The Club With No Standards

The Question:

I must be the worst Christian in the world. I really believe in Jesus and I want to do what’s right, but every time I get around my old friends I forget all about Jesus and end up following the crowd. How can I stop being so weak?

The Answer:

You probably can’t. You sound like a needy, whiny baby with no self discipline or respect.

“Worst Christian in the World?” Fancy yourself much? How about, normal Christian like everybody else Christian in the entire frigging world? Christianity is built on the proposition that everybody, from the saints on down, is flawed, weak, and unworthy of God’s “rewards”. It’s in all of the handouts. All you have to do is keep failing, keep asking for forgiveness for failing, and, when it’s all over, you magically get transported to heaven anyway, just because you “believed”.

Don’t sweat it, everything is on track. Lucky for you, you belong to one of the least accountable religions man ever invented.

Why To Behave

The Question:

I’ve tried and tried to be the kind of person God expects me to be, but I just can’t do it. God must be very disappointed in me. I want to go to Heaven when I die, but I’ve about given up hope.

The Answer:

The good news is, there’s no heaven to get into, so you can rest easy on that account. The bad news is, if you’ve been a terrible person during your one lifetime, that’s going to be the legacy you have.

The question you need to answer for yourself is, do you think you’ve been a terrible person, or do you just think you’ve been a terrible person according to the standards of imaginary God? Because if it’s the former, you need to sort yourself out. If it’s the latter, you can just go ahead and cut yourself a break.

Some of the Bible’s admonitions, like don’t murder people, are morally sound. Others, like kiss imaginary God’s ass every day, are nonsensical. Still others, like honor your mother and father, are conditional depending on whether or not your mother and father conducted themselves honorably. And still others, like kill your disobedient children, are clearly immoral.

There are far better guides for moral behavior than the Bible, including your conscience if you feel you have one. You need to figure out what’s important and how you should behave in order to be a good person. Some think the absence of punishment/reward system in an afterlife will keep people from behaving properly; perhaps in some cases it will, but as your case demonstrates, belief in such a system isn’t enough to motivate people like you. My feeling is that morality based on punishment and reward isn’t morality at all. You should do good because it’s right and avoid evil because its wrong, regardless of the consequences, and not because an imaginary God or his supposed intermediaries set themselves up as gatekeepers to an imaginary afterlife.

Eternal Misery

The Question:

My mother was always a worrier, and she also had a lot of health problems. She died a few months ago and I know she’s in Heaven, but is she really happy there? I wonder about this. Maybe she still worries about us, or still has her aches and pains.

The Answer:

First of all, a lot of folks will dispute your claim to “know” she’s in heaven. The nearly universal answer among atheist answer is, there is no heaven to be in; death is final. The answer for many Christian denominations is, she has to wait to be called on the day of judgement, which hasn’t happened yet and won’t until Jesus finally shows up again. (They call it the second coming, but if you think about it it would actually be the third.) Of course there are a lot of other religions in the world, like Islam, who will say she isn’t in heaven because she followed the wrong religion. There are also many Christian denominations, like the Baptists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who say she won’t be there if she didn’t belong to their specific denomination. You may feel very strongly that your mother is in heaven, but you don’t actually know, any more than my knowing (that is to say, feeling very strongly) that I’m going to win the lottery someday makes it true.

I’m not trying to make you feel bad about this; we’re all in the same boat of not really knowing. Any of our versions of what happens after death could be true, though some (such as non-existence) are far likelier that others. The real answer could be something none of us have ever thought of.

Your question, though, points up one of the real problems with the idea of heaven: why do we think we would be happy there? It’s my contention (and the contention of many others) that it is only the certainty of death, and the possibility that it could happen at any time, that give’s life meaning; life without death would have no purpose and no joy. There would be no urgency about doing anything because you always have tomorrow. If you can’t die, why do anything? And if you are doing things, how long would it take before even the most fun and satisfying things you liked to do became boring and monotonous? A thousand years, a million? Many people end up bored now, when they only have to fill a hundred years or less.

That’s, of course, assuming we have any autonomy in heaven. Many people picture an afterlife of sitting around doing things we don’t enjoy NOW: playing harps, working in the vineyards of the lord, while singing the praises of our despotic overlord all day long. Knowing, at the same time, in another kingdom, he is busy overseeing the eternal torture millions of unfortunate souls, including some of our friends and relatives, who didn’t toe the line when they were alive. How many years before that becomes drudgery, and we begin to hate this two-faced monster if we didn’t already? I’d say not very much time at all.

