Heaven Is For Realz, Yo!

Judging a Book...
I first saw the Todd Burpo book Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back on display several months ago at my favorite rink-a-dink bookstore. I thought the manager was just promoting some dumb little book he liked, so I picked it up, looked at the goofy kid on the cover, read the description on the back, snorted, and put it away.

If the book had just been what I initially thought it was -- some cutesy religious family story that no one was reading -- I would have left it alone. It wasn't written for me. I could (contrary to popular wisdom) tell everything I needed to know about it from the book cover and other trappings. Nearly every blurb is from some pastor or friend. The picture of the little boy who made the "trip to Heaven and back" is of a little buzz-cutted four-year-old, one whom you can easily imagine growing up to be a preacher who bases his ministry on this one event, an event he'd eventually have to be reminded about, since it all happened before he could retain much of his memory. (Mentally replace his sweater vest with a preacher suit and stick a Bible in his hand.) The abstract on the back of the book gives you all the relevant "evidence" that they're basing this trip to Heaven on, and it concludes with the sentence "Heaven Is for Real will forever change the way you think of eternity, offering the chance to see, and believe, like a child." Yeah, no it won't.

Within days of my seeing the book for the first time, I started seeing it everywhere. As it turns out, it had shot up to the top of the New York Times nonfiction bestsellers list pretty quickly after its publication, and it's still there at number one as I write this. So apparently people are reading this thing, and apparently it's a big deal. There's even a children's version of the book now.

I usually enjoy attacking stupid things that gain popularity and make tons of money, but I still felt a reluctance to attack this book. For one, it would mean I would have to read it. But even after I overcame that hurdle, there remained a reluctance to attack. It felt like attacking innocence itself. Then I realized that this was the problem: the innocence of a four-year-old boy had trickled up, not only to his father and family, but also to these hundreds of thousands of readers who were buying -- and "buying" -- this silly little book. (I borrowed my copy from the library, just so you know.) Innocence is charming in a child, but ignorance in an adult is less so, and widespread ignorance is intolerable. Besides, anyone publishing is opening themselves to argument, so -- finally -- I felt justified in doing my small part: throwing my tiny pebble at this Goliath of a book.

Santa Claus

My parents never lied to me about Santa Claus. It may be difficult to convince some that this didn't hinder my fun as a child at Christmas, but it didn't. Though Mom and Dad were always straight with me and my siblings about Santa's nonexistence, we still got to "play" Santa Claus. We would sit on his lap at the mall, get excited when the news would show Santa's sleigh on radar, set out milk and cookies before going to bed, earnestly listen for jingle bells, and wake up to find presents in front of the tree that weren't there the night before--with tags on them that read "From: Santa Claus."

Was this play just as fun and magical for us as it was for those children who actually believed? I'm pretty sure that it was. Think about it: children play at things that aren't real all the time. One way is to pretend to do something that is based on reality, such as playing house or school. You couldn't possibly spoil a child's fun if you broke in to say "You know you're not a real mother" or "You know you're not a real teacher." The child would just think you were stupid, someone who's grossly missed the point. Another way to play is to pretend concerning something that is completely fantastic, such as imagining you're Superman or that you're chasing unicorns. Children know that Superman and unicorns don't exist, but it's still fun to pretend, and -- for a child -- imagination feels very real, even while being fully aware of actual reality. If you told a kid these imaginary things weren't real, you'd be the stupid fool, not them.

In elementary school, when most of my friends either believed in Santa Claus or were questioning their belief (as all children eventually do), they would ask me if I believed. Sometimes I simply said no, but my favorite answer was, "I like to pretend that he's real." As nearly any kid naturally would, I enjoyed the image and idea of Santa Claus. There's no reason to deny a child (or an adult) the mythology of Santa Claus, since it is possible to celebrate him without taking the next (stupid, foolish?) step of forcing belief.