It's Funny

It is funny that everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die. On the other hand, if one is too willing to die, then one's death might be considered suicide, and you don't get to Heaven by killing oneself. Although some believers in Islam would disagree on that. Personally, I think it's funny (funny odd, more than funny ha-ha) that they think that if they kill themselves 'for the cause' then they get 72 virgins in Heaven (is that actually in the Koran somewhere? I doubt it, but I don't know). So if a woman keeps herself pure for Allah, she gets to spend eternity sharing a suicide bomber with 71 other women who kept themselves pure--that's her reward?

Mark Twain once pointed out that everybody believes that we are going to be playing harps in Heaven, but most of us don't take harp lessons here on earth. Of course, he suggested that we are all going to end up in Heaven not knowing how to play the standard-issue harp, but plucking away at it anyway, for the glory of God. I don't remember anything in the Bible about playing the harp in Heaven, but I do know that the Bible says that in Heaven we will know much more than we do here on earth (1 Corinthians 13:12). Just between us, I don't think we're going to be playing harps in Heaven, but, if we do, we'll know exactly how to play them.

It's funny that we tend to think of St. Peter as the gatekeeper for Heaven. Where did that come from? I know Jesus gave him the keys to the kingdom, but I really don't think that means that Peter is going to spend eternity at the gate, comparing names to a list, letting people in, or turning them away. Matthew 25 certainly doesn't describe judgment that way. Isn't there a difference between a gatekeeper and a keymaster, anyway?

I also think it's funny that so many people got so upset over 'The DaVinci Code.' If some of the concepts in that book (or movie) caused you to question your faith, then maybe your faith needed to be questioned, but, it was a work of fiction. Even if there really is a group of people that believes that they are protecting the last descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene (and there is not), that doesn't prove by any stretch of the imagination that there actually ever was a descendant of Jesus and Mary... (Just a side note, Dan Brown asserts in the beginning of his book that the Priory of Sion is a real organization. It was--maybe it still is, but I believe it has been dissolved. However, the Priory never claimed to have any knowledge of the descendants of Jesus. Their stated purpose was to protect the descendants of the former kings of France.) Keep in mind that, book or movie, "The DaVinci Code" is a work of fiction. Of course, it is a work of fiction that works best in the mind of the reader if certain ideas are presented as being factual. Remember 'The Blair Witch Project?' The movie did very well as long as people believed that it actually was spliced together from film recovered after three film students disappeared in the woods, researching the Blair Witch. Once word got out the film was completely fictional, most people lost interest.