Unless you follow St. Augustine of Hippo or John Calvin, who, by the way,
never even made Saint, let alone Patron Saint of Brewers as Augustine did, you
have something called free will and, yes, that's an enormous burden as well as
an empowering freedom. And, for God's sake, if you're firmly in that
predestination camp, pass this on at once to someone who will use it.
Ultimately, nothing you do will make a difference. Were you somehow not aware
of that?
So, no flipping coins. Are we agreed? No roll the dice, no pick a card, any
card.
Which leaves you with a substantial amount of good old fashioned hard work
in your future. There's nothing wrong with hard work, unless you're getting
paid the minimum wage (currently $5.15/hour in Wyoming) and haven't figured out
a good scam to make up the difference. Hard work can be really fun if you're
making the maximum wage ($218,531/hour). I'll never understand why so many more
people seem to choose the minimum.
Not physical work, of course, no Wax On, Wax Off approach to spiritual
enlightenment and karate championships. You can do that too, in your spare
time, if you like.
But we do face a lot of challenging research, analysis and tough, personal
decisions. The key to making it all a manageable process is organization and
categorization. You may have a thousand factors to consider and you may doubt
your own ability to persevere.
That's why you have this Buyer's Guide.
You're going to make an informed choice by answering two questions.
What do you want from God and what does God want from you?
The Happy Place
First, what you want. In the beginning, whenever that was, people knew what
they wanted. They woke up in the morning, or the evening, depending on their
work schedule that week, and went off looking for food. Lots of it. Finding
food was hard and dangerous work. But you never heard them say What's the
point? We spend all day or all night hunting, gathering. Then we eat the food
and go to sleep and wake up only to have to go find more food.
They just did it, without all the grumbling you hear nowadays.
But then some of the people began to get sick or be eaten. And some of them
died.
For the first time they realized they wanted more than food. They wanted to
live.
Gradually they got better at finding the food they wanted to eat and at
fighting off the things that wanted to eat them.
Here's where they got into trouble. With more time available between sleep
cycles than they needed to get the food for the day, they stumbled across the
concept of spare time. And spare time, leading as it does to idle thoughts and
speculation, caused them to invent superstition. Inanimate objects which they
once paid little attention to, like strange rocks, gnarly trees or arrangements
of light in the sky, now became the focus of their investigation.
Some of the more artistic among them started scratching likenesses of the
rocks and trees on the walls of their caves. This really got the rest of them
going. Soon they gave these special objects special names and, before long,
attributed to them special powers.
And once they believed that special powers existed, powers they themselves
did not possess, they became convinced the objects could bring them anything
they wanted if they pleased and obeyed the objects.
Now they weren't satisfied when they had enough food to eat or managed to
live through another day.
You really can't blame them, but they wanted to live forever.
As it happens, they began, not to live forever, but to live longer. Then
their teeth fell out, their bodies deteriorated and they became dependent on
the kindnesses of friends and family which varied from very kind to not so
kind, much as they do today.
This became the basis for the popular warning Be careful what you ask for.
So they amended their original request to live forever. To it they added -
and forever young. They also added - in a perfect world in complete happiness.
They called it heaven.
Now we're getting somewhere. Now we're talking Religion.
You live, with a little luck, a long life. But then, like so many before
you, you die.
What if that's only the start? You come back to life, all better despite
what it was you died from, and in a better place.
What more could you ask for?
Even today, that's what most people want from God. Naturally, it's what most
religions claim to deliver.
But that's not all. If you act now, not only do you get to live forever in a
happy place. The bad people, the ones who don't make the smart choice you're
making, the ones you don't like anyway, go somewhere else, the bad place.
Surprisingly, some people consider other criteria. Maybe you should too.
Let's say you're thinking of taking a little trip. You'd like to go to
Mozambique. With very little effort you can find out everything you'd like to
know about the place. Send off for some travel brochures. Run down to your
local bookstore. Grab a copy of Mozambique On 500 Escudos a Day. Choose one of
those huge picture books, a guide to their culture and customs, another about
their cuisine and something about their history.
Get on the Internet. Take a full screen 360° virtual tour of the rooms in
the best hotels. Watch some video clips of the primary attractions. Logon to a
Mozambique travel forum. Do some online chat with people who just returned from
there. Now you've got a little background. Now you're ready for the ultimate
authority - Google Earth.
Now, substitute heaven for Mozambique. See how far that gets you. Try Google
Maps. Type in heaven. Instantaneously you are in ... Loveland Ohio. Switch to
the satellite view. One week there would probably seem like an eternity.
