Reality, Perception: Morality, Dilemma

#1744

"When you're weary, feeling small,
When tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all;
I'm on your side. When times get rough
And friends just can't be found,
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down.
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down" - Simon and Garfunkel 

The amateur photographer enjoys photographing sunsets. This world traveler has photographed sunsets all over the world, even with almost sightless eyes. The best sunsets are behind mountains or across large expanses of water. 

There are many things in life I can not explain, like people praying as they read self-help books. When I get to heaven, I will have many questions to ask God.  I want to question many ideas about nothingness to somethingness. I want to question about all matter being energy... Einstein shows us this in his equation. Energy = mass x the speed of light squared. We know that our entire universe is electricity, everything about the human body. For some strange reason, we just expect the human body to keep functioning in spite of its treatment, in spite of the nourishment we put in it, in spite of the stress and strain we put on it. The evolutionist has never been able to explain why everything wears out, all matter. 

Recently, two deaths in one day, men this writer knew... two very different men. 

I have joined, for many years, a group of veterans every Monday morning for breakfast. Rapidly we are dying off. The last, a veteran named Fred, who always boasted about never going to a doctor and he just fell over dead, no warnings. He was just beginning to enjoy his retirement. 

The same day, the death of James Forbes Nash and his wife in a traffic collision, returning from Europe where he had just received a prize for mathematics. 

The following day, A ship capsized in the Yangtze River, a storm just out of nowhere. 432 people died. (Chinese have souls too). This world traveler has crossed that river, been in a ship on that river several times. 

The writer C.S Lewis said, "Joy is a serious business." The only joy we can observe in the death of anyone, particularly a family member, is the joy of knowing that there is life after death... last breath here, first breath there. The Catholics would have you believe there is a buffer zone. A place and time between clinical death and heaven, a place called purgatory, where sins can be purged, by others, praying and giving, attempting to influence God. There is absolutely nothing in the scripture to support this. The sovereign word of God tells us that at clinical death, every opportunity is over for purging or repentance. Of course we are taught, in no uncertain terms, that those who live in sin are dead while they live. 

It is incomprehensible that anyone, with nominal intelligence, knowing that everyone will die (the mortality rate is still 100%, no options) And knowing just how short life is compared to eternity, knowing how unpredictable life can be ( Nash and his wife were killed in a taxi on their return from Europe, plane, to their home.) That one would want to be well prepared for exit- death. Everyone does not "fade away" in a hospice. 

Modern science will have you believe that, life is a matter of genetics, genetic intervention to make living better. In England, the popular notion is to have a nurse in the home with a child, for the first 3 years of a child's life. In the notion that the nurse can teach the child right from wrong, and prepare an individual for person hood. 

The Christian message, "Christ-like," the new birth, born again, the righteousness of Christ replacing within the individual. The old man of sin and rejection. The new birth means, that when God looks at you through his spectacles, he sees not you and your indifference, but in you, the righteousness of Christ. 

We are a new creation, different. The problem with most believers I know, they do not want to be different. THEY LIKE THEIR LIFE AS IT IS. Much like the lives of their family and friends who are not believers. They want popularity, to chase the idols of success- money- notoriety. Most people I know, much prefer the lives of "The Rich and Famous" to the servitude life of Christ. Only twenty percent of Catholics go to mass. Thousands of Protestant- Baptist churches, close their doors every year. 

The parel, golden age, the white haired saints still in the fuse, watching their church and its pastor compromise, and become politically correct... The church, a country club with a steeple. Compromising with "Gods word," in order to dance to the tune of Madison Avenue... God becoming just a bell hop; prayer becoming just a quick fix. There is no real joy or genuineness in just pretending. 

The Christian life is not complicated, just tough. Our faith gives us freedom. The grace of knowing that "whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's" (Romans 14:8). Can anyone think of a greater joy than this?