Heaven: FAQ

Congratulations! You are reading this because you died, and I, God, judged you worthy of Heaven. You probably have a lot of questions, but I’m awfully busy and don’t have time to answer them in person. This document should answer your main concerns.

Q: Am I in Heaven?

A: Not yet. To enter Heaven, you must read this document and agree to its terms.

Q: What is Heaven?

A: Pure and constant happiness for all eternity.

Q: Will I be reunited with my loved ones?

A: Heaven is total happiness, and your loved ones, no matter how wonderful, would occasionally disappoint, annoy, anger or otherwise cause you suffering. Heaven has a zero tolerance policy for such emotions, thus you will not be reunited.

Q: Can you make it so my loved ones never cause me suffering?

A: I could, but that would mean changing their identities to make you
happy, which is hardly fair to them.

Q: In Heaven, will I get answers to the questions I always wondered about? Did the-one-who-got-away still think about me? Did I miss my true calling in life? Did aliens land in Roswell, New Mexico?

A: All answers lead to more questions, and spending eternity questioning your life would spiral into self-doubt, regret and depression.

Q: In Heaven, do I get the material possessions I always wanted but could not afford?

A: To eliminate jealousy, there are no personal belongings in Heaven.

Q: Why can’t everyone have the same possessions?

A: Forced equality makes people as unhappy as natural inequality. That’s why I had to cancel Happyball.

Q: What is Happyball?

A: It’s a sport I invented similar to baseball except everyone is good at it and on the same team.

Q: That sounds terrible.

A: It lasted only half an inning. People got bored after the 35th consecutive home run.

Q: Will I get to hear Beethoven himself play piano?

A: No. Also, Shakespeare won’t write you a sonnet, Picasso won’t paint you a portrait, and Einstein won’t teach you General Relativity. It’s unfair for geniuses to be expected to ply their crafts like party tricks for eternity. Also, Picasso’s portrait would make you angry.

Q: What do we eat in Heaven?

A: Obviously, Heaven could have only the finest and most delicious foods imaginable. Unfortunately, by eating them every day, you would quickly become accustom to and disappointed by them. That is why there is no food in Heaven.

Q: So what is Heaven?

A: Pure and constant happiness for all eternity.

Q: Why will I be happy in Heaven?

A: Because you’ll play the harp.

Q: But I don’t know how to play the harp.

A: It wouldn’t matter if you did. Before entering Heaven, I strip your brain down to just the part of its dopamine pathway that is activated by plucking harp strings. It’s a very time-consuming operation that only I can perform, which is why I can’t intervene in affairs on Earth.

Q: But that means losing my entire identity. How could God, an omnipotent being, create such an awful Heaven?

A: Never in your life did you experience sustained joy without any suffering. Surely you realized something fundamental would have to change for Heaven to be eternal happiness.

Q: I thought once the bad people were gone, everyone would get along.

A: Two good people can still bother each other. Here’s the problem: I created you in my image, but there’s only one of me and I didn’t realize that a bunch of mes wouldn’t always get along.

Q: Heaven sounds terrible. Can I go somewhere else?

A: If you want, I can send you to Hell.

Q: What is Hell like?

A: Hell is going to Heaven but keeping your brain.

Q: So my options are to lose my entire sense of self but experience pure unending joy, or to keep my identity but be surrounded by brain-dead harp pluckers?

A: Correct. Please make your decision and sign at the bottom. Also, if it makes you feel better, aliens did crash land in Roswell. All three died on impact and are in Heaven playing the harp.

Catholic Church Woos Anglicans

For those who don’t know, the Catholic Church recently changed their rules, making it easier for Anglicans to convert to Catholicism, but still keep many of their religious traditions.

Here is a transcript of the debate within the Catholic Church that led to this decision.

…

Pope Benedict XVI: I have solved the Catholic church’s greatest problem!

Camerlengo Tarcisio Bertone: World poverty?

Pope: No. How to get more converts to Catholicism.

Camerlengo: That’s good too. What’s your plan?

Pope: Well, a lot of Anglicans don’t like that their church allows gay clergy, so I’m thinking we woo them to become Catholic.

Camerlengo: Excellent idea, your Excellency! We shall convince them to join us, the true Church of Christ and forsake their heretical Anglican liturgy and shameful practice of allowing priests to get married.

Pope: No. I’m thinking we’ll let them keep all that, but we’ll just count them as Catholic.

Camerlengo: But isn’t it our rules and traditions that make us Catholic?

Pope: Nah. What really makes us Catholic is our disdain for the gays. Many Anglicans also dislike gay people and we need more converts, so what’s the harm in letting them join us while also ignoring our two thousand years of tradition.

Camerlengo: I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense…

Pope: And I’m not stopping there. Most Orthodox Jews also disapprove of gay people, so I’m going to start counting them as Catholics as well.

Camerlengo: But they don’t even accept Jesus Christ as the son of God!

Pope: Stop worrying about details! What really matters is that they hate gays. We also need to canonize some new saints to highlight the importance of homophobia in Catholicism.

Camerlengo: Do you have someone in mind?

Pope: Eminem. Listen to these lyrics of his, “My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge. And I’ll stab you in the head, whether you’re a fag or les. A homosex, hermaph, or a transeves. Homophobic? Hey fags, the answer’s yes.” Beautiful stuff. I wonder if we can add that to Corinthians somewhere.

