The Big Guy passed along a joke yesterday that was funny, though his email was more about why some people pass along jokes. Smart funny, not laugh out loud funny. I’ll post it first, then explain why it points out the folly of religion; a bit lengthy but bear with me.
A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead.
He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.
After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight.
When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother-of-pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold. He and the dog walked toward the gate and, as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side.
When he was close enough, he called out, ‘Excuse me, could you tell me where we are?’
‘This is Heaven, sir,’ the man answered.
‘Wow! Would you happen to have some water?’ the man asked.
‘Of course, sir. Come right in, and I’ll have some ice water brought right up.’
The man gestured, and the gate began to open.
‘Can my friend,’ gesturing toward his dog, ‘come in, too?’ the traveler asked.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t accept pets.’
The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog.
After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence.
As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.
‘Excuse me!’ he called to the man. ‘Do you have any water?’
‘Yeah, sure, there’s a pump over there, come on in.’
‘How about my friend here?’ the traveller gestured to the dog.
‘There should be a bowl by the pump.’
They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it.
The traveller filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog.
When they were satisfied, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree.
‘What do you call this place?’ the traveler asked..
‘This is Heaven,’ he answered.
‘Well, that’s confusing,’ the traveller said. ‘The man down the road said that was Heaven, too.’
‘Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That’s hell.’
‘Doesn’t it make you mad for them to use your name like that?’
‘No, we’re just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind.’
[end of joke]
After chuckling my first reaction was somewhere near astonishment. Someone lives their whole life good enough (in a biblical sense) to qualify for eternal bliss in Heaven but immediately after realizing you’re dead you have to pass a trick test?
Sure this is a joke and not a new addition to the New Testament but to my (non-believer’s) eyes it is completely consistent with the promulgated scriptures. Every day on Earth everyone one of is presented with temptations and opportunities to fail the Big Test. As the Devil said to Arnold Schwarzennegger in End of Days, and I paraphrase, if God was such a great guy why does he allow life to be so difficult? No, he said, God isn’t that great, he just had a better press agent than me.
Of course we know Arnold is God’s warrior and the Devil will be banished by the end of Act 3, and he is. But that’s the movies, where we expect Hollywood to wrap up the evil and make everything nice in the end.
Here on Earth we have to choose every day whether to take the first shiny offer that comes along or stay with our dog and keep walking. Heck, now with the wonders of the internet we get to make that choice many times a day just by turning on email or surfing the web.
In End of Days more than one priest insists that the only way to defeat the Devil in his hour of possible triumph is faith. God will protect us if we only believe He will. Have you seen that movie? Plenty of faithful folks, and even innocent (or rather, uninvolved, just walking down the street or praying in church) folks get slaughter as collateral damage (to bring up another ultra-violent Arnold movie).
Movie or not, isn’t that what life is like? In yesterday’s paper I saw that nine California firefighters died when the helicopter they were riding in crashed on route to one of the big fires we get every summer. Hurricane Katrina killed how many reasonably good people? And we can’t even count how many civilians have died in Iraq and Afghanistan in the crossfire.
So, circling back to the original point, we may enjoy an eternal life of bliss after the pains, joys and monotony of this brief span. But only if, in a last moment of thirst and confusion, we make one last correct choice. Amen.
BillSaysThis 