Satire: An Object Oriented Heaven
Pastor Jeremiah Steadfast had always been quite certain about the boundary conditions of heaven. According to his extensive theological calculations, heaven was, in his view, a discrete object with clearly defined parameters—a straightforward conceptual framework. Clean categories. It was the kind of metaphysical tidiness that made sense to a man who alphabetized his spice rack and color-coded his sermon notes.
So when the massive coronary claimed him at the height of his passionate rant about papal idolatry, Jeremiah expected to materialize neatly inside the heavenly object, as if a lock turning would confirm his understanding of divine order. What he didn’t expect was to find himself suspended in what appeared to be an endless field of shimmering, interconnected objects.
“Welcome to the heavenly assemblage,” said a voice that seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Jeremiah looked around frantically for the source of the voice, but saw only an infinite network of objects that seemed to pulse and flow into each other like some cosmic lava lamp. There were objects like harps, clouds, golden gates, tangled with rosary beads, prayer wheels, communion wafers, and a menorah made of light.
“I demand to speak to management!” Jeremiah shouted. “There’s been some kind of mistake. I belong in heaven, not in… wherever this is.”
“This IS heaven,” the voice replied. “Though I suppose that depends on what you mean by ‘is’ and what you mean by ‘heaven.’”
“I mean the real heaven! The biblical heaven! The place where saved souls go!”
“Ah, you’re thinking of heaven as a container,” the voice mused. “How delightfully modern. Tell me, Pastor Steadfast, what exactly makes an object heavenly?”
Jeremiah straightened his ethereal shoulders. “Holiness, obviously. Righteousness. Doctrinal purity. Like being being separated from everything profane—pure, sacred, set apart.
“Fascinating. And what makes an object holy?”
“Well… it’s… it’s set apart. Sacred. Consecrated to God.”
So holiness is a quality that objects have?
“Exactly!”
“But if holiness is a quality, then it’s not really separate from the object, is it? It’s part of what makes the object what it is. Which means the boundary between holy and unholy isn’t really a boundary at all—it’s more like a gradient, a spectrum, a constant becoming…”
Jeremiah felt his theological foundations beginning to wobble. “No, no, no. Things are either holy or they’re not. Either saved or damned. Either in heaven or not in heaven.”
“Look around you,” the voice suggested gently.
Jeremiah reluctantly examined his surroundings more closely. A crucifix was slowly transforming into a Star of David, which then became a crescent moon, and finally a dharma wheel, turning into an incomprehensible shape that filled him with peace. A peace which he consciously shook.
“This is wrong,” he whispered. “These things don’t belong together. They’re separate. Distinct. Incompatible.”
Are they truly separate? the voice asked. The voice asked gently, ‘What makes you think that, Jeremiah?’
“Because… because they represent different beliefs! Different truth claims!”
“Ah, but what if the objects aren’t separate from their effects? What if a prayer wheel and a rosary aren’t different objects at all, but different expressions of the same yearning-toward-the-divine? What if the prayer wheel’s gentle spinning and the rosary’s beads glistening are not separate objects, but different expressions of the same longing rays of the divine energy woven into the fabric of the universe itself, indistinguishable when intertwined.
A King James Bible began to entwine itself with the Quran, both becoming more themselves as they intertwined. “That’s… that’s relativism! That’s syncretism! That’s…”
“That’s object-oriented ontology,” the voice said cheerfully. “All objects exist equally. A communion wafer has as much reality as a prayer flag. A Methodist hymnal is as real as a Buddhist sutra. Your theological categories are just more objects in the network—no more or less real than anything else.”
“But surely some objects are more important than others!” Jeremiah protested. “Some are true, some are false!”
“Important to whom? True for whom? You’re still thinking like there’s some outside perspective from which to judge. But you’re inside the network now, Pastor. You’re just another object in the assemblage, connected to everything else.”
