In The World

"I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world."
John 17:15

It is a sweet and blessed event which will occur to all believers in God's own time -the going home to be with Jesus. In a few more years the Lord's soldiers, who are now fighting "the good fight of faith," will have done with conflict, and have entered into the joy of their Lord. But although Christ prays that His people may eventually be with Him where He is, He does not ask that they may be taken at once away from this world to heaven. He wishes them to stay here. Yet how frequently does the wearied pilgrim put up the prayer, "O that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest;" but Christ does not pray like that, He leaves us in His Father's hands, until, like shocks of corn fully ripe, we shall each be gathered into our Master's garner. Jesus does not plead for our instant removal by death, for to abide in the flesh is needful for others if not profitable for ourselves. He asks that we may be kept from evil, but he never asks for us to be admitted to the inheritance in glory till we are of full age.

Christians often want to die when they have any trouble. Ask them why, and they tell you, "Because we would be with the Lord." We fear it is not so much because they are longing to be with the Lord, as because they desire to get rid of their troubles; else they would feel the same wish to die at other times when not under the pressure of trial. They want to go home, not so much for the Saviour's company, as to be at rest. Now it is quite right to desire to depart if we can do it in the same spirit that Paul did, because to be with Christ is far better, but the wish to escape from trouble is a selfish one. Rather let your care and wish be to glorify God by your life here as long as He pleases, even though it be in the midst of toil, and conflict, and suffering, and leave Him to say when "it is enough".

Spurgeon, Morning and Evening Devotions May 2nd (Morning)

Satan often tempts people to chase after their ideals restlessly. Those who listen to Satan are deceived (and indeed deceive themselves) into thinking there is some terrible aspect of their lives -if they just had something else, or if they could just be free of their lives- then all would be well. The most restless pursuit of anything is suicide.

Yet, to be with God in the next life is certainly something to long for. The martyrs of the faith have met their end hoping to be with God, and this is lovely and becoming of faith. The difference is that those who have faith are not trying to escape from anything. If a man truly possesses faith he will not restlessly wish to be somewhere else or someone else because he is at rest knowing it is fine and acceptable to leave his lot as God sees fit.

When Christ imparts life to those who call on him, he does not just give them an eternal life that begins after they die. The life Christ gives begins as soon as a man or a woman receives it. The life that comes from Christ is not a matter of resisting or finding death ... it is a matter of finding Christ. Those who know him in life will also know him in death.

Dreams And Fantasy

Episodes 7, 8, 9 ...








Episodes 1, 2, 3
Episodes 4, 5, 6

Sermon on Ezekial 18

There are many voices in the world today.

One does not need to listen hard to hear them, or to sense their number.

Many are those who tell us we are all in this life together and how 'this person' is not at fault and 'that person' is not at fault, but really it is society that is at fault.

Or the government ... or 'big' business ...

And if there is sorrow, these voices say it was their fathers who set their teeth on edge, that our parents are the ones to blame. Or our children are to blame. Or the public is to blame.

And they make the understanding of justice so complex ...

They preach that the path to goodness is a matter of having the right circumstances ... of having the right education, the right resources, the right ideology.

But the God of Israel has determined that our solution is a new heart, and a new spirit.

The voices speak today as they spoke in the time of Ezekiel. They are a chattering of gossipers, a slandering against God, and yet they talk of proverbial wisdom. In their craftiness they accuse God of being unjust.

There's nothing for the criminals to do. They have to turn to crime.
The rich just keep getting richer -and they don't deserve their riches.
People that do good things are punished for them.

Are God's ways unjust? Or are our ways unjust?

Certainly there are occasions when misfortune strikes the just, and God allows His rain to fall on the evil as well as the obedient.

Yet, God assures his people that the soul who sins will die.

A man who appears to do evil seems to succeed, but death is already coming for him.

God is not blind to the cries of the oppressed. We may not see the work he does to protect and to change, and we may not hear clamboring voice drawing the least attention to it, but the one who sins will die.

The word of God is a different voice. One only needs to catch a glimpse of it to see that it is not like the voice of worldly wisdom.

