the heaven of pop theology

Popular or "pop" theology is an odd mixture of disorganization and surprising self-consistency. The self-consistency comes from an unstated principle: "Theology is all about me." For example, devotees of the heaven of pop theology talk like this. (Did I mention the 20/20 television report about heaven on July 6?)

Heaven is a paradise after earthly death, which will contain me and everyone I like. I know that I will be there because I don't do evil every moment of every day, and because I don't have evil intentions every moment of every day. So not only me, but people I consider similar to myself, will be there. Others who are different yet who treat me well will be there. Those who are mean to me are clearly awful people who won't be there. Religion won't matter. God, or the gods, or the First Cause, or whatever, will be able to figure out which people are the right ones, regardless of what any of us believe. It just wouldn't be nice if the choice of religion disqualified people I like. In fact, most people are born good enough anyway, and as long as we avoid the horrible choices like mass murder, we'll get in. I'm not a saint, and since I'm the standard for admittance into heaven, nobody else needs to be a saint either. Once we're there, we won't do boring or divisive goody-goody activities like worship. We'll be in a state of never-ending bliss. Everyone will be the same as they were, yet everyone will finally manage to be happy together, somehow. There might be different levels of rewards, but I wouldn't worry about it; heaven will be heavenly whether or not you're one of the weirdos who lived sacrificially. 

This is the heaven which is consistent with "moralistic therapeutic deism", of course. This is the heaven for people who love themselves and therefore can't imagine how heaven's security guards could turn them away.