Heaven's Passport

by Neil Verwey

In Japan good deeds has become the latest fad of teenage girls.

Surprisingly, it is not a fad likely to raise the blood pressure of members of the older generation.

Teenage girls now collect stickers in a pocketbook called a Heaven’s Passport. Each sticker represents a good deed done.

They earn a sticker for their Heaven’s Passports whenever they do something like pick up garbage, give up their train seats to senior citizens or do their own laundry.

On the front of these pocketbooks, which are the same size as real passports, girls affix their photographs. On the first page they then write down their wishes for the future.

When a girl has collected 100 stickers, the wish she has inscribed in her passport is supposed to come true.

Nao, 16, a second-year student at a high school in Tokyo, opens her school books. Her Heaven’s Passport is also on her desk — bearing her wish to fall in love.

When her teacher asks a question, no one answers. In an attempt to “save” the teacher, Nao raises her hand. Another good deed! Immediately she pastes another sticker in her passport.

The night before she slapped another sticker into her pocketbook because she returned home just in time to make her 10:30 p.m. curfew. This qualifies as a good deed.

An Osaka-based maker of the Heaven’s Passport, turned doing good into a game. He never expected that the product would be such a hit. He has already sold about 100,000 Heaven’s Passport pocketbooks. In some regions, demand has been so high that supply cannot keep up. It is a hot item among not only teenage girls, but also women in their late 20s. (Source: The Yomiuri Shimbun)

I have nothing against teenagers having fun in doing good deeds.

What I like to point out to them though, is that there is a real heaven and you can never reach that wonderful place by a good number of good deeds.

FOR BY GRACE YOU HAVE BEEN SAVED THROUGH FAITH, AND THAT NOT OF YOURSELVES; IT IS THE GIFT OF GOD, NOT OF WORKS, LEST ANYONE SHOULD BOAST. Ephesians 1:7