Choose How You Want To Go To Hell

Here is a post that begins with a joke about religion. If you are sensitive to religion jokes, you may want to skip this post.

A Protestant missionary went to Alaska to convert the Eskimos. He tried to persuade these people to attend church on Sunday, and said if they didn’t, they would go to hell.

Then a Seventh Day Adventist came to the same Eskimos, and tried his hand at converting them. He said if they didn’t attend Church on Saturday, they would go to hell.

This confused the Eskimos so much that they didn’t go to church at all.
When the missionaries asked the Eskimos why they didn’t attend church either Saturday or Sunday, they replied, “We’ll go to hell the Eskimo way.”

If you read this far and were offended, my apologies. But it’s a convenient set-up to an episode from my own past.

I was raised and grew up in a Baptist Church that was Fundamentalist. In those days we didn’t use the term “Fundamentalist,” we didn’t even know the term. But we were thoroughly steeped in what the word stood for: faith in the literal truth of the Bible, and a life lived in strict accordance to Biblical teachings. For Baptists, this meant accepting Jesus as Savior, and being baptized in water to acknowledge death to the old sinful self, and rebirth to the new, “saved” person.

Most Baptists in my church were skeptical of other denominations that considered themselves Christians, and could be catty about it (literally). Someone asked a Baptist if the newborn kittens in their house were Catholic or Protestant. “They were Catholic for two weeks, but then they opened their eyes and became Protestants.” Baptists criticized Catholics for infant baptism, because a baby could not make a conscious decision to choose Jesus as savior.

Those who did not make this choice would be condemned to hell. That was the kind of religious commitment I took with me to college, and thought that my studies would confirm my faith that the Baptist Church and the Bible were the keys to a true Christian life, and to capital T Truth.

Even as a young Baptist, some questions about eternal salvation and eternal damnation had bothered me. For example, what about the people who had never heard of Jesus and Christianity? Were they doomed to hell forever?

In coursework at Knox College, other questions arose that further eroded my confidence in Baptist absolute truth. An anthropology course taught me that every culture had its own way of life, and my own American culture was just one among many ways of life.

A class in world religions opened my eyes to Shinto, and the veneration of nature—even trees and mountains can be holy. Biblical religion, like in Baptist teachings, saw veneration of the natural world as idolatry (such as the biblical example of worshipping the golden calf). American Indians, too, had their own distinctive patterns of living in harmony with the natural world.

A class in my sophomore year with John Collier, Sr. turned into a life-transforming event. He had become Commissioner of Indian Affairs under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs had a policy of eradicating Native American identity: prohibiting native languages and religious rites, in order to Americanize, and Whitemanize them, in the process converting them to Christianity. Collier supported the use of native languages and tribal ceremonies, and eliminated the policy of converting Native Americans to Christianity. (I recommend his book, Indians of the Americas.)

Increasingly, I found myself drawn into alternative modes of viewing life, and my absolute Baptist faith in absolute Truth crumbled.

For me, the most important question became, not what defined the Truth, but whether there was one overarching Truth. And if there was no absolute Truth, then how could we understand all the religions in the world? This second question, an exploration of how to comprehend the amazing diversity of religious traditions in world history, is what made me decide to go on for a Ph.D. at The University of Chicago and pursue the study of religion. It took me quite a while to figure this out, and I am still in this process today, but my shift in commitment can be summed up quickly.

Theology starts with God as the Absolute, and how it orders faith and life for humans. The humanistic study of religion starts with the religious life of all humans, asking how we can understand the spiritual fulfillment they find in their respective traditions.

The humanistic approach will never yield an answer to questions of absolute truth, but may lead us to helpful insights as to how we can better understand people different from us, and to appreciate their ways of life. Too many times, differences lead to misunderstandings, and even contribute to violence and war. We don’t need to enumerate here the instances in which one religion is pitted against another, or times when differing commitments within branches of one tradition lead to violence.
The best part of my Baptist upbringing was the firm conviction that all people are equal under God. In Havana I grew up in an all-white community and never had contact with other races. At Knox I met people of different ethnic backgrounds, and made a lifelong friendship with Jerry Long, who is Black, and also a Baptist. I attended the First Baptist Church in Galesburg, which, like my Havana church, was lily white. I wanted to ask Jerry to come to this church, and talked to the associate pastor there about asking Jerry to attend. The nervous avoidance of an answer told me what I had anticipated, that the church wouldn’t welcome him. I was upset, saying if he could not attend, then I wouldn’t. Jerry decided to be part of a local church whose members were Black, so he made it unnecessary for me to make an issue of his attendance. I wonder if the members of this all-white church, should they make it through the pearly gates of Heaven, would insist on a separate space for whites.

This post began with a tease that you should choose how you want to go to hell. It could also be phrased as choosing how you want to go to heaven. In my novel, No Pizza in Heaven, identical twin brothers lead very different religious lives. One is a conservative revival preacher. The other is a computer jockey who develops a program to create your own religion. This is a dramatic situation that will lead the reader to view his or her spiritual choices in a new light.

I invite you to enjoy the book and the personal challenges of these brothers.