heaven is for real conversation guide todd burpo

Also, Colton describes the “markers” on Jesus’ hands and feet, even though, when the film depicts Colton’s visions, Jesus has no such wounds where the nails would have pierced his flesh during the crucifixion, meaning that Colton is either giving an inaccurate report or embellishing. In numerous scenes, children overhear their parents’ conversations, making it possible that Colton is aware of certain facts not because they were supernaturally revealed, but because they were discussed in his presence.

Still, the film leaves open several other possibilities. How else could Colton see himself, while the doctors were swiftly completing the surgery? How else could he see his mother, while she was calling friends and asking them to pray for her son? How else could he see his father, while he was sitting in the chapel and crying out to God? How else could Colton describe his conversation with “Pop,” his great-grandfather, and his unnamed sister who “died in Mommy’s tummy,” when he hardly knew the former and was not even aware of the latter?ĭespite Todd’s doubts and his persistent efforts to find a rational explanation for his son’s story, he becomes convinced that Colton, an innocent young child, is telling the truth. Todd’s inability to account for Colton’s description of heaven leads him to the reluctant conclusion that his son was shown heaven - or, at least, a version of it that is intelligible to the mind of a young child. As a result, his wife chides him for ignoring the family’s financial troubles and risking his own job over his obsession with what it was exactly that Colton witnessed.

“I want to believe ”, Todd says, “but everything he talks about is impossible.”įor most of the film, Todd is oscillating between doubt and belief, experiencing frustration, and becoming so enthralled by Colton’s story that he begins to focus on the afterlife at the expense of the present.

Todd Burpo (Greg Kinnear) is skeptical of his son’s claims that, while he was on the operating table, he temporarily left his body and visited heaven. In the film adaptation of the New York Times bestselling book Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back, Rev. Burpo responds, “By the time I know, it will be too late to tell you.” But when Todd, by this point a pastor at Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, Nebraska, hears his 4-year-old son describe his supposed journey to heaven, which he experienced while undergoing an emergency operation for a burst appendix, he is forced to ask: Can a young boy, who is near death, really experience heaven, walk with Jesus, and return to earth to talk about it? When a young Todd Burpo asks his father if heaven is real, Mr.

Heaven is for real conversation guide todd burpo