Image by kibuyu via Flickr
[This is a story by my brother, Bernard Russick. It is a parable about what life may be like after death—or now, for that matter.]
Call me Bern. A few years back when life was too much for me, I hiked out to a box canyon in a remote area. It was a beautiful spot, mountains, trees, the birds were singing and the bubbling of a spring was a soothing background. I took a deep breath, a sigh of relief, and pulled out my Sig for a little target practice. Turns out it only took one shot to accomplish my task.
As I approached the exit to the canyon a man met me. He said he had been waiting, suspecting that I may be going his way on the journey out. He said it was not what I thought. That there were many layers here.
The first layer was Alpha Dog Heaven. He introduced me to a man named Bill. Bill told me that he was once the CEO of a major corporation. One day after a large layoff a man approached him in the parking lot and dispatched him, and that is how he arrived here. He said that in executive heaven the people are very competent, very aggressive, and very competitive. They want to get everything done. They want it fast, cheap, and they want it now. They are paid enormous salaries, have many very nice things: big houses, fast, luxury, sports cars and beautiful wives or husbands, and their beautiful children are educated at the finest schools.
“Just like I used to be,” he said. “But I got tired of it and now am out here picking apples. I find it pays less, but there is something reassuring about doing practical work, and it is real peaceful. Besides, the apple pickers get along, help each other, and share the results of their work. When I was in the mainstream of executive heaven, everyone was trying to tell everyone else what to do, and nothing was getting done. It’s because there are no workers, they’re all here in the orchard.”
As we walked on we came to a beautiful neighborhood. The houses were all large and new, the yards, well kept, the residents had new cars and seemed to get along with each other well. I stopped a clean cut teen and asked him about the neighbors and life there. He said it’s kind of like the heaven you hear about in Sunday school. Everyone has everything they need and people get along. There’s no crime and no disease nor disability. The kids are all good, they do what they are told, and have many activities. And while there are no drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes, there’s junk food that tastes delicious yet doesn’t make you fat or rot your teeth. All the husbands and wives are faithful to each other and attentive to their children. Everyone has a good job with good benefits and a retirement plan. In general, a peaceful place, there is no envy or greed, as everyone has everything they want, and if something else attracts them, they only need ask for it, and it is given unto them.
As we walked further I met a college student, he was off on his own, reading under a tree. I asked him how he liked the place.
”It’s good enough, you know. There is no pain or suffering here, and everyone gets along; however, I want something more.” He felt he needed a sense of adventure, risk and reward. “I’m curious about many things. I know choosing that path opens me to risk and injury, but still I’m drawn to the unknown, despite the risk. As a matter of fact, I long for it.”
Next, old Pete stopped by another layer, the church activity center. There was singing and praying, people playing cards and chess, also lots of people sitting at a table talking and eating. As I walked past the table I noticed that no one seemed all that happy. It turned out that that heaven wasn’t what they had been promised at all. It seems that they thought that many of the residents here must have lied to get in, they were obviously sinners in their past life and didn’t belong here with God’s people. The folks at the table were here for eternity but each one was busy examining the life of the person two seats down from them, speculating if any of the tales of their misdeeds were true. Apparently everyone was saved and taken care of, but there were a lot of people here who just didn’t belong, so they set up committees to weed them out. It took a lot of critical judgment to decide which gossip was true and which was just a false rumor about their friends. There seemed to be a lot of disapproval and disagreement but somebody had to do it, and they had eternity to get it done, so they were going to work hard at it till they were finished.
Pete approached a man sweeping the sidewalks and asked him how he was doing.
“Not too bad,” Ted said. “I used to chair one of the committees but a rumor got out about me ; it was a complete fabrication by a jealous person, but I was kicked off the committee anyway. Now I sweep the sidewalks and the driveway, and the funny thing is I’ve grown to like it.”
There was no status to the job but he got fed well, and it kept him in shape, and people appreciated not having to get all dusty.
” People are nice to me and I feel at peace, so not bad, not bad at all.”
The next stop was Heaven for Evangelical Vigilantes. Certain cells, the Skinhead Christian Über alles Militia, Allah’s Sacred Suicides, and Jihad for Jesus, were making plans for how they would punish a group of nonbelievers, fornicators and such. They quoted the sections of their sacred texts that justified their actions, and then, went about “God’s” work. Turns out that each sect was keeping an eye on all the individuals in the other sects to make sure they would stop all that sinning and worshiping of false idols. There were skirmishes from time to time, mostly non-terminal wounds, and even if they were killed, this was heaven so they would be back at it the next day, ready to go out and do it again if needed.
