Deathbed Classroom

“What if you die and find out it’s not true?” someone asked our fourth-grade teacher, in the Christian school. “What if God’s not real?”

It was an unspoken question that Christian children whispered to each other when adults weren’t around. And it was always on our minds, at least a lot of the time. But mostly it was forbidden to mention it, bad to ever doubt that God, whom we could not see or hear, existed. Worse still to wonder if another religion was the truth and we were going to hell according to its standards.

We had just finished a very philosophical discussion about heaven, hell, animals, and other related matters. But I was very surprised by the flippant, dismissive remark that followed this inquiry.

“So what? You’ve lived a good life,” the teacher, Mrs. Bitter (not her real name, but close, and descriptive) fired off. And with that, the discussion was over. We were back to being children/cattle again. Our opinions weren’t respected anymore.

There seemed to be some sense of letdown settle over us. I noticed this in myself, and thought I saw it in my classmates too. That was it? That was the best answer she could give us? Somehow that remark, and the fact that she thought she had the answer, rubbed me the wrong way. It rubbed me so hard, in fact, that I’ve remembered that rug-burn ever sense. Maybe we did live good lives, but that wasn’t enough.

We knew even then what we were missing. No one had to tell us that life would be easier if we weren’t believers, if we didn’t have to worry about whether whatever we did or chose was a sin or pleased God. Those were my exact thoughts, actually: “My life would be so much easier if I wasn’t a Christian.”

So now I’m on my deathbed, but somehow I’m still in fourth grade too. All around me, my classmates are old and weak and on their deathbeds too. And Mrs. Bitch is still there! She’s still reminding us that we all lived good lives, making us feel guilty for ever questioning the afterlife.

So I’m two hundred years old (I can dream, right? This is fantasy, remember?) and I’m looking back on a long life spent serving God and trying to please Jesus. Was it happy? All these things I did, all my effort, all my abstinence (not just from sex, from anything that could be an “idol”), was it worth it?

Perhaps I had become a missionary and lived among strange people without any comforts, missing my parents terribly and wondering why I had made this mistake. But I couldn’t go back to the States, because there wasn’t enough money, and the other missionaries would hate me, and God would be so disappointed.

Maybe I had gotten married, tried to be a good submissive wife, wore skirts but no jewelry or makeup, and had five kids because some preacher said that birth control wasn’t letting God give you as many kids as you could handle. I gritted my teeth and obeyed some man against my better judgment, even when the welfare of my children was at stake. I resented all the babies that kept me from writing and pursuing my goals.

Maybe I never published anything, because I was afraid God didn’t want me to. Maybe I decided I would only write “for the glory of God,” and wasted my time with Christian novellas that always ended one way: the character gets saved. Or gets saved and falls in love. Never any sex, never any creativity. I would be miserable with so narrow a margin. It always seemed a little forced anyway.

And then I had given ten percent of my money away in “tithes” that I didn’t want to give up. I had spent my life pleasing and serving others, with no time for myself. I had not enjoyed music, art or reading that wasn’t Christian or bland. I had not bought things for myself, stuff that I enjoyed. I had given away things I loved, thinking that God would approve. I had wrestled even with my own thoughts, had thought of my “flesh” as evil, had not allowed myself to enjoy anything too much.

(There may be some denominations out there that promote a different, less strict brand of Christianity that I’m unaware of, but this was what was taught to me when I was younger.)

I relate my life story, and so do a lot of my peers. We listen in our beds as most tell a version of the same tale. A few are gone, maybe—they left the church and never looked back. We pray for their souls and lament that they are lost. And all the while, at the back of our minds, a small, tiny voice asks the question: “Wouldn’t it have been easier…wouldn’t it have been better…what if…”

But we dismiss it, knowing that that voice is the devil trying to make us walk away from God. We don’t trust that voice, even though it’s a part of ourselves.

“Ahem!” Mrs. Bitter finally clears her throat. “All eyes up here! I have an announcement to make. Class is over; you’re all dismissed.”

“But what about Heaven?” Austin, the kid who lies next to me, pipes up. “Don’t we get to go to heaven?”

“No; heaven’s cancelled. God never existed all along, it turns out. But don’t worry, you’ve all lived good lives.”

The disappointment is palpable. So much waste! I could be in a bar with the lost kids, I think. I could be having a good time until the very end. But now it’s too late. I was tricked. My one life, and I was tricked into giving it away.

“But I didn’t live a full life!” I whine. “I didn’t really live!”

My last thought as the darkness encroaches upon me, as I get sleepier, right before I cease existing forever, is, “I hope I get reincarnated.”