I raised this issue with my religious brother once, and he conceded that we wouldn’t be very happy in heaven the way we are now, much as your mother might not be with her aches and pains and propensity for worry. He replied with the standard Christian reply that we would be getting new bodies in heaven, free of all our Earthly maladies, but that also God would change our minds so that we wouldn’t mind millions of years of doing whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing up there. Which seems to me to be saying, when we get to Heaven we aren’t going to be ourselves. And if we’re not going to be ourselves, but rather become beings without personal desires or feelings, in what sense will “we” be in Heaven at all? It will be some pale shadow of ourselves that might as well be dead. Indeed, would be better off without feeling or existence, which is the afterlife I expect.

Modern Transportation

The Question:

I suppose I’ve given my life to Jesus dozens of times, but I still worry about my salvation. I don’t really feel like I’m going to go to Heaven when I die. Am I always going to be like this?

The Answer:

According to the instruction manual, you only have to give your life to Jesus once. It’s like starting a car; once the engine turns over flipping the key in the lock repeatedly is just destroying the ignition system. Obviously, you don’t think the car ever actually started.

Gave my life to Jesus! Sinned. Gave my life to Jesus again! Sinned again! Crap! Jesus, one more time! Vroom! Dammit! Stalled again! START THE CAR FOR ME JESUS!

Yep, you’re probably always going to be like that. Some people just can’t keep a car running. Sometimes it’s their fault because they’re bad drivers, but sometimes -and I hope you will consider this possibility very seriously- sometimes it’s the car. You can keep trying to start this old car over and over again, and never get it running, or you can ditch it and go out and get a car that actually works. The car that runs won’t take you to heaven, because heaven isn’t on real road maps, but it can take you to all the interesting places that do exist, which is better than spending the next fifty years sitting by the side of the road going nowhere.

Rainbows and Butterflys

The Question:

When we die, does an angel accompany us into Heaven? I’ve heard this all my life, but is it really true? How do we know?

The Answer:

We don’t know. It seems highly unlikely though. It seems highly unlikely that there are angels or a Heaven. I suppose it’s possible, there just isn’t any evidence for it. It’s just as likely a puppy escorts us into Candyland, or a mongoose takes us up to the Eternal Ferris Wheel where we go around in circles forever. Nobody can stop you from believing whatever implausible scenario you want. The only thing we can actually observe from where we are when people die is lifeless bodies rotting, but it’s hard to bilk people out of their money preaching that.

Welcome to the Hotel California

The Question:

Will God forgive me because I no longer go to church? I really miss it, but I’m a lot older now and not in very good health, and just can’t get around like I used to. I even gave up driving a few months ago. Does God understand?

The Answer:

No.

Of course, you have to remember he didn’t understand when you went to church either, as He would have to actually exist in order to understand anything.

However, as long as you keep forking over cash to the scam artists fronting His alleged operations here on Earth, they’ll keep feeding your fantasies about the great afterlife waiting for you when you finally cash in your chips. Won’t that be grand! I can hardly wait myself!

Is Heaven Worth It?

The Question:

We’ve had some hard times since my husband lost his job and has only been able to find part-time work. Does God still expect us to give something to our church? I don’t want God to get mad at us, but money is really tight right now, and I don’t see how we can give anything.

The Answer:

Not only does God expect it, your salvation depends on it. Look at it this way: life on Earth is a mere meaningless piffle in and of itself, the whole point of it is to see who is worthy to spend eternity kissing god’s ass while toiling in his vineyards and singing his praises. That’s what matters, isn’t it? Surely you don’t think going without a toaster strudel or the extra doughnut once in a while is too great a sacrifice? Think of all those martyrs who had to prove their love for Jesus by getting crucified and fed to lions and burned at the stake, and you’re worried about keeping every dime in your grubby little hands? Really, forking over cash to Jesus is too much to ask? Enjoy your stay in Hell, Bub.

So, obviously, since you begrudge Jesus His fair share of your lucre, even though He needs it to maintain His house and His faithful servants and also His outreach programs to wherever Your denomination has decided to infect next with His Word, and are most certainly going to Hell, let’s take a second to parse out the logic of this.

God is all-knowing and all-seeing: therefore He knew you were going to run into financial trouble even before you knew it. He also knew you would decide to stiff Him once the money got tight. So, He also knew you were going to fail the test and that He would be sending You to Hell. There just weren’t any other options.

However, at the same time He gave you Free Will, because He doesn’t want to be surrounded in Heaven by sycophants who don’t want to be there. That would upset Him greatly. You have to love Him voluntarily, or else He just can’t get off on it. So even though He already knew what choice you were going to make, it’s your fault for not making the other choice.Because even if you have Free Will you’re only allowed to make one choice, or else. On the other hand, choosing the path of faith doesn’t lead to great results either. if you consider rejecting your humanity in order to spend eternity sucking up to a monster like God an eternity worth having, I have to wonder about you. What kind of God claims to love you unconditionally, while putting a condition like you must love Him first on it? What kind of Deity would torture all of HIs foreordained failures in Hell for ETERNITY rather than just, say, causing them to cease to be after He finished judging them? Does His massive ego require the soothing sounds of humans screaming in agony in one ear to counterbalance the celestial zombie chorus of his braindead angels in the other? Where is love in any of that?