So, admit it. Most of us have a little doubt about this heaven business.
But, we figure, if it works out, great. If it doesn't, it was worth a shot.
And what about the seasoned travelers? They've been everywhere, sometimes
twice, but they're always ready to head out again. They come home from scaling
Mount Everest. At most they were allowed to spend ten minutes on the summit,
the highest point on the planet. You know they want to go back. What they
wouldn't give, next time, to be able to spend an hour or two on top of the
world. Maybe not a week or a month, but an hour or two.
Or the space travelers? They can't get enough of it.
Unless you measure enough in terms of tens of thousands of years. And, by
definition, that's not even a small fraction of eternity.
Eternity may not be the thing for people who get bored easily. Or ever.
In The Meantime
Very few religions, no matter how tempting the picture they paint of the
afterlife they promise, suggest you go there directly. In fact, most of them
discourage you from pursuing an early admission to it. Instead they work hard
to make your remaining days here on earth as pleasant as possible. So they plan
regular get-togethers, often weekly, often with music and speeches and even
refreshments.
They know hard times come to us all and train their staffs to offer comfort
and advice to their members when disaster strikes.
How important is this kind of support to you?
Remember the last time your computer froze just as you were about to file
your electronic tax return? You didn't want phone support from another country
from someone who spoke your language as well as you speak French. You wanted
someone to come on over to your house, someone you knew and trusted who could
calmly explain to you that you probably shouldn't have run the keyboard through
the dishwasher when you dumped coffee all over it. Without even a giggle but
with a spare keyboard in their car.
You want the kind of support that won't get outsourced to save someone fifty
cents an hour. Especially when you discover those discount Viagra charges on
your credit card bill and you know you didn't order them and yet they were shipped
to and signed for at your address.
And yet you don't want too much support. Like someone knocking on your door
on election eve to remind you how miserable you were in the heat wave last
August and to remember that when you're thinking of voting for the candidate
that God really doesn't like.
What's the difference between a pastor and a doctor? No, it's not the kind
of car they drive. In fact nowadays the most successful in both fields probably
shop at the same Mercedes dealers.
Both heal. Once upon a time doctors stuck mainly to healing bodies and left
the soul to the priests. That's changing.
Now doctors often treat ailments that don't show up in the form of broken
bones or blood-gushing wounds or other physical, visible signs you can point your
fingers or medical instruments at. Depression, once thought to reside in the
soul, they've now decided has underlying body-related causes you can't often
measure or quantify but still exist. Fortunately the pharmaceutical industry
has found magic chemicals that can change the body, and therefore you, in ways
that the doctors can recognize as making you better.
In retaliation the clergy found that they have the means to treat many of
the old diseases that once only doctors were thought qualified to treat. Faith
healing and the laying on of hands, once rare and limited to a few individuals,
who later were usually recognized by certification of sainthood or by great
wealth, can now be practiced by almost anyone without the inconvenience and
expense of academic study. For some reason these remedies are rarely covered by
insurance but neither were the first heart transplants.
So it's your choice where you go when you're in need of healthcare. But not
all religions offer the same coverage. Read the fine print.
Ambiance matters too. Religious ritual should fit your artistic sensibility.
Are you more of a cathedral or a storefront type? Pipe organ or that classic
Hammond B-3 sound? A foreign language introduces a mystery and
other-worldliness to any ceremony but you may prefer the more up to date
rhythms of a rap sermon. You may be transported by the smell of burning
frankincense, myrrh, rose, and cedar or it may only aggravate your allergies. A
relative few still swear by the evocative power of burning goat or lamb. What's
your choice of costume? Gothic chasuble, saffron robe or Jake and Elwood style
black suits?
Take your time. Many of us, each week, spend ten hours or more in our chosen
church, synagogue, mosque or sweat lodge. Those hours should reflect the kind
of people we are. A few will only choose to attend at Christmas or Easter, The
Feast of Naw-Ruz or Bright Monday but that's still quality time and no less
important.
And it's not just during those hours in the pew that you will find your life
tied to your choice of religion. Think of all the areas where religion plays a
dominant role. Art, literature, science, economics and, most importantly,
sports.
Jot down each and every sporting activity that you and your family are
involved in, at every level, from those pre-school karate tournaments through
college curling ends. Amateur, professional or in between. Participatory or
spectator. The ones you gamble heavily in or just enjoy for the spectacle. Religion
has played a pivotal role in all of them since well before the first Olympics.
