Opinions. I reserve the right to change them.

Death is a sensitive subject.  We are frightened by it.  We wish it weren't so scary.  But what is truth?  Is it what is or is it what we wish?  We do nobody any favours by sugar coating a painful subject.  Unfortunately, most of Christianity, with a noble goal of comforting those who mourn, has misled their flock as to what the Bible teaches about death.

The majority of Christians believe that they are an immortal soul, and their body is the temporary container of this soul.  When they die, the soul, being immortal, goes somewhere.  Where exactly depends on what denomination you belong to, but generally there are least two destinations: heaven or hell.  But since when has the Bible taught us to follow the majority?  (Mat 7:13-14)

Is the soul immortal? Ezek 18:4 says that the soul that sins shall die.  That should put that idea to rest (sadly it often doesn't).   So if the soul dies, then where do we go when we die?  God spelt it out to Adam in Gen 3:19: 'For you are dust and to dust you shall return'. Furthermore, the Bible uses the word soul to refer to corpses and animals too, hardly what conventional Christianity thinks.

Are we conscious in the dust? No. The Bible states (again and again and again) that death is a sleep.  Not a party or a punishment, but a sleep (see 1 Cor 15).  So if we are unconscious dust when we die (like the animals, see Ecc 9) what hope does the Bible say we have?  Resurrection.  1 Cor 15:16-18 says that without resurrection those who have fallen asleep would perish.  When the resurrection happens, where will we come from?  The same place they buried us, our graves (John 5:28, Dan 12:2).

According to the Bible those who are dead:
 - sleep (1 Kings 2:10)
 - decay (Acts 13:36)
 - have no thoughts (Psalm 146:3-4)
 - do not know about their family (Job 14:21)
 - cannot thank God (Isaiah 38:18-19)
 - do not praise God (Psalm 115:17)
 - are like beasts (Psalm 49:12, Ecc 3)
 - do not mention God (Psalm 6:5)
 - are silent (Psalm 94:17)
 - have no knowledge (Ecc 9:10)
 - simply aren't! (Job 7:21)

Does your church teach a message consistent with the Bible?  Or does it tell you what you would like to hear?

Ecc 3:9 For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity.

Well, I'm back from Ecuador and it was a blast.  It was a long long trip down and back but the kids did fine (portable DVD players make travel SO much easier :> ).  Highlights included:
 - Someone trying to break into our hotel room at 11:30pm! (that was in the US not Ecuador)
 - Galapagos turtles
 - Amazing varieties of hummingbirds high in the mountains
 - The people!

Some weird things to keep in mind if you ever make it down there:
 - The keep the toilet paper OUTSIDE the stalls, so you have to stock up before you go in
 - The two lane winding highways with a cliff on one side and a precipice on the other and a double yellow line in the middle are commonly treated as THREE lane highways (passing lane in the middle)
 - Traffic is insane, some wide highways don't even have lane markers at all
 - Air is thin

But despite the arduous driving and flying to get there, I highly recommend it as a fun destination!

My family and I are heading off to a different continent for two weeks!  Internet acces may be spotty... watch this space for updates!

but I've been suuuuuper busy...

Well, I guess I'm a little surprised and disappointed at the response to my last entry.  Surprised that a few people actually came forward and frankly accepted what Jesus said.  This in spite of the fact that most of christianity would disagree with them.  Disappointed that nobody took the bait and contradicted Jesus.  Three of you answered in somewhat vague terms which suggest you are perhaps looking to inherit something other than the earth (not that our inheritance is limited to the earth, but there is no denying the earth is part of it, at least according to Jesus).

So many good orthodox christian folk here and nobody tried to reconcile what Jesus said with what is heard from the pulpit so frequently.  Well, hopefully some will pause and reconsider.  On the other hand it was very heartning to see a few come out of the woodwork and stand for what Jesus said... maybe there's more rational christianty out there than I thought!

Along this train of thought, it's worth considering that God promised Abraham all the land that he could see... forever.  Will God fulfill that promise?  A simple question which so many people would say the answer to is 'No'... Ah well, it's their loss.

Robot2, you mentioned you didn't want the earth...   Is it the earth itself you don't want, or all the problems that humanity has created on it?  Maybe you need to move somewhere where you can appreciate the splendor, the majesty, the sheer power that exists, without it being cluttered by man.  There is a city not far from where I live, quite large, and once as I was driving out of it I was admiring all the skyscrapers and the degree to which man had transformed the landscape.  And then I looked beyond the cityscape, and I saw the mountain range that dwarfed the city.  A mountain range that stood like a sentinel, in mockery of this small scraping together of rubble that we take pride in.  A mountain that will still stand, long after the city is gone.  This is how what God makes compares to what man makes.

Thank you for humoring me :>

Here's a question for those religiosly inclined: Jesus said that the meek shall inherit the earth.... what are you expecting to inherit?