The world never singles out a person and says, "If you hear me and follow my ways you will certainly live." The world only understands probabilities, trivia, and generalities.

'If you steal the sour grapes, someone else will (probably) be punished...'

How great is the depth of the scorn and deceit of the world!

It first sets itself up as a judge to scoff at the criminality of others, when it is clearly one's own life that is at stake. Mixed with the pride in judging these invisible criminals, it begins to envy them and say, 'How much better I am than the evil-doers, and how much I would wish to be like the evil-doers eating the sour grapes!'

The second practice of the world is to join in the acts it condemns. To what can we call the agony of duplicitly holding such opposite intents, but death? We have the assurance of God Himself that death waits for those who sin and do not turn from their evil ways.

How unlike the voices and proverbs of the world, to say everything is left up to the individual! To say that life and death are at hand! To identify the singularity of the moment and say, 'This is when you must decide!'.

To count a man's sins against him no longer!

Very often a worldly man will welcome someone with a tarnished background. He will smile and excuse his acts with societal proverbs about grapes -the very proverbs he excuses his own behavior- and even before the lowly one reluctantly agrees the worldly man is already saying to himself:

What a despicable man, wholly inferior and a reminder of my greatness.

The worldly man is quick to recall the injustices of others, but unable to survey the criminality of his own ways.

The ways of the Lord are set apart. When a wicked man turns from his ways and sets in his heart to obey all the decrees of God's Word, the Lord himself says,

None of the offenses he has committed will be remembered against him.

When a famous person errs, he often gathers the crowds and apologizes. The spectacle draws many, but no one forgets and the condition of the man is the same.

But when a sinner errs and turns to God, it is as though the jabbering of the crowd quiets down and vanishes away. His offences will not be remembered against him, and, behold! He is a different man because he is alive!

In the same way God calls everyone -the ones who have deaf ears as well as the ones with ears that hear- to repent and be saved from the downfall of sin and death.

Teach us, O Lord, to view our sins, and to turn from them that we may find our wrongs forgotten and our hearts full of life.

Ezekiel 18

The word of the Lord came to me: "What do you people mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel:

"The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge'?

"As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. For every living soul belongs to me, the father as well as the son - both alike belong to me. The soul who sins is the one who will die.

"Suppose there is a righteous man who does what is just and right.
He does not eat at the mountain shrines or look to the idols of the house of Israel.
He does not defile his neighbor's wife or lie with a woman during her period.
He does not oppress anyone, but returns what he took in pledge for a loan.
He does not commit robbery but gives his food to the hungry and provides clothing for the naked.
He does not lend at usury or take excessive interest.
He withholds his hand from doing wrong and judges fairly between man and man.
He follows my decrees and faithfully keeps my laws.
That man is righteous; he will surely live,
declares the Sovereign Lord.

Suppose he has a violent son, who sheds blood or does any of these other things (though the father has done none of them):

He eats at teh mountain shrines.
He defiles his neighbor's wife.
He oppresses the poor and needy.
He commits robbery.
He does not return what he took in pledge.
He looks to the idols.
He does detestable things.
He lends at usury and takes excessive interest.

Will such a man live? He will not! Because he has done all these detestable things, he will surely be put to death and his blood will be on his own head.

But suppose this son has a son who sees all the sins his father commits, and though he sees them, he does not do such things:

He does not eat at the mountain shrines or look to the idols of the house of Israel.
He does not defile his neighbor's wife.
He does not oppress anyone or require a pledge for a loan.
He does not commit robbery but gives his food to the hungry and provides clothing for the naked.
He withholds his hand from sin and takes no usury or excessive interest.
He keeps my laws and follows my decrees.

He will not die for his father's sin; he will surely live. But his father will die for his own sin, because he practiced extortion, robbed his brother and did what was wrong among his people.

"Yet you ask, 'Why does the son not share the guilt of his father?' Since teh son has done what is just and right and has been careful to keep all my decrees, he will surely live. The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.

"But if a wicked man turns away from all the sins he has committed and keeps all my decrees and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the offenses he has committed will be remembered against him. Because of the righteous things he has done, he will live. Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign Lord. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?

