Louisiana State Fair Day: the school day off and reduced-price entrance tickets for students! My friends and I carpooled to the fairgrounds, and with anticipatory grins, crossed the parking lot to the siren song of carnival music blasted at ear-splitting decibels. Inside the grounds, garish colors and strobing lights beckoned us to scale the Himalayas, view a real-life Pegasus, or score an oversized stuffed animal via our ring-toss skills. For me, State Fair Day was not complete without a cruise by the Chick Publications giveaway booth. Despite the name, these tiny tracts referenced neither barnyard fowls nor British slang for women. Their purpose was, quite simply, to scare the Hell out of people.
I’d wander around the Chick booth, nabbing each version of the central theme. Then, in the quiet of my room that night, peruse them. I can’t really explain the attraction, except that it was akin to those inflated humanoids you see at car dealerships; the ones grinning maniacally and flailing their appendages? They horrify me, and I can’t look away.
Somewhere, tucked in my high-school memorabilia, is my Chick assortment. I recall one clearly. Two teen boys spend their night out in sinful no-goodness. One boy suddenly dies and is whisked off by chortling demons to Hell. There we see him screaming in the flames.
A heavenly messenger points out the error of the living boy’s ways and, terrified by his mate’s fate, the boy repents and is saved. The saved boy’s reaction is pure celebration: “Go me, I dodged an eternal bullet!” Forgotten was the friend being slow roasted on a demonic spit.
What troubled me, and still troubles me now about the story, is not its depiction of Hell: the artwork was so over the top, it read like a bad horror film. What shocked me was the living boy’s reaction. Chick Publications purports to represent Christianity, whose founder gave us two laws for living: love God with all you’ve got, and love your neighbor as yourself.
A far cry from doing a selfish happy dance because it’s not you being eternally slow roasted.
We definitely need joy; it strengthens us in hard times. But full joy is not divorced from the suffering of others. It wraps loving arms around them and says, “I’m here. It gets better.”
I don’t know what the afterlife looks like: Scripture describes it in metaphor and mystery. I do believe that, if we trust that God loves us in this life, there’s no reason to think God would not love us in the next. All of us. Not just the ones who dodged the eternal bullet.
What matters to you about your faith? What do you think matters most in how we live our lives? What does God hope for you? Where do you find joy? How do your show care for others? Share your thoughts at contact@aspaciousplace.com .