One of the methods used to punish sinners was to give them a virus that caused boils, it made the recipient itch terribly. Another was the use of chemicals to cause cancer. Sometimes they would use mud jacks to undermine houses from a distance and make it appear to be natural settling. Other times they would loosen the bolts on cars or tamper with lubricants, such that they would seemingly have wear related problems, these things could be done quickly while the occupant was inside a store. The damage would seem to be from poor maintenance and would cause breakdowns and create expense for the sinners. All of these punishments would be delivered without detection, thus avoiding any involvement of local authorities. They could be blamed on God, as a biblical form of punishment for their sins.
Though many of these people and their children became infected, after a month or two they would heal, so they would go about their mischief all over again. They also vandalized houses in ways that would also appear as natural wear and tear, or infest them with insects causing expense for those no-good sinners. When the holier-than-thou did not have enough to justify their “godly” actions, they would invent crimes for which the accused needed to be punished, knowing that no one would doubt the veracity of the “righteous.” The only catch here is that they were doing this to each other and didn’t realize it. These acts were always attributed to God’s will and were thus rationalized. They had a strong feeling of self-righteousness that kept them motivated to do God’s work so as to get into heaven when they died. Most didn’t realize that they were already in Evangelical Vigilante Heaven and hence, would probably keep this up for an eternity.
Pete and I walked around there for a bit, when we came upon another person keeping to himself. I asked him, Jeb, what was up. He said, ” I used to enjoy all the mischief and self-righteousness, but after a while people start doing it to you, as well, and you start to think that maybe ya missed the point somewhere, and what did Jesus really say anyway?”
Jeb realized that his actions were part of his hypocrisy. “Whether Jesus is God or not, is immaterial. We believe He is, and Jesus said, ‘Love thy neighbor as thy self’ not ‘get even.’ It is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord’. Hell, if God made all things, he can certainly punish sinners without our help.”
Jeb had finally forgiven his ex-wife for leaving him, and regardless of what the SRI, the Self Righteous Identity, said, he no longer was interested in the goings on of others. He decided he liked the peace of fishing, and besides, he was weary from all the hate. He said, “You know, there is a certain peace to forgiveness that I never realized. Being away from hate and suspicion is comforting.” Now he was at peace, willing to accept his life, and move on.
Preacher Heaven looked like a big courtyard with immaculately kept churches of many different denominations. Each Church had an attentive congregation and believed what the preacher was saying. None of the parishioners had any doubts or questioned the teachings. The interesting thing to me was that many of the churches had conflicting beliefs but mostly got along. I asked a man how things worked there. He told me, “You get what you believe and one of the rules is : Accept everyone else, even if they’re wrong, so it works ok—we get along. This is one of the few places in the universe where fundamentalists are only allowed to hurt their own kind. In our own communities we practice what we preach. There’s not a lot of interdenominational mixing unless you believe in that.” It seemed as people evolved, many became Unitarians, Buddhist, or just kind of hung out with people of like interests and more open beliefs. He went on to say, “As we grow, our freedom increases as long as we follow the basic rule of making the world better or at least not doing harm.”
There was an elegantly dressed, elderly woman sitting on a bench by some flowers. I asked her how she was. I sat down on the bench next to her. She started to speak.
When I first got here I was pretty happy knowing that I had led a good life and that what I taught was right. And don’t get me wrong, it’s nice that everyone gets along and isn’t too critical of conflicting beliefs, but I have come to realize something I’m not too happy about. You see, here, whatever you believe is true, and if every belief is true then they are all pretty meaningless. Especially if you are fundamentalist, we start to realize that believing in the words written by men as if they were written by God, is really a form of heresy. I have come to realize religious beliefs are not important; it all boils down to what you do and how you treat your fellow beings. It’s hard to let go after believing one thing is true your whole life though.
I sometimes miss the ceremony and the simplicity of the superstitious beliefs. Now I realize that they are there just for us and have nothing to do with God other than to provide us with a mechanism to relate to Her/Him/It (God has no gender and does not differentiate between men and women). I guess it comes down to this, God relates to us on our level not Hers. God realizes that we would never be capable of understanding Him. We are too small, the Universe much too complex, so, to give everyone the opportunity to realize their full potential, God relates to us in ways that we can understand, and on our own individual level.
You see, God doesn’t really make any of the laws that man attributes to Her. He tolerates them because She knows that they are doing it to keep the peace, but when their egos get involved, hateful religious laws arise. Each of us has a different intellect, education, and experience, which mold our view of things. Rocket scientists have a much different view than do aboriginal people who live off the land. Intelligent beings have always used a concept of God to explain what they do not understand. Neither understands everything, they just have a different portal to eternity. Neither is better or worse, just different.
She took a deep breath and just stared at me for a minute. I guessed she was finished with her discourse and waiting for a response from me, but I had nothing to say; I was just taking it all in. “The thing is,” she sighed, “I always thought my beliefs were better.” Then she turned back to the flowers.