"But if a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits sin and does the same detestable things the wicked man does, will he live? None of the righteous things he has done will be remembered. Because of the unfaithfulness he is guilty of and because of the sins he has committed, he will die.

"Yet you say, 'The way of the Lord is not just.' Hear, O house of Israel: Is my way unjust? Is it not your ways that are unjust? If a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits sin, he will die for it; because of the sin he has committed he will die. But if a wicked man turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he will save hsi life. Because he considers all the offenses he has committed and turns away from them, he will surely live; he will not die. Yet the house of Israel says, 'The way of the Lord is not just.' Are my ways unjust, O house of Israel? Is it not your ways that are unjust?

"Therefore, O house of Israel, I will judge you, each according to his ways, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent! Turn away from all your offenses; then sin will not be your downfall. Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!

Ezekiel 18

There are many voices in the world today.

One does not need to listen hard to hear them, or to sense their number.

People in these times preach from the roof tops about how we are all in this life together and how 'this person' is not at fault and 'that person' is not at fault, but really it is society that is at fault.

And if there is sorrow, these voices say it was their fathers who set their teeth on edge, that our parents are the ones to blame. Or our children are to blame. Or the public is to blame.

And they make the understanding of justice so complex ...

They preach that the path to goodness is a matter of having the right circumstances ... of having the right education, the right resources, the right ideology.

But the God of Israel has determined that our solution is a new heart, and a new spirit.

The voices spoke today as they spoke in the time of Ezekiel. They are a chattering of gossipers, a slandering against God, and yet they talk of proverbial wisdom. In their craftiness they accuse God of being unjust.

"There's nothing for the criminals to do. They have to turn to crime."
"The rich just keep getting richer -and they don't deserve their riches."
"People that do good things are punished for them."

Are God's ways unjust? Or are our ways unjust?

Certainly there are occasions when misfortune strikes the just, and God allows His rain to fall on the evil as well as the obedient.

Yet, God assures his people that the soul who sins will die.

A man who appears to do evil seems to succeed, but death is already coming for him.

God is not blind to the cries of the oppressed. We may not see the work he does to protect and to change, and we may not hear clamboring voice drawing the least attention to it, but the one who sins will die.

The word of God is a different voice. One only needs to catch a glimpse of it to see that it is not like the voice of worldly wisdom.

The world never singles out a person and says, "If you hear me and follow my ways you will certainly live." The world only understands probabilities, trivia, and generalities.

'If you steal the sour grapes, someone else will (probably) be punished...'

How great is the depth of the scorn and deceit of the world!

It first sets itself up as a judge to scoff at the criminality of others, when it is clearly one's own life that is at stake. Mixed with the pride in judging these invisible criminals, it begins to envy them and say, 'How much better I am than the evil-doers, and how much I would wish to be like the evil-doers eating the sour grapes!'

The second practice of the world is to join in the acts it once condemned. To what can we call the agony of duplicitly holding such opposite intents, but death? And we have the assurance of God Himself that death waits for those who sin and do not turn from their evil ways.

How unlike the voices and proverbs of the world, to say everything is left up to the individual! To say that life and death are at hand! To identify the singularity of the moment and say, 'This is when you must decide!'.

To count a man's sins against him no longer!

Very often a worldly man will welcome someone with a tarnished background. He will smile and excuse his acts with societal proverbs about grapes -the very proverbs he excuses his own behavior with- and even before the lowly one reluctantly agrees the worldly man is already saying to himself:

What a despicable man, wholly inferior and a reminder of my greatness.

The worldly man is quick to recall the injustices of others, but unable to survey the criminality of his own ways.

The ways of the Lord are set apart. When a wicked man turns from his ways and sets in his heart to obey all the decrees of God's Word, the Lord himself says,

None of the offenses he has committed will be remembered against him.

When a famous person errs, he often gathers the crowds and apologizes. The spectacle draws many, but no one forgets and the condition of the man is the same.

