The Heaven Club

One of the things I love most about weekends is that I can sleep in like crazy. Like a tranquilized rhino, on Saturdays and Sundays I just stay in bed until I totally don’t want to.
Then, when I finally do get out of bed, I flick on the TV and there will be back-to-back re-run episodes of one of my favorite shows of all time.
Will & Grace.
Few sitcoms make me actually laugh out loud. Will & Grace is one of them.
I just think that the premise of the show is so good, the writing is so witty, and the actors are so fabulous.
This morning…. well, early afternoon, I just roared! [Like a rhino].
Scene: Jack and Grace were in the kitchen where Grace was preparing supper for Will and Karen, who would soon be returning from a gruelling day of legal work.
Jack is so impressed with Grace’s preparations.
He turns to her and says, “You know Grace. You’re so nice. If you weren’t Jewish, you’d go to heaven.”
During the live audience’s uproar of laughter [and mine too], Grace quits stirring the bowl of whatever-it-is.
And then, perfectly timed, she says, “Thanks Jack. And if you weren’t gay, you’d go there too!”
LOUDER laughter, as Jack nods and has that “touche” look on his face.

Why does that scene so work?
Why is it so funny?

Well, I think that it is so hilarious because it plays right into the absurdity of the notion that we can KNOW [or think that we know] who it is that will or will not go to heaven!
When all the while we simply cannot possibly know such a thing!
Believe me when I say that I know there are people… zillions of them in fact, who think that they DO know exactly the groundrules for membership in The Heaven Club.
In other words, they know that if a person does not hold to a particular precise belief system, this fact alone guarantees that the Gate will be shut to them, later on.
I would not at all dispute that we can BELIEVE this.
But I would totally argue that we can not KNOW this.
I would tend to say that we cannot even possibly know this for ourselves, much less apply it to the future disposition of other people.
And you know what is funny?
There are people who, hearing me say the above, would conclude that such a personal statement ensures that I myself will not make it in!
Because surety is Rule #1.
And that statement hacks it to shreds.

[aaaaaaaaaand… fade to commercial…..]

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