What Wallace does show mostly looks like an overexposed version of earth, though populated by an extremely friendly Jesus, and CGI angels that titter when Colton asks them to sing “We Will Rock You,” a Burpo family singalong favorite. The film only offers fleeting glimpses of heaven itself. Heaven Is For Real, the film adaptation co-written and directed by Randall Wallace, only mentions the rainbow horse, but never shows it. Among the other sights he saw there: Jesus riding on a horse that’s all the colors of the rainbow. Written by Nebraska minister Todd Burpo (and Sarah Palin co-author Lynn Vincent), the slim book tells the story of Colton Burpo, who had emergency surgery for a burst appendix at age 4, and while on the operating table, traveled to heaven. (There is the small matter of the facts not squaring with his account, but that hasn’t stopped him from being a favorite guest on talk shows, and turning his time in heaven into a cottage industry.) That followed on the heels of 2010’s Heaven Is For Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story Of His Trip To Heaven And Back. In the 2012 book Proof Of Heaven, neurosurgeon Eben Alexander recounts the experiences he had in heaven while his body lay in a coma on earth. (That tradition isn’t entirely dishonorable: The Divine Comedy matches the description.) In recent decades, such accounts have found a niche of their own in religious bookstores, but recently, a few have broken out and become mainstream bestsellers. Nonetheless, there’s a long tradition of stories from those who’ve visited the afterlife and returned with a story to tell and a message to impart. Trying to prove the truth behind an article of faith means turning it into something else, and that’s especially true of religious faith. Whether it’s trust in the the rightness of a law, the love of a spouse, or a higher power, faith is a feeling beyond demonstrable proof. Faith is, by definition, a belief in something that cannot be proven.

Heaven is for real author