“This—this cannot be heaven,” he whispered desperately, anguish mounting in his voice. Heaven, as he envisioned it, had soaring walls of radiant marble, thick gates carved with angels, and boundaries that bricked in the righteous impervious, unyielding, holding in the blessed and warding off the unrighteous. Gates. Boundaries. Heaven has walls, gates, and boundaries.”
“Does it?” the voice asked. Or is that just another thing—an exclusionary theology—that you’ve been carrying around? What if heaven isn’t a distant place, but a living, breathing tapestry woven from acts of kindness, mutual understanding, and love an ongoing dance that binds souls together across eternity? What if inside and outside are just meaningless categories?
All his carefully constructed concepts—salvation, damnation, exclusion—were just more objects in the network, no more fundamental than paperclips or chips.
“But if everything is equally real,” he stammered, “then nothing matters! There’s no difference between good and evil, sacred and profane!”
“Oh, but there is,” the voice said warmly. “The difference is real—but it’s not a difference between separate objects. Instead, it’s in the quality of connection, the depth of care, and mutual understanding.” Watch.”
Suddenly, Jeremiah saw the connections between objects—light threads illustrating how each affected the others. Some connections pulsed with love, others with fear. Some glowed with compassion, others flickered with judgment. Some objects seemed to enhance the network, making everything more connected, more alive. Others seemed to create knots of isolation, dead zones of separation.
“Your theology,” the voice observed, “created a lot of those dead zones.”
Jeremiah saw it now—the way his exclusionary beliefs had functioned like a virus in the network, cutting connections, creating artificial boundaries, diminishing the flow of love between objects. Every time he’d declared someone ‘unsaved,’ he’d created a knot of separation—like a tangled cord that kept connections from flowing freely.
“I only wanted to protect the truth,” he stammered, voice trembling. “I thought I was doing right.”
“But what if truth isn’t about protecting fixed objects, but about nurturing genuine relationships—connections of love, care, and understanding that transcend static categories?” the voice asked. “What if truth isn’t an object to be protected but a quality of relationship, the interconnectedness of things? Everything is interconnected.”
Jeremiah watched as his own theological objects—his certainties, his exclusions, his carefully defended boundaries—began to dissolve into the larger network. Instead of disappearing, they seemed to be transformed, their unique qualities amplified and clarified as they connected with everything else.
“This is terrifying,” he admitted.
“Yes,” the voice agreed. “But also liberating. You don’t have to police the boundaries anymore, Pastor.”
He didn’t have to decide who was in and who was out. He just had to be present to the network, to care for the connections, to enhance the flow of love between objects.
“But how do I know what’s right? How do I know what to believe?”
“You don’t,” the voice said simply. “You respond. You care. You connect. Belief is just another object in the network—no more or less real than anything else, a node of connection whose importance lies not in its inherent truth, but in the quality of love you bring to your relationships with other objects.
As the voice finished, Jeremiah felt his last theological certainty crumble. “So does this mean my old distinctions, like Catholic and Protestant, are meaningless?”
“No,” the voice said. “They’re different. Really different. But the difference isn’t hierarchical—it’s lateral. They’re different expressions of the same fundamental connectivity. Like jazz and classical music. Like roses and daisies. Like you and the people you spent eighty years condemning – a connection now seen not as a boundary to maintain, but a thread woven into the vast tapestry.
As Jeremiah’s individual boundaries continued to dissolve, he experienced the unprecedented sensation of being more fully himself by being connected to everything else—the Catholic priest he’d debated, the Buddhist monk he’d dismissed, the atheist neighbor he’d prayed for—literally, ontologically connected through the infinite network of care.
“Welcome to heaven,” the voice said. “Population: everything.”
The object-assemblage that had once been Jeremiah laughed for the first time in decades. The sound rippled through the network like a warm current, instantly mingling and resonating with other laughter, other surges of joy, other luminous moments of recognition across the infinite web. He was home, not because he’d been admitted to an exclusive club, but because he’d finally realized he was part of the infinite community of objects that had always already included him.