Dear Ann Landers: I am a divorced woman in my early 50s. An interesting and intelligent man I’ve been seeing for a year asked me, out of the blue, if I believed in hell.
I didn’t know how to respond because I had never thought seriously about it. When I asked if he believed in hell, he said he did indeed but was sure he would never go there.
I then asked who he thought would be there, and he said, without hesitation, “Hitler, for sure, and Mussolini and Josef Stalin.” After a minute, he added, “I am positive that Charles Manson will be there, without a doubt.”
My friend then pulled a newspaper clipping out of his pocket that said college-educated adults with incomes of more than $50,000 a year were the most certain they were heaven-bound. It further said that of the 6 in 10 Americans who believe there is a hell, 77 percent do not believe they are going there. One in four believe it is a blazing inferno. Twenty-four percent described hell as a torture chamber. Ninety-two percent of Lutherans described hell as “separation from God.”
The New Catholic Explorer, a newspaper of the diocese of Joliet, featured a chart based on an international survey of 19,000 people in 14 countries. It showed that in the United States, 86 percent of the people believe in heaven, and 71 percent believe in hell. In East Germany, it’s 19 percent and 7 percent. In Great Britain, 54 percent and 29 percent. In Ireland, 87 percent and 53 percent. In Israel, 43 percent and 39 percent.
What do you think about all this, Ann? Do you believe in a heaven and a hell?
Perplexed in Passaic, N.J.
Dear Passaic: It’s a subject I haven’t given much thought. I checked, however, with Martin Marty, a theologian at the University of Chicago, and he said more than half of the people in the United States do believe in heaven and hell, but very few people think they are going to end up in hell. He added, “It doesn’t keep folks from behaving badly because they see hell as a place for others.”
As for me, I think of heaven as a place where we will be united with our loved ones who have passed on.
Dear Ann Landers: I read the letter from “Thankful in Orlando,” whose wife urged him to have a PSA test.
This diagnostic laboratory test is one of the most effective for early detection of prostate cancer. “Thankful” should be glad he does not have to rely on Medicare, which does not cover this screening examination. Medicare only covers this test after signs or symptoms are present. Because “Thankful” had no symptoms, he might have been deterred from having a PSA test knowing that Medicare would not cover it.
This is another example of Medicare being “penny-wise and pound-foolish.” Early detection would generate savings for the Medicare program. To wait until signs and symptoms are present usually means the disease is advanced and requires more expensive treatment. That may be too late for the patient, but it seems to make sense to the bureaucrats who administer the Medicare program.
Dennis P. Hawkins, patient accounting director, Southwest Medical Center, Kansas
Dear D.P.H.: Your letter makes sense to me. Thanks for writing.
Dear Readers: The Chicago Tribune Holiday Fund has been phenomenally successful through the years. I’d like to think you, my readers, have had a little something to do with it. I try to be there for you, and when I ask you to do something, you come through like champions.
” ‘Tis the season to be jolly.” But, sad to say, in Chicago and the area surrounding us, there is precious little for some people to be jolly about. I am talking about the hungry, the homeless, the unemployed, the battered women, the mentally retarded and the children whose stockings will be empty Christmas morning unless we do something to help fill them.
At holiday time we tend to reflect on the blessings of home and family, and this makes us more sensitive to the needs of others.
Are you teaching your children to be givers? The art of giving is not inborn. It must be learned. I would like to suggest a way you can teach your children the joy of sharing.
At the supper table tonight, read to them what I have written here. (Five years of age isn’t too young to understand.) Ask your children if they would be willing to give half a week’s allowance to some boys and girls who will be getting nothing or very little for Christmas. This small personal sacrifice will make them feel good about themselves.
Put your children’s contribution along with yours and send it to the Chicago Tribune Holiday Fund. Not only will the money go directly to those who need it, but it will teach your children the joy of sharing.
If you have been reading and enjoying my column since I came to the Chicago Tribune in 1987, your check will be a holiday gift to me. Please fill in the coupon below and mail it today.
Thank you for your generosity, and God bless you all.
Ann Landers
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