I was walking through a parking lot in a nearby small town when a woman coming out the door of the Dollar Store met my eye, reached in her pocket, and handed me a flyer, saying “you should read this.” ‘Scuse me? You don’t know from Mother Eve – what is this thing and why are you handing it to me? When I glanced down, it was a classic, standard model Mark I tract. My spirituality isn’t likely to pull up roots at this point in my life, but I confess that I was curious. I glanced through it.
It starts with a middle aged man being loaded into an ambulance and asking for a priest. Next we see him with the classic sheet over his face, as a weeping young woman asks the priest if he managed to make his confession. The priest assures her that he confessed, was forgiven and received Last Rites, and that his soul was safely on his way to heaven. I noticed in passing that the words put into the priest’s mouth were “I forgave him” not “G-d forgave him”, but what do I know? I’m no Catholic. I’m also fairly certain that the clergyman isn’t the one personally doing the forgiving, which puts me ahead of the folks who wrote this little gem. But whatever. I forged on.
Next they show Our Hero at the proverbial Gates, with an indistinct but imposing figure pointing down. The next frame, clearly meant to be at the same time, is of the priest describing this man’s life, and assuring his flock that Our Hero was already enjoying Heaven’s Bliss, for he had been not only a been an observant Catholic, but a loyal son of Mother Church, known for charity and good works, building homes for the poor with his own funds, giving clothing to any poor child he saw, never throwing away leftovers from the restaurant he owned because “everyone knew” that if they came at the end of the day, he’d give anyone a package of leftovers sufficient for a family with no questions asked. They laid it on with a trowel; this guy was a Good Person.
“But I did everything right! Why am I condemned to the Lake of Fire?” cries Our Hero. And so he is brought for an audience with Jesus – another indistinct but imposing figure. (Why not G-d, I wondered? But again, what do I know? Not Christian in any form, much less this one, and never will be.) And in great detail, this figure tells the man that all that matters is that he never “accepted [Jesus] as his personal Lord and Savior in life, that everything he was taught by the Church was a lie, and that not only he but everyone who became Catholic because of his example would burn eternally, THE END.
I threw it away, of course, but I found myself thinking about the people who hand those things out and believe their message. How sad, to believe that your $DEITY is so cruel and petty. Good intentions count for nothing. Concern for those less fortunate counts for nothing. Charity, honorable behavior, ethics, morals, honest faith – all of those things count for nothing. The road to their divinity is a one-way street, accessible only through their particular gate-keeper. They have made G-d as finite and narrow-minded as they themselves are – making G-d in their image, rather than making themselves in G-d’s image.
I’ve seen these things before, and they’ve always left me disgusted. So did this one; no one has a right to determine the validity of another’s belief. But it left me with another response as well – pure pity. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the reaction they were hoping for.