the tragedies of life play a role in the shaping of us all. We must constantly be wary of assigning value to people's lives based on time lived, abilities, talents, or influence. We may discover, in the end, that those who appeared to be the least were actually the greatest.

Sacrifice for others is never in vain
One of the people Eddie meets in heaven is his military Captain. During the war the Captain's one stated goal and guiding truth was that no man would be left behind. In the course of their discussion, Eddie discovers that the Captain sacrificed his life that Eddie might live. Through this, he teaches Eddie this lesson: "Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father. A man goes to war�" (p. 93). Eddie discovers that no one dies in vain. No one dies for nothing. Even Eddie's wife who died in the prime of life did not die in vain. "Life has to end� Love doesn't" (p. 173).

In the end, Eddie finds himself surrounded by thousands of children playing together in peaceful harmony. In the joy of the moment, he expresses his sadness. "I was sad because I didn't do anything with my life. I was nothing. I accomplished nothing. I was lost" (p. 191). It is then that the final revelation is given. Eddie questions, "Fixing rides? That was my existence?... Why?" She [the fifth person] tilted her head, as if it were obvious. "Children," she said. "You keep them safe" (p. 191).

With new eyes, Eddie views the surrounding children from an enlightened perspective. Each of the thousands of children benefited from his life. "They were there� because of the simple, mundane things Eddie had done in his life, the accidents he had prevented, the rides he had kept safe, the unnoticed turns he had affected every day" (p. 193).

Eddie's life mattered. He discovered his purpose. He thought he was a simple mechanic, maintaining amusement park rides. In reality, he was a preserver of life and a giver of happiness to countless children. In the end, he sacrificed his life for the life of one child - a sacrifice he discovers was not in vain. In the final scene, we discover that Eddie is one of the five people that the girl he saved at the cost of his own life will meet when she finally dies. He will help her understand her life and her purpose. In this way his story and her story connect.

Each one of the five truths that Albom highlights in his book provides a wonderful starting point for reflection upon God's relationship to our lives. If each person has a purpose in the one overarching story that connects us all so that no life is ordinary, every human life is valuable, and sacrifice for others is never in vain, then this must reflect in some way upon the God who oversees the story, who created each valuable person, who provides the context for each superordinary life. Furthermore, if sacrifice for others is never in vain, we gain a fresh platform upon which to understand the significance of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross and the resounding impact of this upon all people: "each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one" (p. 196). The one story is God's story, and yet, since it involves us, it is also our story as well. The greatest truth Albom underscores is that our individual stories are without meaning until they are viewed in light of the one grand story of God that unites us all.

There are two ways to live in relationship to others. I am grateful for those who applaud my positive contributions rather than condemn my shortcomings. I am drawn to those who seek to discover my good and overlook the bad. They lift my spirits, draw me closer to God, and drive me to do the same for others. Mitch Albom should be praised for the good he presents in his story rather than condemned for what is missing. His book is worthy of praise for the story it tells, the questions it raises, and the answers it gives - even if only partial. Albom's book does not give every answer. But what book possibly could?

Albom has given us a book that provides a great starting point for reflecting upon God, God's character, and God's purposes. He does this by prompting us to seriously consider the most profound questions of human existence. The lessons taught in Albom's book are completely compatible with Christianity. It would be a shame to dismiss this book because of what is missing when what is present can be completely integrated with the person of Jesus and made into a compelling whole.

© Richard J. Vincent, 2003