Be careful what you wish for!

          I recently was subjected to a too loud, too long,  Sunday  rant, wherein the speaker gave a very brief summary of the tenets of several of the world's great religions and their view of the afterlife, if any. He elided over Judaism and Islam,  because.....well, I'm not really sure why, but I suspect it's because it's difficult to distinguish those religions'  concepts of "what it takes to move on up to the big house" from Christianity's view, and he wanted to hold out Christianity, specifically belief in Jesus  as  (his words)" the only way to get to heaven." I think by omitting Judaism and Islam he was trying to avoid dealing with the "So belief in God isn't enough?" question. He was fairly specific (and incorrect in several points)  about  others he mentioned - Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism. 

 

      The whole thing, as intellectually and theologically superficial as it was, set me to thinking about a book  I've heard of but never read,  "Five People you Meet in Heaven", by Mitch Albom. As the title churned around in my mind, I began to reflect on their statement regarding only Christians being certain of a supernatural, eternal, and really nifty reward. That prompted me to reflect on what this meant from a world view standpoint regarding who you (by this person's definition of believing in Jesus as the only way) would be likely to meet if there were a  heaven and if you went there, as well as who you definitely would not see because they were Atheists, Agnostic, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sihks, Taoists, or just heathens in general.  This list might be surprising, and perhaps alarming,  to some who put stock in the propositions  I outlined from the sermon.

          "Many people you might and might not meet in Heaven" - a partial listing!

          Atheists who wouldn't make it:

Douglas Adams ,Woody Allen, ,Isaac Asimov,,George Carlin, Francis Crick, Rodney Dangerfield, Richard Dawkins, Albert Einstein, Jodie Foster,  Bill Gates, Bob Geldof,  Robert Heinlein, Ernest Hemingway, Katharine Hepburn, Christopher Hitchens, Billy Joel, Diane Keaton, Hugh Laurie, Richard Leakey, John Lennon, ,Barry Manilow, Sir Ian McKellen, Arthur Miller, Claude Monet, Julianne Moore, Randy Newman, Mike Nichols, Jack Nicholson, Ronald  Reagan Jr., Rob Reiner, Gene Roddenberry, Andy Rooney, Salman Rushdie, Annika Sorenstam, Vincent van Gogh, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Ted Williams, Steve Wozniak,

          Agnostics and/or self professed skeptics you won't see

Margaret Atwood, Antonio Banderas, Alexander Graham Bell, ,Warren Buffett,, Dick Cavett, ,Charles Darwin,  ,Enrico Fermi, ,Morgan Freeman, ,Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, James Taylor, Henry Fonda, Irving Berlin, Sting, John Steinbeck, Gene Kelly, Gustav Mahler, Guiseppe Verdi, Elie Weisel, Dr. Oz, Paul McCartney, Neil Armstrong, Sandra Bullock, Michael Caine, Arthur C. Clarke, George Clooney, Clint Eastwood, Danny Elfman, alph Waldo Emerson,  Mikhail Gorbachev, Stephen Hawking, ,Sir Edmund Hillary, Thomas Jefferson, Angelina Jolie, Mark Knopfler, Stan Lee,  Abraham Lincoln, ,Thomas Paine, Natalie Portman, Christopher Reeve, Dr.Oliver Sacks, William Shatner, Neil Simon, Mira Sorvino, Donald Sutherland, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Gene Wilder,  

          Persons of other religions who do not acknowledge the divinity of Jesus (who, therefore, you also won't see)

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, in fact the entire Old Testament, Buddha,  Confucious,   Leonard Bernstein, Marc Chagall,  Baruch Spinoza, Maimonides,  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Julio Iglesias, Elizabeth Taylor, Alicia Silverstone, Barbara Streisand, Mandy Patinkin,  Harrison Ford,  Gwyneth Paltrow,  Michael Landon, Sarah  Jessica Parker,  Robert Downey, Jr.,  Paul Newman,  Cary Grant,  Bob Dylan,  Itzhak Perlman,  Isaac Stern, George and Ira Gershwin,  Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin  Herb Alpert,  Niels Bohr, Jonas Salk, Milton Hershey, Marcel Marceau,  Jerry Seinfeld,  Sarah Silverman,  The Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, Harvey Korman,  Steven Spielberg,  Mel Brooks,  Ben Stiller, Art Blakey, Muhammad Ali, Omar Khayyam, Omar Sharif, Dave Chappelle, M. Night Shamalyan, Jon McGlaughlin, J.D. Salinger, Ben Kingsley, Carlos Santana, Deepak Chopra,  George Harrison, Vijay Singh.    

 

          People you could see, being self identified Christians, therefore guaranteed a seat at the big table:

  Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, Gerry Adams, God's army in Thailand, Lord's Resistance army in Uganda, National Liberation Front of Tripura in India, anti-Semitic league in Romania, George C. Wallace,
the KKK (which claims to be a "white, protestant brotherhood")
Adolph Hitler, John Wayne Gayce, Torquemada, "Bloody" Mary Tudor, Vlad the Impaler, The Perpetrators of Crusades I through IV, Cortes, Pizzarro, Columbus, de Soto and every Spanish Conquistadore and Indian slayer, Every Pope who ordered anti-Protestant massacres.

          It's too bad, really;  Imagine a scenario where Mel Brooks, Harvey Korman, , Sarah Silverman, Groucho Marx  and Adolph Hitler were together. Now that's a show I'd go to New York to see!