There is no escaping the end. It may come swiftly and without notice. It may approach you day by day, taking years to finally take hold. Either way, your end will offer relief to all the suffering your life has caused.

You will open your eyes to the blinding light. Massive gates will stand locked before you, behind a solemn figure in simple robes. Tears will build in your eyes as you anticipate the treasures that await behind those gates. Your only remaining trial, this gatekeeper of paradise, will raise his arms and beckon you forth.

Robes still tight around his shadowed face, he will recite a list of mortal sins committed against the innocence of the earth from the day you entered it, beginning with each animal's death at your hands for no reason better than the comfort of your own life.

How much praise did God receive for your murderous acts against these animals?

He will then speak of every piece of the earth you took for granted, from the papers stolen from trees born long before yourself to the pollutants released into the air from your death machines. He will describe to you with divine accuracy the gallons and gallons of oil poured into your streets, burned through your engines, cast into your plastic toys, dumped into your rivers, for no reason better then the pleasure of your own life.

How much praise did God receive in exchange for allowing you to carelessly rape his precious creation?

He will then relate to you the stories of tortured women and children in countries you have never heard of or cared about, kept under sanctions and poverty and brought to early graves so you could enjoy the spoils of a so-called free trade economy, for no reason better than the pride you held for a country that needed to be the best.

How much praise did God receive for your ability to sit upon your perch and enjoy your constant electrical flow, your televised glory of war overseas, your worry-free terrorism against the countries that couldn't possibly stand a chance against your weapons of mass distruction? How much appreciation did God receive for the stones cast by your sinful hands?

The figure will loosen its robes, allowing you a glimpse of its face: a ghastly montage of every shrieking face beaten to death by your consumption, the incarnation of your sins against humanity. The robes will slide lower, revealing pale, lifeless shoulders shrunken by starvation, shivering from generations of sleep in alleys and dirt roads with no protection from the polluted weather. A pair of once-beautiful wings will emerge from beneath the robes, oil from dirty oceans clinging to their feathers, hindering their movement. Below his waist, you will notice not legs but a trunk, a healthy tree whose roots will strain to keep his body firmly planted in the ground. With horror, you will be forced to watch as the trunk starts to split, a clean, unnatural crack from right to left, severing the trunk and bringing a million screaming voices, a million frightened animals to the ground with one deafening crash, the same crash heard around the world countless times due to your determination to ignore the truth.

Tears will flow from your eyes--for the first time since your childhood years, pure tears, shed not from disappointment but from shame for your betrayal to your people, to your earth, to your god. The tears of one who has come face-to-face with the sins of a lifetime.

With that, the body will disappear in one short, painful burst of flame, and the gates will open.

God has shown his anger, but you have been forgiven. You have been shown ther extent of your immoral deeds, but you will be allowed to enter the kingdom of heaven despite them. Tears still streaming, you will hesitate, remembering vividly the screams of the innocent, a memory that will last for eternity, and you will feel unworthy to enter this paradise. You will fall in a heap on the oil-stained clouds, your face in your hands, screaming aloud at your own unforgivable exploits, your uncontrollable sobs echoing against the streets of gold beyond the gates. For forty days and forty nights you will remain, unmoving, praying for an alternative to this damnation in disguise.

You will eventually return to your feet, still shaking at the realization of your sins, and slowly approach the gates. Having been shown the effects of your luxuries, there will be nowhere to escape the truth. The only thing left will be to enter heaven and try to make amends with the souls of those whose lives you took advantage of--a feat that will take the rest of eternity to complete.