Lions versus Christians, final scores at eleven. Billy Sunday was a ballplayer
(Billy Batter) before he became an evangelist. Mohamed Ali used to infuriate
Howard Cosell. Every interview had to start by praising Allah.
So how do you think it's going to work out if you find that the star players
on your favorite rugby team or cricket club pray to a different God than yours.
You're praying in one direction and they are praying in the opposite.
Conflicting prayer. Twenty yard penalty.
Don't cry, but you may have to switch some allegiances one way or the other.
Art - where would it be without religion? Tough to keep score on that one.
Think of all the famous paintings and sculpture directly commissioned by one
church or another, paid for ultimately by tithing dollars. Even when you factor
in all the banned and destroyed art work where a church made the final judgment
call, there's a good chance we have more art now rather than less. And Sacred
Music. I suppose you think churches no longer commission sublime work by the
greatest composers. Well, how about reggae? Bela Fleck and the Flecktones? It
just no longer gets the press coverage it used to.
Literature - the Bible - best selling book of all time. Inspired directly by
God. But did inspiration end there? Of course not. Do you think Dante didn't
have a little help too? Give me a break. How else do you explain the Divine
Comedy?
For centuries, people, at least people who pondered such issues, a few
people, agonized over the concept of heaven and hell. If you were good you went
to heaven. Otherwise hell. No matter how good you were, there was no First
Class section; coach for everyone. And no matter how bad, hell was just hell.
That didn't seem fair.
Finally Dante, with the help of God, or God, with the help of Dante,
clarified the carrot and the stick. Heaven had nine Spheres, all of them pretty
nice but some nicer than others. Hell was divided into Circles and the really,
really bad got the tough ones, the Abu Ghraib or the Supermax. The petty
miscreants got assigned to the minimum security accommodations. No golf or
anything like that but way nicer than Abu Ghraib. And sincere expressions of
remorse and the desire to turn your death around could get you moved from one
Circle to a better one.
Shakespeare too. Who do you think wrote the King James version of the bible?
Hint, it wasn't King James. And let's not forget Allen Ginsberg (Alan
Greenspan). He, surprise!, they're one and the same, may have written
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, he and Ayn Rand, but don't be so naive as to
believe that Positivism, the whole Greed is Good philosophy, is lacking in
divine influence, and not just through Reverend Ike.
That brings us to Economics. The same Christianity that tells us it is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of God condemns socialism. Where else can one find that kind
of all-encompassing flexibility?
Right about here you've got to be saying to yourself, I had no idea. This is
going to be tough.
If you're not, consider science. We all crave knowledge of our origins. Look
how popular genealogy has become. OK, some of that is our natural desire to
posthumously baptize our deceased ancestors but that's only a partial
explanation. And as much as computers have revolutionized the way we search our
family trees, this is only the beginning. DNA research will soon astound us in
the help it can lend. Within a few years, or decades at most, we will be able
to trace our roots not just back to the species of ape we are descended from.
We will know, as certain as Newton when he deciphered the physical forces that
govern the universe, the specific ape that answers that Who's Your Daddy
question and the specific tree he descended from. Some of us may not dare admit
it but that's knowledge for one's personal heart and soul, no need for public
broadcast, so what's the difference?
Hate to have to tell you this, my friend, but this is the easy stuff. You'll
need to address some conflicts you may have about some cultural issues and how
you feel about them and what religions will and won't accept your feelings but
you'll manage. What we have to consider now is a little more essential and to
the core of this whole process.
You desperately want God in your life, but describe Him or Her or It or
Them.
Remote or approachable? Someone you'd like to sit down with over a beer or a
bowl of Jello? Or more of the policy wonk type you trust to run the universe
but aren't likely to hang with? A Bill Clinton, an Al Gore, a Willard M. Romney
or a George W. Bush?
Vindictive and capricious, or all-merciful?
Someone involved in every aspect of your life, a micro manager, a control
freak? Or someone who takes a more relaxed approach, checking in with you and
your planet on a monthly, yearly or millennial basis?
Old Testament stern, New Testament forgiving, or New Age touchy-feely?
Anthropomorphic or droid or incapable of even being described in human
terms?
Flexible, evolving with the universe and its inhabitants or stuck in a time
warp and out of touch?
They're all out there, some with a sense of humor, some with none, some who will
grant your every wish, if you play the game, some who leave you on your own,
tough love, My Way or the Highway To Hell.
