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“….God created many separate but, well, for the most part, equal heavens.”
-Ronald Reagan in White Heaven, "The Boondocks"
-Ronald Reagan in White Heaven, "The Boondocks"
Recently, there was a knock on my door. It was not just any knock. It was a "knock." The knockers were not strangers; they have knocked before. I don't scare easily so I like to talk to people - even people dressed like entry-level accountants just released from a 1950's-era time vault.
The return visitors came with smiles and literature and promises of pies in the sky. Well, not exactly. The pies the return visitors came a-promisin' were not in the "sky" - these heavenly paradise pies are redeemable only on the terra firma.
You see, the return visitors were members of, what they insist, is God's earthly organization: Jehovah's Witnesses. *Looking at any of their "Bible-based publications" with the unending images of very Eurocentric angels and Jesus and God Himself and/or looking at virtually all of their annointed leaders (that is the word they use to describe their big kahunas: "annointed") another name seems to be a much better fit: Jehovah's Whiteness but ... I digress.
Among the many interesting aspects of their unique view of religion is the insistence on two separate heavens: one - in Heaven with God & Jesus - and another here on Earth. Here is the deal, the heavenly Heaven is for God, Jesus, and - according to the Whiteness - 144,000 select souls (rich white men) and the earthly Heaven for all of the saved riff-raff (if you are gonna be riff-raff, you may as well be saved riff-raff).
*The specific number - 144,000 - is taken from a metaphorical math equation in the Biblical book of Revelations that the Whiteness takes literally (which is ironic given how the book of Revelations is loaded with symbolic language).
So, to be brief, Jehovah's Whiteness builds its dogmatic platform upon a religious manifestation of another classic "white is right" moment in his-tory: 'separate but equal' heavens.
Check out this exchange between me and one of the return visitors:
me: so, let me guess this straight, if I do everything you guys say to the letter, when I die, I am not going to Heaven?
return visitor: well, no, you are not going to Heaven. That is for the annointed, the 144,000 but God is going to create an earthly paradise...
me: an earthly paradise?
return visitor: ...yes, an earthly paradise.
me: but I want to go to Heaven.
return visitor: but the earthly Paradise will be just as good as Heaven.
me: then let me switch places with one of the annointed guys - I go to the real Heaven and he goes to the earthly, just-as-good-as-heaven Paradise.
return visitor: no, you can't do that.
me: why not?
return visitor: because you can't.
me: why not?
return visitor: because you can't.
me: why not?
return visitor: would you like a free, in-home personal Bible study?
me: why not?
[crickets]
return visitor: well, nice talking to you again.
But what can one expect from a "non-secular" organization based in the worldiest city in the worldiest country in the world, in history? What can one expect from a world-wide organization the continues to perpetuate colonial dysfunction with the raising of a Western European standard for fashion, dress, hairstyles, privilege of colour et cetera in a very thinly-veiled guise of global brotherhood (we won't get into how the Whiteness is not only racially elitist but also chauvinistic)?