Next we came upon what appeared to be a resort town. Fancy hotels and fashionably dressed people. It was strange because here the pharmacies sold over the counter what, on earth, had been controlled substances. This seemed odd to me, this being heaven and all. I talked to one of the residents and asked about it.
She told me that on earth she had been a prostitute and drug addict. Now she had plans to quit but just wasn’t ready. She no longer had to sell her body to support her habit but still suffered from poor self-esteem. She was really ashamed of her past and couldn’t face it sober. She told me that she came from an abusive home and one day ran away.
When she got to Atlanta a man and woman met her at the bus station and befriended her. They fed her and took care of her for a while and introduced her to drugs, which they told her would take away the pain of her old life. After she became dependent on them and the drugs, they started selling her on the street to pay for her upkeep. She had no place to go, and these people were the first that were kind to her in a long time. She became stuck in another life full of abuse. Finally one night after being raped and beaten by a client, she succumbed to her wounds and an overdose. It turned out the client was an important member of the community and this had to be kept out of the news, there was no mention of her death/murder in the paper and she woke up here.
She told me this is a much better place. This was a community of people similar to herself who helped each other. Many had learned to get over what had happened in the past and were clean now; they became counselors for the newcomers and dedicated their new lives to helping other victims of this awful abuse. She told me that she was eternally grateful for their help and hoped that someday she would be able to do the same, but she was new here and still recovering from the trauma of the life she had been living.
“They are nice to me and don’t judge me. They understand that none of us chose that life—we were abandoned to it. Society on earth was too judgmental and would not allow us to ever get over it or even forget it, so we, as best we could, hid—at least in our minds. Now we actually have a chance. Once you are rehabilitated here, the record is destroyed, and you get to have the type of life you choose, guided by counselors who teach and nurture you.”
Pete and I walked on and came to a school. The school was divided into two parts. One group was busy organizing events and fundraisers. They were talking to government officials and TV reporters. They seemed happy, consumed in their self-importance. The second group were teaching classes helping and nurturing students. It seemed this group really liked their work. I stopped and asked one why were they so happy.
“This is like heaven,” she beamed. “We get to teach and nurture kids all day; we are treated well, and don’t have to deal with the government bureaucracy or the parents. We have good benefits and are taken care of. When we get tired, we get time off, and when we get bored after a while teaching the same curriculum, we get to go to school to learn new things. Life is meaningful, everyone is so nurturing, and we help each other.” She smiled and touched my arm. I felt a warmth spread through me.
Pete and I kept going; we passed Philosopher Heaven, Musician Heaven, Doctor Heaven, Engineer Heaven, Tradesman Heaven, even Lawyer and Used Car Salesmen Heaven and so many others. Each were variations on a theme, mostly of like personalities and related talents, some complimentary sometimes competitive. Some seemed happy; some were a little stressed.
”So, Pete,” I said, “I guess, based on my life and the way it ended I’m not bound for any of these heavens. . . No sense in delaying the inevitable. Now that we’re past all the heavens, where is hell anyway?”
Old Pete he scratches his chin and says, “Things are not quite what you were led to believe.”
He kept walking then turned, seeing that I had stopped, “There really is little difference between heaven and hell, as a matter of fact, for each of us they are the same place. God knows we are human, we are weak, and we make mistakes. Heaven or hell, as the case may be, is within you.” He walked back to me and touched my arm in the same place the teacher did, “When you leave that world, you come to another, which is arranged around how you are and what you need to learn to be happy and get along with others. Many times that means that you are put in a group of beings like yourself with the same goals, desires, and attitudes till you realize that many of those things are harmful. As you learn this and change, you are separated from the group. You are then transitioned to the next group. Even heaven is not a constant, God wants you to grow, to learn and evolve, to move along on a continuous journey. He is not petty like the sentient beings he created. Besides, if heaven were this idyllic place where you got everything you wanted just by asking for it, it would soon seem like a hell where you were constantly being bored to death.”
He put his hand to his chin again, “I’m not sure what to do with you, we don’t get that many people who have let go of their fears and actually thought about it. For the believers, we give them what they expect. You, you don’t expect anything. Would you like to start out with the group of seekers?”
I said that would be good. As we walked on I heard a few dogs barking and I realized this would be a good place to start.
Tags: addiction, allegory, alpha dog, Christ, Christianity, church, compassion, Dante, death, Divine Comedy, evangelical, fear, God, happiness, heaven, hell, irony, Jesus, jihad for Jesus, love, nature of reality, nurture, Purgatory, religion, Religion and Spirituality, revenge, self-righteousness, spiritual growth, St. Peter, teaching, true believers, truth, vigilantes, vindictiveness
I’m fond of quoting Jesus for saying “I am the vine, you are the branches.” If a branch stops seeing himself as the branch, he might just realize he’s the vine too. Or, another metaphor from further east, if the wave stopped identifying with its waveness, it might sense that it is the ocean itself.
