That’s plural not singular.

For you who look up into the sky and think heaven, you don’t think of several heavens. You think of one heaven where people who love and serve God in this life go to live forever when they die. You don’t think of multiple heavens. That would raise all kinds of troubling questions about what heaven is like. It is just better to think of heaven as the one and only good place and any place but heaven is naturally the bad place — it’s not heaven.

Now, this is the way you think if you are from somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Butif you are from around here, down South, you may think there is more than one heaven. For instance, there’s “hillbilly heaven.” We don’t learn about it from the Bible. We get that from country music. Then there’s “hawg heaven.” We learn about “hawg” or “hog” heaven from North Carolinians. “Hog” is the way more refined barbecue lovers pronounce porcine matters in places like Raleigh, Charlotte and Greensboro.

As for me, just sit me down in Lexington and I’m in “hawg” heaven. Of course, if you’re from Texas you think there’s only one heaven and Texas is it. Just speaking for myself, I like Texas. But when I die, I don’t want to go to Lubbock; I want to go to the real heaven. Lubbock is too hot, dry and dusty.

There is no argument about how many earths there are according to this marvelous part of the Bible. There’s just one earth. And Moses, the fellow who wrote Genesis, tells us that our Creator has put us people in charge of this earth — given us dominion over it.

Now I’m getting to my specific reason for the lesson this week. In the first place, we aren’t doing very well looking after the earth. One could get the idea that we are trying to pave over the earth and paint white and yellow stripes all over it to keep us from running our cars into each other and parking on top of each other. Maybe some folk think this is a good way to have dominion: keeping us orderly and preventing a bunch of yahoos from running over us when we venture out of the house.

In the second place, I understand that I have been given dominion over the animals in my little sliver of Eden. However, I can’t get the deer to quit exercising dominion over my okra patch! It looks like they have taken a chainsaw to every plant in it. The luscious big leaves are nearly gone now. According to the explanation of Moses about how all this is to work, the green plants are given to the breathing creatures for food.

Here is my question for the Creator. Who gets to eat the okra, me or the deer? We are both breathing! I think this ought to be clarified. I believe that whoever gets dominion over the animals ought to get the majority vote over who eats the okra. I would be amenable to a compromise.

I say give the deer all the Brussels sprouts and asparagus they want. But keep them out of my okra patch! After all, who needs dominion if it can’t fix this? Hawg heaven ain’t heaven with outfried okra.

Harold Bales is a retired Methodist minister who lives in Kannapolis, where he tends to his garden and feeds the resident deer. Contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .