Heaven Is for Suckers

I can't think of a better example of the infantilization of theological thought than the current bestseller Heaven Is for Real by Todd Burpo. (Note: Burpo's coauthor, Lynn Vincent, ghostwrote Sarah Palin's recent Going Rogue, making this her second bestseller in a row.)

The unfortunately named Burpo is a small-town Nebraska pastor whose four-year-old son Colton, after being clinically "dead" for three minutes following an undiagnosed ruptured appendix, claimed to have visited Heaven -- and met not only his long-dead great-grandfather and miscarried sister but Jesus Himself.

Burpo's contention is that Colton can be taken at his word because he's never been prompted in any way. But let's be real: the boy's father is a pastor. And he's attended Sunday school, where he very likely was implanted with the traditional imagery of floating white clouds and Jesus on a throne, stigmata wounds and all. Plus any child in any household absorbs all sorts of information without anyone intending it, including tidbits of family lore and recent sorrows like the loss of a baby sibling.

Burpo's most frequently applied argument for the authenticity of Colton's claims is that the child reported seeing his earthbound father during the period that he was "dead." But it's not like he spotted his dad buying a lottery ticket at the 7/11 or having sex in a Chevy Impala with one of his parishoners. He reported that during the three minutes when he could not be revived, he saw Burpo praying. What else would he have been doing -- or would claim to have been doing?

It's been said that the popularly accepted perception of Heaven as a place of pillowy clouds accessed through a golden gate, populated by angels in white smocks and shining halos, originated with just one Negro Spiritual film from the 1920s, then cascaded through the public consciousness in the century since. So it doesn't surprise me that little Colton Burpo(!) saw that same juvenile version of it while in a physical state where many people have claimed to experience out-of-body sensations. That said, it also doesn't surprise me that Heaven Is for Real placed number one on the New York Times Bestseller List -- it's exactly what most people expect and are willing to hear, and better still, the message seems untainted by adult intervention because it, supposedly, comes from the mouth of a child. It's just depressing that we as a people don't demand more of our exploration of our existence, and that human thought hasn't kept pace with our physical evolution as a species. 

Holy Moley

I wasn't always an atheist. As a child growing up in a large French Catholic family, I embraced every bit of dogma and pomp and arcane ceremony that came my way: the Blessed Trinity (which included God in the form of a pigeon!), the mysteries of the Sacred Heart (which my best friend Paul navigated as surefire loopholes that could get you into heaven no matter what sins you'd committed), the Ascension of Mary (the only human, according to the nuns, who wasn't required to die to reach Heaven), and even the Stations of the Cross with its droning dirges that solemnly recounted Christ's progression through a long series of humiliations and atrocities toward his ultimate demise.

The rituals of Catholicism provided a comforting platform for a child besieged with ugly images of a distant war and constantly reminded of an impending nuclear annihilation. I loved the smell of the incense and the empty thrum of the church when I arrived in the morning to serve Mass as an altar boy, where I also "served" at funerals of people I'd never met -- becoming overwhelmed with sadness regardless -- and attended weddings where grooms in the know tipped each altar boy a whopping five dollars. The priests were all red-faced alcoholics who would insist on an extra splash of wine from the cruets even at seven a.m., but I learned the entire Mass by heart -- fortunately no longer read in Latin -- and rang the huge altar bell at all the right times. I even believed that I really did have a guardian angel whom I named Tony, and because he never seemed to get even a Sunday off I took pity on him and would sit to one side on any chair in case he needed to take a load off for a few minutes.

There was something amazingly reassuring about prayer -- you could pray for a good grade on a test or to find your geography book and because things couldn't always turn out for the worst, once in a while when something went your way you could choose to believe that your prayer had been answered. I'm sure that today's Bible-belters who pray for their football team's victory experience the same sense of justification when Bubba scores a point, never considering that a real God might be a bit more concerned about the housing crisis or the Haitian earthquake victims.

For someone so comfortably entrenched in a religious culture that was also a fundamental part of my ethnic background, it all got left behind pretty easily. Our parish church was within walking distance so our parents let us choose which Mass to attend (as long as we did go), and one Sunday when I was 11 I passed my friend John's house (a family of Down East Yankee, non-practicing Methodists). It suddenly occurred to me that I could stop in and hang out with him as I often did, then return home in time for our usual huge Sunday dinner (which was actually lunch) and then no one would be the wiser. It was as though my very ability to frame that thought shattered the dream I'd lived in up until then...suddenly I knew I was in charge of my own destiny, and it was up to me to develop my own moral compass rather than depend on a mythology that did it for me. At that instant all the powdery myths and hoary legends fell away like so much gosamer and cobwebs, and I never believed in any of it ever again.