Alexander the Great conquered the world. It was more than a Saturday afternoon job, but when he finished, did he party? No. As someone said (hopefully), “Alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.”
Later, the world having grown lazy and gotten itself unconquered, Julius Caesar had a similar idea. He read Al’s life story, and he wept, because he was already older than Emperor Alexander had been and he hadn’t even mastered the Mediterranean yet. But he went on to snag a healthy chunk of history books, Shakespeare, and the chained lives of high schoolers.
Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Napoleon, Hitler, Lenin, Sam Walton—the same old story over and over again. The world can’t seem to get itself properly conquered.
My question is: What has everyone else been doing?
All this time, we could’ve been jockeying for global domination ourselves. Yet instead we set our sights so low: a good job, a new car, an Olympic medal, a happy family, bananas that aren’t overripe…we each have our own ridiculous version of the eschaton.
In the last year or so, my version has been (ready?): a perfect marriage (oops), a huge happy family (working on it), my bestselling name a household word (Bill who?), and a self - sufficient - homestead - in - a - perfectly -safe - place - surrounded - by - wondrous - folk - with - whom - I- can - build - a - glorious - wellspring - of - culture.
Yep. That’s Heaven.
Oh, wait, I also need to include figuring out which of the two thousand nutrition prophets are the True Voice so I can Eat Perfect and never get sick again. And, ah, never hurting myself, so I never have to mess with a medical system which has a virtue or two planted among the vices. Also good weather every single year so we never have a bad crop. And a country and world that stops hacking away at its babies and old folks and minorities and women and suspects and poor so I don’t have to take time out of my perfect life to minister to anyone who isn’t also Building the Glorious Wellspring of Culture. And while we’re here, I’ll go all the way and say that whatever else happens, I sure as hell better never go bald.
I think it would be easier to just conquer the world.
The sad part is, I’m not joking that much. Right now is a glorious time to live if you can escape the job-mortgage-insurance-consumer bear trap and hook into the networks of folks who are taking the long and tortuous journey back to the world that sits outside their front doors. Yet at the same time, there’s such a pressure to think that a total escape is possible, that we can heave our way out of this valley of tears.
Death? Death who?
Like ripping off a scab, it both hurts and thrills to face reality: Heaven is somewhere else. Always has been, always will be.
Here’s where I part company with many of my beloved kindred spirits in the simple living world. Many (Bill Mollison, for instance) expressly repudiate the Christian pipe dream of Heaven. Others (such as Wendell Berry, at least in A Continuous Harmony) don’t exactly reject it, but the tone is an agnostic assurance that we’d better make it good down here just in case.
I have to trek up to my cabin now, so I haven’t the slightest intention of defending the outlandish idea that there really is another world that is perfectly happy, and we might get there. The more you consider it, the crazier it is. Sometimes I think it’s harder to believe in Heaven than to believe in Hell. Seriously. Our tastes of ecstasy are so fleeting, while misery (or at least hassle, inconvenience, worry, and baldness) are so constant.
But I do believe in Heaven, and I want to yank out my creeping Gnosticism and squash it. Sometime I’ll introduce you to Eric Voeglin’s book, The New Politics of Science, that knuckles down and traces Gnosticism (here, the idea that we can make Heaven on earth) all the way from the High Middle Ages to, ah, us. For now, I’ll only say that while a God Who spent so much time healing obviously would be in favor of escaping the cubicle and eating foods that don’t bloat and kill, He also did not fix Earth. I can’t either. Rejoice in, adorn, love—yes. Fix—no.
I want to. I want to carve my own little Heaven that I can hold in my palm and defend against the whole universe. But unless I’m the one exception in a race of millions, my Heaven will crumple in my fist. Open my hand, and I’ll receive—that’s what I’m told. Scary. But at least this way, my eyes are raised.
