Stairway to Heaven

A recent poll of self-identified Republicans, conducted by the Daily Kos, asked the question: “Do you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is though Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith?”
Sixty-seven percent said that Jesus was the only way; fifteen percent said there might be another way, and eighteen percent weren’t sure. I’m wondering about that eighteen percent. Were they not sure about the proper way to get to Heaven, or were they maybe not sure about the whole idea of Heaven itself? I’ll assume the former, while wishing for the latter.
Two thousand and three people participated in the poll, which means that, at most, about 360 people might have answered: What a stupid question! You’re assuming that I subscribe to the inane and idiotic notion of Heaven. Do you think I’m a child?
Polls can be very revealing, but they seldom tell the whole story. In this case, they can only hint at how depressingly inchoate or infantile most people’s beliefs are. Some corollary questions might have been useful or interesting. Such as:
What will this Heaven be like? What will you do there? And if you’re bored with this life, why do you want another that will go on forever?

Mr. God Takes a Vacation

It appears that our God in Heaven went away on vacation in or around the Year 1, shortly after the death and then the disappearance of his son. He left no forwarding address.
A source said that God was despondent over the loss of his only offspring, Jesus Christ, and worn out from the demands of the public. He was reportedly particularly exasperated by the continuing obtuseness of people in positions of trust. Having brought his son back from the dead, he was disappointed, the source reported, that the disciples still wanted proof that he was Jesus the Chosen One.
God’s mood went from depression to anger, those close to him said, to the extent that he considered another flood; friends and associates, however, talked him into taking some time off.
Apparently God left sketchy, at best, instructions for subordinates to carry on in his absence. The ship of state sailed on under its own momentum for some time, then began to founder during the so-called Dark Ages; it has continued to take on water ever since.
God’s place of retreat is entirely unknown to this day. His date of return is likewise a mystery, but concerned constituents should bear in mind that two thousand years is but the blink of the eye in eternal time. It may be that God is just now opening his beach bag and putting on sunscreen.

Happy Fourth!

(Picture: Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who both died July 4, 1826.)
On this day we’re reminded that our Founding Fathers consecrated “the pursuit of happiness” as one of our sacred blessings and inviolable rights, and vexed us ever afterward with the question: What is happiness?
Disregarding all those many whose notions of happiness are no more than those of a pig in a trough, what makes us happy? A placid existence, unruffled by care? Aside from the near-certainty that no one has ever experienced it, should that really stand as our ideal of happiness?
Wealth and fame? But don’t we all know by now of the tribulations of the rich and famous, which console us for being neither? And besides, should mere ambition and the grab for money represent and epitomize the pursuit of happiness?
How about a sense of purpose? This is probably what the Founders meant, more or less, by their vague phraseology. In the new world they were building they expected everyone to take part in the endeavor, to exercise his freedom to seek happiness in a way that would contribute to the common good. But when the sense of such a purpose is stifled or overwhelmed, or is nowhere to be found in an anonymous mass society, then people will look elsewhere, and the religious impulse may take hold. It bids us, in our pursuit of happiness, to worship the unseen, to believe in the unbelievable, to trust in a life to come in which wishes will be reality. So “happiness” becomes the idiotic mooning over something that never was and never will be.
Our Fathers decreed that we were endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, but they disagreed about the nature of that creator and whether it even concerned itself with the affairs of men. They saw that for us to be free we must be free of superstition and fear, and that for us to be happy we must find our own purpose in this life, the only one we can be sure of.

Beasts of pray

It sounded like a novel form of animal abuse, worshippers taking their dogs to church with them, but then I read that the four-legged friends get treats and beds and aren’t required to hear a sermon or attend Sunday school.
The Covenant Presbyterian Church in California has instituted a weekly service for dogs, our town’s daily dog-bed liner has reported. The pastor takes canine prayer requests from his flock for the infirm and afflicted and the dearly departed denizens of dogdom, and then intones the Lord’s Prayer. Wouldn’t the 23rd Psalm be more appropriate (“The Lord is my Shepherd…”)?
The idea, in part, is to accommodate slackers who are more devoted to their pets than to their faith. And don’t all preachers fervently pray for a congregation that will sit up and take notice?
Wonder if, at some point during the services, attendees turn backwards and offer up a hymn to doG?
Do dogs have souls in need of redemption? The Bible is vague on the question, except to say that man was meant to have dominion over the beasts, who are too dumb, presumably, to apprehend the weighty subjects of death and original sin and grace and eternal life. But plenty of simple God-fearing Christians fully expect to be reunited with their beloved bow-wows in heaven. And, if our pooches can’t be as immortal as us, how to account for Cerberus, the hound who guards the gates of Hell?

