The reason I ask that question is that on the day Rush died, I was listening to what different talk show hosts were saying about Rush, and I heard Mark Levin and Sean Hannity saying that they were sure he was in Heaven. Then, last night, my wife showed me some of the hateful social media posts people who hated Rush had posted. I assume the people that hate Rush are assuming he is in Hell.

It really does not work that way. We cannot send the ones we love to heaven with our desire and condemn the ones we hate to Hell with our hate. Actually, hate can harm us more than the ones we hate. Rush seemed to have a good life regardless of who hated him. Even though people hated him, Rush was very successful in radio.

Back when I had some involvement in radio, Rush was getting $300.00 a minute. This was at the radio station I used to sometimes sit in on a show with a host with whom I was friends. Rush got more than that at bigger stations and at that time, he was on more than 300 radio stations. If I use the $300.00 a minute as an average, Rush could have been getting $90,000.00 a minute for his ad time. I remember when I was thrilled to make $90,000.00 in a year, but $90,000.00 a minute is good money.

In radio, we had what was called the clock. The clock was an hour of the show, and it was drawn like a pie. It showed how much of the hour was commercials, and how much was the actual show. So if you look at how many minutes of the clock Rush had commercials, he could have been making a million dollars an hour. A million dollars an hour is not good money or even great money, it is amazing money. Like him or not, Rush was known how to do radio.

I was surprised how his death affected me. My involvement in radio was a special time in my life, and Rush was like a mentor I never got to meet. Even though I never met him, I felt like I knew him. Towards the end, I was turning on his show just to see if he was still alive, and I was happy to discover he was still fighting. Rush really had a way of making people laugh. I remember having someone in the truck that complained about what Rush was saying, and when I was about to change the channel he said, “Don’t change it, I gotta hear what he says next.”

Back to my question: Is Rush in Heaven? That is between Rush and God. I hope Rush knew Jesus. I hope you know Jesus. I think about this because some of my friends, who were in radio, are dead now, and I do not know where they were with God. The man I used to own a radio show with claimed to love Jesus and yet, he had some serious problems. Another friend, who had an oldies show, never talked about God. I loved being in the studio with him.  He knew how to put on a show. Oldies music was fun. However, now that he is dead, his eternity is between him and God. I regret not spending more time talking to my friends about God. I wasted my chance.

Since my readers are also friends I never met, now you know why I mix religion with my topics. To me, religion and life are not separate. I use the term religion, as in being a follower of Christ. I hope reading my articles will cause you to think about God, and where you will be once you die. As an Emergency Medical Technician, I have met people who are finding themselves losing their life way sooner than they expected. Unfortunately, a person’s soul and life cannot always be saved at the same time. I may have seen people lose both, I do not know. I hope I can get you to think about where you are with God while you still have time to do something about it.

If you hate God, I understand that. When my son died, I hated God too. That hate hurt me, not God. I eventually had to admit that everything about my son’s life involved decisions made by me. My son’s 34^th birthday is coming soon, and I have never forgotten this. He died at eleven months. Hating God because my son got pneumonia never brought him back. All it did was hurt me and the people I loved that were still alive. Something that eventually knocked some sense into me was when I realized that by hating God, I was dishonoring my son’s life. His life should have been a good thing, and it was. It was my problem in handling his death that was making it worse. That was my fault.

Once I realized these things, I looked at God and the Bible in a different way. I realized that God gave me free will and if I used it wrong, that is my fault, not God’s. I realized that the Bible is like the owner’s manual to life. God gave us life and He gave us the manual that can help us live that life. If we choose to use it, that’s up to us.

If you bought a car and looked at the owner’s manual on how to close the window, would you argue with how to close the window? If it said to push the button this way to close the window, would you say, “No one tells me what to do,” and push the button the other way? If you did, whose fault would it be if the window stayed open and the car was damaged when rain and snow got inside it?

If we drink alcohol or use drugs to find happiness or hide our problems, it is not God’s fault when that does not work. That is our fault. The Bible tells us that will give us problems. Try reading your Bible as something given to you by God to help you. If you think the Bible is preventing your happiness, think again, and give it another try. I had to learn these things the hard way. I hope what I went through can help you avoid some pain.

I hope Rush is in Heaven, but my hope will not have gotten Rush to Heaven. Only the hope we get from following Jesus will get us to Heaven. I hope Rush had that hope, and I hope you do too.

Goodbye to the friend I never met.

Article by Steve Richards