Here's one of my favorites stories about Heaven: Richard Dreyfuss was asked by his youngdaughter what Heaven was like. A bit broadsided, he responded, "Well, Heaven is a very nice place, where nothing bad every happens and everybody loves you." Visibly disappointed, his daughter shrugged and said, "Oh. That sounds just like here."

If you want to know how clearly you understand something--really understand something--try explaining it to a three-year-old. Preschooler logic is no nonsense and uncompromising. For instance, my father-in-law was recently in town for a visit. He came in from the back porch, and my daughter asked him what he was doing outside.

"I was just drinking some coffee and smoking a cigar," he said.

"But," she said quizzically, "how could you do both at the same time?"

My daughter has just started to think about God, and Heaven, and Jesus. Trying to explain Christianity to a young girl, you start to see what a complex and confusing set of concepts our faith truly comprises.

Christmas

I was driving my daughter to the store, and I was trying to tell her about Jesus. "I know who Jesus is," she said matter-of-factly.

"Really?" I said. "Who is he?"

"He's got a beard," she said.

"Yes, that's right," I allowed.

"And he brings presents on Christmas." She smiled, crossing her arms across her chest.

Ask, and Ye Shall Receive

Yesterday, my daughter asked me where her Babe videotape was, holding out an empty box. "I don't know where it is," I said. "Sorry, sweetie." Then I asked my wife: "Do you suppose that when we get to Heaven, we'll get a list of all the things we lost and where they ended up? That would be nice."

This morning, my daughter said to my wife: "I want to write a letter to Heaven, asking where my Babe video is, and the piece from my Clifford puzzle with Cleo's nose on it."

Jesus and the Fishermen

My daughter approached my wife recently and said, "I'm going to tell you a story. It's called 'Jesus and the Fishermen.'"

"Oh, how wonderful!" my wife said. "How does that story go?"

"Well," my daughter began. "Jesus and the fishermen went out on the boat. Then they saw some sharks. Jesus said, 'Don't be afraid.' Then he took out his gun and shot the sharks. The end."

God Is Everywhere

After a timeout, my daughter, sniffling, said, "I'm rude and bad. God won't love me."  I said, "Oh, no sweetie. God always loves you. God loves everyone. That's one of the things that makes God so wonderful. God will never, ever stop loving you. He never stops loving."

Skeptical, she looked up at me and said, "When does he sleep?"

And so on.

Every few weeks, my daughter brings home some little colored drawing or craft involving Noah's Ark. Noah & Co. are the be-all-end-all of children's churchgoing activities. In these pictures the sun is shining, Noah and his family are waving from the deck of a pretty wooden boat, elephants and giraffes and zebras poke their heads out of portholes, gaily smiling at the observer.

What they tend not to show in these to-be-colored drawings are the corpses of the animals and people who did not survive; which is to say, most of them. Likewise, they tend to show Adam and Eve smiling in the garden by a big apple tree, with fig leaves on, glossing over the fact that between "fig leaf" time and "run out of the garden with a flaming sword" time is a painfully short interval.

The only children's media I've ever seen that even comes close to representing something that actually connotes its intended meaning in the bible is in my daughter's Bible for Little Ones (or whatever it's called). It shows Zacchaeus up in his sycamore tree, and a beaming Jesus reaching out to him. The text glosses over Zacchaeus's profession and reputation, but the other people in the crowd look sufficiently baffled by Jesus's friendly greeting of the man that a clever child might pick up on it. Maybe. Okay, probably not. But what can you do? The bible isn't a children's story.

It just isn't. There's no way around it. Our Judeo-Christian heritage, like all of human history, is soaked in blood and tragedy and pain. But here's the thing: any religion that isn't about blood and guts, suffering and hatred, betrayal and warfare, isn't real. Simple faith speaks to the soul, but religion in all its wonder speaks to the whole of life and like life it is dirty, bloody, and all fucked-up sometimes.

My daughter thinks that if she writes a letter to Heaven, God will write back and tell her where her video is, and where the missing puzzle piece is. That is simple faith. It's part of what Jesus is talking about when he says that you must become like a child to enter the kingdom of Heaven.

I'm certain that whichever well-meaning Sunday School teacher planted the seed of my daughter's rendition of "Jesus and the Fishermen" would blanch to hear my little girl's retelling of it. We tend not to think of Jesus as the kind of person who would pre-emptively blow away sharks with an Uzi. My daughter, of course, knows nothing about what kind of person we think Jesus is supposed to be. In her heart, she knows that if sharks are threatening, Jesus will mow them down. I don't know how she knows this, since my wife and I are both gun-control nuts who don't even use the word "gun" around her. But it is her three-year-old faith, and I'm loathe to mess with it.

Someday she'll grow up and she'll learn that prayers and letters to Heaven don't get answered sometimes. She'll probably come to doubt in God's existence at some point, perhaps renounce religion altogether. Who knows? That's her path, not mine. But if, for now, she can believe that Jesus is a sweet-tempered amalgam of Santa Claus and Robert Shaw, then who am I to spoil it for her?

Yes, maybe her conception of God is crazy, confused, outlandish and even a little unsettling. But honestly, you think you're doing much better? I'm sure not.

God, I love that little girl.