"While taking an eraser to the whiteboard of life can be convenient, we better visit our brother now and retract the threat of force we boasted earlier. Find that train, where you took the last seat, and turn it into a giving exercise."

—The Prophets

Like the origin, heaven can be different places to different people, and even different things at different times. We have debated about heaven throughout the history of humanity, as if it is the main reason for Life.

Congregations from every corner of the world work diligently a lifetime to go to heaven. Scholars, disciples, and bystanders alike, all seem to have taken on a personal interest to define the concept and clarify the picture, as if to somehow help each other find the way.

Thousands of years later, atheists, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims and more, turn heaven into a mysterious endgame. Not only is heaven merely a point of attainment now, we have also reduced the mission of religions. As if without knowing, we belittle the individuals around us and the One who dwells within.

Our fixation on heaven necessitates yet a new governor of life, where personal prerogatives are veiled from scrutiny, as long as they can be justified with a religious overtone.

The new rule of law seems to allow that as long as my supporting evidence is more dramatic than yours, I can kill you in war, deprive you of opportunities, or unleash my anger in the absence of kindness. For example, if the international allies can assemble a more impressive justification than a sovereign nation, then bombing may commence. That's exactly what NATO and its allies did March 25, 1999, and sustained the bombardment until Yugoslavia turned into ruins.

Yugoslavia was not targeted in the name of heaven, but the situation shows vividly how even killing can be justified in pursuit of an endgame.

"Who or what religion teaches this?" a reader protested. Again, this book is not about any one religion in particular. I am not going to discuss any particular dogmatic curriculum here. Have you not heard that most wars were fought in the name of the Prince of Peace? Do you not know of one religious faith, which condemns another as hell bound?

Perhaps heaven is the final place, or a graveyard of sorts where the dead eventually live on. Others do not focus very much on heaven, but rather on the avoidance of hell. For these people, heaven is a luxury they need not afford, as they accept that avoiding hell is definitely more critical. Within these two groups, the one seems more selfish and the other more humble, but both are self-serving. The former would step on a fellow human to reach heaven the latter would do the same to hedge hell.

....