Walking through downtown last weekend, I found myself passing a small group of tourists who looked like they were enjoying themselves.
That is to say, I assumed they were tourists. Looking to enjoy themselves.
I also assume that most tourists, who travel to Pagosa Springs, do so with the intention of enjoying themselves. Just another assumption.
One of the ladies in the group was wearing a shirt imprinted with a slogan that I had not come across previously.
Make Heaven Crowded
She looked like a nice enough person, and the message was printed in soft, pastel tones, so I naturally took the slogan as a polite exhortation — “Let’s all make heaven crowded, shall we?” — rather than as a aggressive command — “You there! Make heaven crowded, or else you’ll pay the price!”
But again, those are also assumptions. One, that she was a nice person, and two, that she intended the message as a courteous suggestion.
When I went looking online for a photo to illustrate this column, I discovered there were literally dozens of manufacturers printing shirts with this identical slogan, in various fonts and colors. But the photos made it pretty clear that this particular slogan is being marketed mainly to women.
Which I found interesting, considering that the slogan implies an allusion to Matthew 28:19-20.
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…”
This imperative is presumably directed at all Christians — men and women — but it’s a bit wordy to be easily accommodated on a t-shirt. So obviously, someone came up with a clever slogan that gives essentially the same directive, but can fit on a coffee mug, etc.
But… is it really the same message?
Because I find the word “Crowded” to be problematic. I have never thought of heaven as a place where people are crammed in, shoulder to shoulder, like in our local coffee shops during the July 4th weekend.
Would I even want to go to heaven, if I knew it was going to be crowded?
When Darlene and I moved to Pagosa Springs, we noticed that residents often made the claim that they’d found “Paradise”, which we understood as a reference to clean air, clean water, friendly people, deer grazing in the yard, birds singing in the trees, relatively mild climate, and only three stoplights. (This was many years ago.)
“Paradise” was a place where you never had to wait more than 5 seconds to make a left-hand turn.
Then, they added another stoplight. And then another, and another.
Pretty soon, you were lucky if you could even make a left-hand turn at all.
This unfortunate transition was driven by desires coming from the business community and the local politicians that never appeared on t-shirts, but certainly could have:
Make Pagosa Crowded
These business and political leaders were never assigned a divine mission to “Therefore go and make tourists out of all nations.” But for some reason, they thought that causing Pagosa to be more crowded was a good idea.
It wasn’t.
Let us seriously consider, then, if making heaven crowded is a good idea.
Darlene and I brought three children into the world, and they’ve grown up to be the kind of people who will probably go to heaven. But it was never Darlene’s intention, or my intention, to make heaven any more crowded than it already is. We just wanted to have kids.
And we all understand, there was a population explosion during the 20th century — which now seems to be tapering off — and it’s very possible that heaven was not designed to handle the size of the crowd, and probably there’s not much we can do about it at this point.
You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
But please, ladies, we don’t need you wearing t-shirts that will only encourage people to make the problem worse.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.