Tears in Heaven

When you tell them that you have a potentially fatal illness, most religious people will say something like, "I'll pray for your health," or "God bless you," or things in that line. A few will say, "I'll pray for everything to work out as it should," which infuriates me.

Because it doesn't mean that they hope I'll get better, it means I hope you convert to [narrow-minded, premillenialist Protestant sect] before you die, and that you die soon, before you commit [victimless sin I've probably already committed]. It's not an ill wish, but it is a reflection of their repellent, destructive theology, where life in Heaven is so much better than life on Earth that actually living is an unhappy obstacle to be removed, hopefully as soon as possible.

They'll say, "I'll pray for everything to work out," and I'll chirrup, "Thank you so much for thinking of me!" while thinking Fuck you and your consolation prize Heaven. I want to grab them by the shirt front and shout at them, like Mersault to the priest in his prison cell: Don't you know how beautiful life is? Don't you understand that, at it's best, Heaven is just a chance to live again? Or that even a moment of life in wracking pain from my deformity and sickened by chemotherapy is preferable to a thousand years of that imaginary honeyed perfection? Like the masses who couldn't understand Nietzsche's Zarathustra, their other-worldly obsession prevents them from seeing that the this-worldly is infinitely more deserving of their attention.

Heaven is a reward only in the minds of the healthy, like a person persuading herself to get out of bed by remembering that the comfort will still be there this evening. When night falls, she pushes herself to stay awake just a little longer, to finish her program or novel or conversation. The dying person uses any means available to them to push Heaven away for an hour, a day. Heaven is the cheese in the mousetrap: Put your foot on the pressure plate, little mousey.