God bless, and help, us all

“God Bless America” should be the national anthem of our country, someone (probably more than some one) has said. Certainly that phrase, God bless America, is a favorite of speakers striving for a surefire rousing signoff. What is it about those three words that stirs the heart and raises the temperature of red-blooded Amurricans?

Do the citizens of Uruguay, Burkina Faso, or Belgium, for example, exhort God to bless their countries? Do they imagine that God already has blessed their countries, and beseech Him to continue to do so? In their appeals to God, do they put in a word for a neighboring country, or maybe even a country far away but particularly in need of being blessed? Or is their wish only for God to bless theirs?

When God hears these requests, how does He judge which ones to grant? In parceling out blessings, does He favor the largest countries, or the ones with the most supplicants, or those with the most ardent or eloquent?

When we say “God bless America,” are we including South America? If just North America, do we include all 23 countries involved? To be precise, shouldn’t we say “God bless the United States of America”? And even then, are we including all the territories? Just where do the boundaries begin and end? And what about Americans who happen to be living elsewhere?
Thorny questions, all.

Surely, when we say “God Bless America,” we mean, God bless the idea of our country. For surely, the idea of America must be the apple of God’s eye.

And the song is catchy, too.

A novel enterprise

It’s been a year since I finished writing a novel. (Shameless self-promotion: It’s available at Amazon; title is The Misforgotten.)

There wasn’t any reason or logic, especially, behind this undertaking. I wrote my 340-page magnum opus to purge myself of accumulated random thoughts and a narrative that’s been nagging at me for years. It was an act, you could say, of pure self-indulgence. Beyond that, if there is a beyond that, it was an effort to make sense of things.

And, for better or worse, that’s what religion is. Dawkins and Hitchens and Maher and all the other shrill and strident atheists want everyone to come to their senses and start using their heads on the question of God. But if everyone used their heads all the time then no novels would get written (also for better or worse, people will argue), no music would get composed (except the sterile kind of music), no paintings would get painted (ditto on the last parentheses). Literature and music and art are what help a lot of us get through life, and the same goes for religion.

The utterances of Jesus are as beautiful and mysterious and startling as the works of Michelangelo or Bach or Keats, and to ask that we abandon our “belief” in any of them is to say we should close our hearts – while using our heads – to the ineffable.

Hell's bells

A megastar pastor and author of a best-selling book about hell was in Music City last week to deliver a sermon on his view of God and His fiery furnace.

Hell, says Rob Bell, whose Love Wins has won him fame and fortune (it’s second on the New York Times bestseller list), but also the wrath of the fire-and-brimstone set, may not be irrevocable. God can give people a second chance, in Bell’s eschatology, although He does fell the need to punish them for a spell, for purification’s sake.

But “a God who tortures people in hell forever can’t be trusted and is not good,” Bell says.

The argument raises some interesting and pressing questions: Can a part-time torturer be called “good”? What conduct should one strive for in hell, in order to earn a reprieve? If we can spring ourselves from hell, can we also fumble our way out of heaven? And, more to the point:

Has everyone lost their mind?

Here we are, a decade into the 21st century, and still the idiotic and monstrous notion of hell, which has made life a hell on earth for so many millions, has not relinquished its hold on our imaginations. Like babies, we conjure demons in our dreams and boogeymen under our beds, and then try to explicate such infantile fancies.

Our speculations about hell—its design, its curriculum—are as senseless as the visions of a lunatic. And our debates—so earnest, so learned—about just what species of ogre God is, must set the Almighty, if He’s listening, to either roaring with laughter or trembling with rage. Sometimes He must think that a really big bonfire wouldn’t be a bad idea.