Questions That Really Matter

I feel there’s more to be said about dying, but I’m unsure what (following my previous blog here).  There are many views, and so many have no views at all, and it’s a sensitive subject.  It’s something so many dare not think about.  Yet, it’s the most important question anyone can ask: “What happens when I die?  What happened to Grandpa when he died?  What happens to anyone after they die?”
Such important questions, but questions, really, without answers.  So, what is there to be added here?

At the risk of getting it wrong, here’s a stream of thought:
Humanity has always had an expectation of life after death.  Many – most – First Nations and indigenous people buried their dead with tools, weapons, utensils … things they presumed they’d need in their next life. Where does this expectation come from?
Whence comes that oft expressed hope and comfort that a loved one is now ‘one of those stars up there, looking down on us’, or ‘Mother is still with me – I feel her presence all around’?  Or other fanciful notions, fashioned to explain the unthinkable – that Grandpa has really gone forever.

There’s something in the heart of men and women which rejects the notion that death is a full stop.  Like, there must be something more, right? Something after death.

Trouble is, no one has ever returned to tell us, confirm it, that there is something more.  Except Jesus Christ, if you subscribe to that hope.

Actually, if we dare to face the issue in a measured way, the claims of Jesus have to be confronted.  We ignore them at our peril.  We can’t afford to unthinkingly take on the common but uninformed opinions and fancies of people who deny any life hereafter.  What do they know?  They know nothing, have no evidence, no authority.  Yet that’s the opinion we mostly go with, because what else can be true?  Surely this is all there is, here and now, because the alternative conclusion carries profound implications, which we don’t dare buy into.

It’s not for me to say.  I have no authority either.  But Jesus’s claims need to be assessed.  He was undoubtedly a historical figure.  (There is more documented evidence for his existence in history than for most other historical figures whose existence we never question.)  And this Jesus claimed to be the portal to eternal life.  A wild claim! Scorned and spurned by an increasing majority in our world.  But he claimed it and, if you accept the truth of it, he rose to life again after his execution, asserting and evidencing an after-life.

Truth or fiction?

There’s a simple test: that historical Jesus was either mad (yet, read his teachings – surely not the wisdom of a madman), or he deliberately lied (yet it was a lie he willingly and without recanting or trying to escape it, went to the Roman cross for), or he spoke the truth. Mad, lie or truth?

Dying is a bewildering, scary mystery for we on this side of it, but one for which there are clues if we have the wit and courage to soberly evaluate them.

Start with John 14:1-6 and Psalm 23:6.