Ok, a lot of stimulating comments on the last one, which has forced me to explore and expand my argument.

There is objective and subjective truth. An example of subjective truth would be 'Chocolate is the best flavour of ice cream'. It may be true for me but it is not necessarily independently true. So how can we know which truths are subjective and which are objective? Well, for one, objective truths remain once you're dead. The reason they remain is because they are not just in our heads, they have an independent existence. (it may be factually true that it was your favourite flavour but it not really true anymore in an existential sense)

So if you disagree with gravity, and decide, as a symbol of your independently minded outlook, to take a long walk off a short plank, what happens? Gravity remains unaffected as you walk, unaffected as you plummet, and unaffected as the paramedics scrape you off the sidewalk. Your taste in ice cream, however, will definitely have changed.

So the question is: Does God have an existence that is not just in our heads? If He doesn't, then we would curiously find ourselves in agreement with the atheists. If He does, then He is not affected (ie his existence or nature is not changed) by our opinions as to how He should behave or what He should be like or what He should require of us. Furthermore, (Judeo-christianity is implied) this means there is in fact only one God, and one Truth (religiosly speaking). If the one Truth is not knowable, then it is also irrelevant, for God could not expect us to do something based on a truth which was inherently unknowable. If the one Truth is not knowable, then the Bible is certainly discardable, both now and in the past, as it is quite clear that it states there are not multiple Truths (one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all). If the one Truth is not knowable then Deuteronomy is wrong to say:


So if the Truth is knowable.... why do so few people have it? The Bible gives us a few reasons:


You have to buck the trend. Inertia. People would rather go with the flow, not resist, not invest, not knock, but decide to end their search by creating their own truth, rather than to seek. (think of the lost coin parable) That verse is also an interesting statement about the fact that any religious group that gains wide acceptance is guaranteed to be off-track!

Another reason (a little more complex, stay with me here) comes from Romans 10. In Romans 10, Paul is bemoaning the fact that the Jews, by and large, have not accepted Jesus as the Messiah, despite great zeal:

Two key points: They didn't know enough about God's righteousness, but more interestingly (as far as this discussion is concerned) they sought 'their own' righteousness rather than God's... That's right, they turned to a religion of subjective truth rather than objective truth. If our religion comes from our brains, then we have license to change it, to accept that mine is right and yours is right, even though they contradict eachother. We have license to 'create' instead of to 'seek'. And it is so much nicer to have a religion tailor made for our desires, rather than taking on the burden of finding out who God actually is and what He wants from us. The problem of course, is that subjective religion will be gone when they're scraping you off the sidewalk.... but objective religion will still exist.


Additional thoughts:

• Note that zeal is no indicator of truth (Rom 10)
• A common perspective I hear is: "I've heard x number of really wise people totally disagree. If they can't figure it out how could I?". A couple of problems with this approach... Just because 5 people have a wrong answer is not evidence that there isn't a right answer. Also, read 1 Cor 1. Also, read the parable about the man with the one talent and consider how excuses are received.
  
• Another way to possibly recognize subjective truth is to ask if you can change it by just thinking about it... (such as pick another favourite flavour)

Other passages:

• John 8:32
• Acts 4:12
• 1 Cor 8:6
  

That's what Pilate said.  He was trying to maintain that truth is unknowable.  Why?  Because if you can claim that truth is unknowable, it gives you license to give up the search.  Create your own truth.  And that's the best truth of all, the most convenient, the most desirable, specially tailored to our desires and weaknesses.  But when you jump off a tall building, you can wish whatever truth you want, but gravity is real.  And you can dislike gravity, rebel against gravity, deride gravity, oppose gravity, pretend gravity is different for you.  But in the end, gravity is.  And all your desires mean nothing when faced with truth.

No one is entitled to their own gravity, why should they be entitled to their own truth?  Religion never was about what we wanted, it was about what God wanted.  Trying to bend God to our desires and expectations is as useless as hoping that gravity will behave differently for us. 

Read Psalm 22. Read Psalm 69. Jesus felt despair. He was perfect. He led the perfect life. But he felt despair. Despair is a strictly human feeling. He did not let despair overcome him but he felt it. He wept. When facing the cross he asked God to 'let this cup pass'. Jesus wanted something that God did not want. But he submitted his will to God's. That is the marvel of what he did. For something to be difficult it requires a weakenss. Jesus has weakness. If Jesus had no weakness by nature, than he had no difficulty, then all that he achieved was easy. And Psalm 22, 69 and dozens of others are false...

Is a cross between a blog and wiki. A place to develop thoughts with the benefit of lots of feedback, but without the total loss of control of a wiki. Oh, and it has to be free. Does such a beast exist? The problem with just blogging is that the old entries fade away and all the effort invested in them is lost. With most blog entries that's probably fine, but I've seen a lot of investement in the content of this site, be it developed thoughts or poetry... where does that all go in 6 months? It needs to be maintained in some kind of portfolio or something....