Did Elvis Presley go to heaven?
One of the dilemmas I faced in becoming a fully-fledged Christian was accepting my allegiance to certain cultural icons who in the past had been labeled non-Christian. The greatest of them is undoubtedly “the King” himself, Elvis Presley. Before Elvis, the only individual in history who could be known simply as “the King” was probably Jesus himself. Was Elvis an example of Satan’s grand plan to subvert our Lord’s authority?
Many Christians of that time saw the advent of rock and roll as the worst thing that could happen to Western culture. It was the devil’s concoction that aroused unhealthy passions in healthy adolescents. Elvis was so impressive that he could only be filmed from the waist up! But, like many young people, she loved Elvis and all of his songs, and she couldn’t believe that God would want to send such an enormously talented individual to hell. In his life, a confessed Christian who in himself should be enough to save him, he always showed himself as the perfect gentleman, kind and considerate of all his fans. Perhaps in his private life, there was a hell that only his inner circle knew about, but that is not uncommon among Christians in general. We are all expected to live a life of martyrdom to some degree.
In deciding whether or not to pull the plug on Elvis and send him to rock and roll hell, I had to be honest with myself and decide what I liked about his music. Was it that he aroused within me passions that I could not control? Or was it that it inspired a love for life, and even more than that, a love for our created universe that we often describe as “all right with the world”? In the end I decided that it was the latter. His music doesn’t drive me into a sexual frenzy, it makes me feel like we’re all part of something bigger and more mysterious than we can ever know. That something must be God. I think this is true of all great music, perhaps even art in general, and as such Satan has no part in any of it. Quite the contrary, great art, great music, like the old hymns of the past, can help us rise above the ordinary in our lives so that we can glimpse that special place that awaits us in eternity.
Happily, by that calculation, I can be sure that the King of Rock n Roll is not only guaranteed a place in heaven, but he occupies a special throne very close to the Lord.