Quazy Quistian Question # 5

I haven’t asked a Quazy Quistian Question in quite some time, but the other night Mrs. Ex and I had a quonversation which got me thinking. This is odd because we’ve been together so long that most of our communications are limited to grunts of various kinds. When we do have a conversation, it’s usually about my clothes: “You’re not going to wear that, are you?” Apparently, no matter how long a woman is married, she keeps hoping that she’ll suddenly find herself cohabiting with a man who gives a shit about how he looks sitting in a dark movie theater.

Anyway, we were having dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in town. Now, where we live, any restaurant that doesn’t have a drive-through ranks pretty high on our list. The joint in which we were eating doesn’t serve the greatest food in the world, but there are place settings that you don’t have to color yourself. And you get handed a menu instead of having to read one printed on a sign above a bored teenager’s head. Also, thankfully, there’s no bored teenager’s head.

This particular restaurant is very popular with us because it serves both Chinese food and sushi. My wife can’t stand the thought of raw fish, cooked eel, or sweetened egg wrapped in seaweed; I love that stuff. So at least once a month we go to the Pan-Asian Emporium because I can get my toro, ikura, hamachi, unagi, and nori-tama — and she can have General Tso’s chicken while she sits across the table and makes gagging noises every time I shove something in my mouth. Except beer, which we both like.

So we’re sitting and gobbling our different foods, and we start talking about our idea of paradise. It would certainly include a variety of ethnic dishes. Both of us love Indian and Thai cuisine, Italian and French and Greek and Russian, Mexican and Spanish and Middle Eastern. In fact, there are very few edibles that we don’t like, sushi being her exception and French-cut canned stringbeans being mine.

However, in a Protestant Christian heaven, almost all of those delectables would be missing; there’d be no one around to cook them properly, all the best chefs having gone to hell for believing in the wrong god, or none at all. In a Catholic heaven, there’d probably be some decent French and Italian, maybe even Mexican if immigrants are tolerated, but certainly no sushi or General Tso’s chicken. In a Muslim heaven or a Jewish heaven, the dietary laws would pretty much nix everything except the slop that mama ladled up back home on Earth. And try getting a decent hamburger in the Hindus’ forever.

So, since dining well is one of life’s great pleasures, how could Christians want that to be absent from the eternal happy place? Jesus may have been a fisherman, but can he prepare a really artistic salmon roll? Does he know how to make sag paneer or moo pad prik? Can he whip up a batch of hummus or tabbouleh? And what about deviled eggs or devil’s food cake? Is decent wine allowed, or only that watered down swill he pours at weddings? Would the Savior prepare a special Infidels’ Buffet now and then? Or would the fare be limited to molded Jell-O and tuna casseroles all the time, with maybe a little Southern-style barbecue once in a while?

In fact, what will the food be like up there? It can’t be your favorite meal whenever you want it, because that would get really old before long. Do souls sit down at a table, one with nice silverware and dishes and gravy boats and crystal wine glasses, to eat like civilized human beings, or do they just grab a handful of trail ambrosia on the fly? And what if you want Jesus to hold the pickles and the lettuce? Will he do it, or does everybody have to eat whatever’s put in front of them and no TV until they’ve cleaned their plates?

Quazy Quistian Question # 5:
Is there food in heaven? If so, what’s it like? If not, what do you do when you want a nosh? Explain your response.