Camerlengo: Your Excellency, don’t you think this is a little extreme?

Pope: We must do something to draw more sheep into our flock.

Camerlengo: If we’re looking to expand, wouldn’t it make more sense to open our doors to the gay community? Didn’t Jesus preach about love?

Pope: But gay couple can’t have babies. That’s a sin against God.

Camerlengo: Neither can an infertile couple. Should we discriminate against all infertile people?

Pope: Of course not. Infertile people aren’t gross like the gays.

Camerlengo: Ugly people are pretty gross. Should we discriminate against ugly people?

Pope: No, because ugly people can still have babies.

Camerlengo: So we should discriminate against gays and ugly, infertile people?

Pope: That might work.

Camerlengo: Have you looked in the mirror lately? You look like a Mogwai that’s eaten after midnight.

Pope: Need I remind you how infallible I am?

God’s Deadline

According to Jewish tradition, God uses the last month in the Hebrew calendar to judge every person on Earth and write their fate for the next year in the Book of Life, which he closes on Yom Kippur, sealing humanity’s destiny. For Jews this is the holiest time of the year when they seek forgiveness for all their sins committed in the last year, but for God this is the busiest time of the year when he tries to meet an unrealistic writing deadline.

God: So there’s a 3 here, a 2 in the corner and both are those are 1′s, which means…

Archangel Mikha’el: God! You’ve been playing minesweeper for the last hour. I knew switching from parchment to computers was a bad idea. You’ve got to stop procrastinating and get back to writing.

God: I deserve breaks! Writing a year’s worth of stuff to happen to 6,785,801,775 people is a lot of work. I don’t want to burn out.

Mikha’el: Let me see what you have so far.

God: It’s still a first draft. I’m not ready for other people to…

Archangel Mikha’el pushes God aside and reads off the screen.

Mikha’el: What do we have here. Benjamin Rosenberg gets laid off in November. He tries to take up cooking to fill his days but ends getting addicted to the soap opera Days of Our Lives. In February he meets Jennifer Blatt at a speed dating event, she gets pregnant and… oh come on God. Really?

God: What? What’s wrong with that?

Mikha’el: That’s the exact same thing you wrote for the last 40,000 people!

God: Yeah, but they’ll never meet each other, so what’s the harm if I double dip to save some time? I’ve got a lot of people to write about, there’s going to be some overlap.

Mikha’el: Okay, but you wrote that same fate for Shi Bing Nu. He’s a farmer in rural China. Where’s he supposed to find a speed dating event in the Qinghai province?

God: Fine! I’ll change his to an arranged marriage. You happy now?

Mikha’el: Now that wasn’t so hard, was it, God?

God: I’ve been writing for a week straight. I’m so tired. I need some Mountain Dew. Where’d my Mountain Dew go?

Mikha’el: No! No more Mountain Dew for you, God. Last year you drank a twelve pack and had people invent sports like Glacial Unicycling, Freefall Rollerblading and Rocketpack Badminton.

God: But the Henderson family really enjoyed Rocketpack Badminton!

Mikha’el: Until Grandma crashed into the side of their house. Seriously, Rocketpack Badminton was easily the worst idea you’ve ever thought of, and you thought up the cockroach.

God: What do you want from me? Look at the great writers throughout history. Homer only composed two epic poems. Shakespeare only wrote 37 plays. Twin Peaks only had one good season. I’ve been writing for 5770 years, I jumped the shark centuries ago. Just look at the Protestant reformation. I ran out of ideas so I introduced a new religion. How was I supposed to know it would ruin the dynamic and alienate fans?

Mikha’el: Come on God, focus. Look you’re doing pretty good, you’re already halfway done!

God: I’m only halfway done?!? I am never going to finish in time. Can’t I get an extension?

Mikha’el: No. You were the one who set the deadline for Yom Kippur, otherwise you said you would never finish.

God: Yeah, I know. But I made that rule back in my fire and brimstone days when there were only a few million people and most died young from plague, famine or poor medical practices. Those were better days, that’s for sure.

Mikha’el: Okay, God. I’m going to help you for a bit. Maybe bouncing ideas off someone else will get the juices flowing. Next up on your list is Wening Wulandari. She owns a food cart in Indonesia. What can we do with her?

God: Indonesia, huh? Isn’t that volcano Krakatoa in Indonesia?

Mikha’el: I don’t like where you’re going with this…

God: All I’m saying is, one really giant eruption and then I’m one hundred thousand people closer to hitting my deadline.

Mikha’el: You promised to lay off the large scale disaster for a few years. They were becoming a a writing crutch for you.

God: Okay, good point. But how about a small eruption, just two thousand dead? How’s that sound?

Mikha’el: Okay, that’s reasonable. So we’re done with Wulandari and her whole family. Next up is Fernando Gomez. He lives in Colombia and works as a mid-level bureaucrat in the Ministry of Transport. Let’s do something fun with him, maybe he wins the lotto?

God: I don’t know, that sounds like hack writing. How about this instead: He gets laid off in November. He tries to take up cooking to fill his days but ends getting addicted to the telenovela El Baile de la Vida. In February he meets Jennifer Blanco at a speed dating event, she gets pregnant and they marry two months later.

Mikha’el: That’s the best you’ve got?

God: It’s that or a huge earthquake.

Mikha’el: Fine. Looks like 5770 is the year speed dating really takes off.