In heaven, they eat. -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 17:51:11 04/21/08 Mon
Author: CS Holden
Subject: In heaven, they eat.

I once read a book written by a Catholic priest to tease out the problem of pain and seek to justify suffering through the promise of heaven. He quotes a rabbinic story that encourages self-sacrifice. It goes something like this:

A man dies and his soul ascends to heaven, where an angel offers to grant him one wish before he enters heaven. "I wish to see the poor souls who must spend eternity in hell," he says.

So the angel takes him to hell. There is a table, about four feet wide and infinite in length, and the damned sit on either side, facing each other. Their faces are large and sallow, their mouths gaping and salivating endlessly, for inches from them is the most beautiful, bountiful feast ever conceived. The smells and sights are overwhelming, but none of them can partake because their heads are affixed to the backs of their chairs, and their hands have been transformed into giant utensils, a fork and a knife. They are twice the length of a normal arm, so they cannot get the food from the plate to their mouths. Everyone is screaming from hunger.

"This is horrible," says the man. "Please, I can endure no more. Take me to heaven, where I may forget this torture."

So the angel takes him to heaven, where the man is surprised to see the exact same set-up: the same long table, the same great feast, the same rows of souls on either side, the same heads affixed to the same chairs, the same arms-turned-utensils. The difference? Each person simply feeds the person across from them.

--

The idea of the parable, of course, is to show that the promise of heaven or the damnation of hell is but an extension of how a person lives on earth anyway. The selfish go to hell, where they are forever selfish and forever in agony, whereas the unselfish go to heaven, where they forever sacrifice themselves for the Other.

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