I think you can see now that ultimately the problem is your lack of faith. You don’t believe in God enough to accept that He’s either going to take care of you and bring you through your current troubles to a better place here on Earth before the shit hits the fan in the End Times, or He isn’t going to take care of you here and your death by starvation as a homeless person is part of His plan and you’ll get your reward as an eternal boot-licking brown-noser in Heaven. So you need to do one of two things: bury your head in the sand and double down on faith, or stop groveling before this illogical imaginary being of man’s creation, open your eyes and grow the fuck up.

Heaven on Earth

The Question:

What happens when we die? Or can we really know? I’ve never thought about death very much, but my aunt died the other day, and it’s made me stop and think. Does death end everything?

The Answer:

Death doesn’t end everything, it just ends the person who died. When you did everything else goes on without you, just like before. Only without you being aware of it.

This is not a pleasant thing to think about for most people. The main saving grace is that you won’t have the unpleasantness of thinking about it after you die, because you’ll no longer be doing any thinking. It’s only a problem to think about while you’re alive. The best solution is to not spend very much time thinking about it, but if you feel you must, keep in mind thinking about it is only a temporary problem that will solve itself when you die. If you remind yourself of that every time your mind goes there, it will be less horrifying.

Many people resist taking this path. They cannot imagine a universe without them in it. In a sense they are correct; not in the sense that a universe can’t exist without them, but in the sense that the ability to imagine requires them to be in it. The unwillingness to let go of their own perception of their intertwined state with reality has led to all sorts of imaginings about immortal souls and other worlds after death and benevolent and evil gods rewarding and punishing people based on what they did in the real world. Probably the fantasy of an immortal soul preceded the fantasy of a system of eternal rewards and punishments, as the second idea is a refinement on the first. If you’re going to live eternally, you don’t want to be surrounded by the same sort of assholes you were surrounded with on Earth. Also, making up some eternal punishments as a justification for your moral code might make people pay more attention to it than some moral code where the stakes aren’t so high. So, win-win.

Fear of death can be a great motivator. Knowing that we don’t have unlimited time to do what we want ought to propel us to live the best lives we can. Death -or actually finite time- is the only thing that gives live meaning. Unfortunately, people taking the religious path can cheat themselves out of the gift of meaning by taking the significance of death out of their lives entirely. Conversely, people who take the shortness and cosmic meaninglessness of our lives (and the lack of divine punishment) to mean there is no reason not to lead lives of substance abuse, debauchery, and even crime; will be scarcely better off. If one values the length of one’s life, and the security and pleasantness of living in a decent society, it should be clear to most that the path of hedonism will lead neither to longevity or happiness.

The only immortality we have is what we leave behind. Our works, our reputations, our children, and the world.

Our Appearance In Heaven

The Question:

What will we look like when we get to heaven? Will we wear white robes, for example, like I’ve heard some people say? And will we be able to recognize each other? I’ve always been curious about this. — R.W.

Billy’s Answer:

The Bible doesn’t answer all of our questions, including what exactly we’ll look like. But we will have new and perfect bodies that never age, become weak, or die, because they will be like Christ’s. This is because of Jesus’ death and resurrection which conquered all sin and sickness and death. They will also be recognizable even if they are indescribably glorious. Just make sure you are actually going, by giving your life to Jesus.

My Answer:

I probably wouldn’t stay up too many nights trying to figure this out, since my expectation is that we are at the moment residing in the only bodies we will ever have, which are not designed for a reboot.

The Bible seems to indicate that the basis for our “celestial” super-spiffy bodies will be our old Earthenware models, since, on the day of judgement, we are to rise from our graves and float upwards, at least those of us who actually have remains remaining. (Pity the fools who had the bad luck to die centuries ago and have since turned to dust, or were lost at sea, or been cremated).

One of the difficulties, apart from the one about actually having immortal, never aging physical bodies, indescribably glorious or otherwise, is the question of what age we will be. Most of us, I am sure, would opt for something in our prime, somewhere between twenty and forty, but we might wish our grandparents to remain older looking, and our children to remain younger. Our children and grandparents might have other ideas. And pity the poor babies and children who died young; spending eternity pursuing childish interests while the rest of us discuss heavenly affairs with the Creator and our peers. Fortunately, an absence of heaven resolves these issues.

Dying is a bummer, but it is the natural order of things. Pretending it isn’t final may be a comfort, but it trivializes life. If we truly believe in our own immortality, purchased simply by declaring devotion to a wandering teacher, why do we fear our own death and grieve at the death of others?

The goal of our lives ought to be finding meaning in the here and now, and time spent in the company of those who teach the opposite is time lost, and you won’t get that time back. Ever.

If you have a hankering to wear a white robe, this is the time and place to do it.