But when a sinner errs and turns to God, it is as though the jabbering of the crowd quiets down and vanishes away. His offences will not be remembered against him, and, behold! He is a different man because he is alive!

In the same way God calls everyone -the ones who have deaf ears as well as the ones with ears that hear- to repent and be saved from the downfall of sin and death.

Teach us, O Lord, to view our sins, and to turn from them that we may find our wrongs forgotten and our hearts full of life.

Laughing With The Joker

"It is the minor characters that make up the cast of life -for they are life."
Bob Kane

Somewhere in Gotham city a business man is driving home on the freeway.

He's in a hurry to get home because he's had a long day. He wants to relax before he has to eat his wife's meat loaf. He's had a long day at work and he has no patience for bad drivers.

Suddenly a car cuts him off.

The business man lowers his window and shouts, 'Hey who do you think you are, buddy?!'

The other car changes lanes and slows down. Its window lowers and there behind the wheel is the white and green smile of the Joker.

And he laughs.

...


What a coincidence. This man thinks he is thoroughly bad and tough - or atleast enough to learn the identity of the man who cut him off. And this man discovers the smile of the Joker. He is an extreme character, but I don't think it is hard to laugh with the Joker. I think we laugh with him all the time.

This businessman thinks that if he can make it home a little sooner, if people treat him a little more fair, if he can eat roast beef for dinner, his life will be meaningful.

Ha!

With every laugh the Joker seems to say, "Someone forgot to tell this outstanding fellow just how meaningless this all is."

And it is meaningless. At least Solomon says so.

"'Meaningless, meaningless,' Says the preacher, 'Everything is meaningless.'"

The businessman tries to apologize on the road, but, again, the Joker is an extreme character and his stylized extremeness is also his greatness. The Joker stalks the man into a park and places a gun to his head.

"No," The man says, "Don't kill me ... I'll do anything!"

The Joker's curiousity is aroused. "Anything?" He asks.

To kill the man or not is a meaningless choice -or atleast it is as much to the Joker. But experimenting with a man's boundaries ... testing the limits of his sanity ... well, somehow the novelty of such an opportunity is somehow ... meaningful.

The Joker begins to question Solomon. He wonders, 'Maybe there is something new under the sun'. Something new to laugh at ...

So the Joker sets up the business man to be an accomplice in one of his criminal acts to embarass the commissioner.

Of course Batman is not far from the scene, and he exposes the facade of the Joker for what it is: petty human infatuation with appearances. The Joker wants to be seen as a fearsome and terrible person -a person he could care less about actually becoming.

Batman is the true glimpse of an extreme lifestyle. The promises of the world: to be admired by the crowd, the allure of the opposite sex (particularly catwoman), the luxuries of the millionare lifestyle ... all are meaningless to him. He finds them so meaningless he becomes an ethical superhero -an alien to the rest of the world.

One person to catch such a glimpse is the business man.

Batman breaks in on the Joker's plans to ruin the commissioner's party. The exploding birthday cake is removed just in time. The Joker and his female assistant, Harlequin, escape. The businessman runs away.

As the business man runs he catches the attention of the Joker.

The Joker holds him at gun point, but the business man asserts he is no longer afraid of what the Joker can do to him. The business man's appearance does nothing to intimidate the Joker, but he catches a glimpse of the businessman's willingness to lose everything and not care.

The Joker's psychological curiousity -crafted for the sake of a comic effect- detects the contours of something great and unmovable. Perhaps he is reminded of someone.

Batman watches from behind.

The Joker fumbles and the gun drops. "Don't hurt me!" He shouts out. "You! You're going to let him hurt me?!".

"Who's the one afraid now?" The business man asks.

The Joker is taken to Arkham Asylum and the businessman returns home. One person stays the same, but the other person is different.

"He's crazy!" The Joker shouts -pointing at the businessman- as they take him away.

Suddenly the prospect of eating his wife's meatloaf doesn't seem so bad after all. The business man has learned something about the tenuousness of existence ... the futility of choosing between roast beef and meat loaf ... and in a meaningless world he has found something meaningful: gratitude.

The Joker is an extreme character, or presents himself as such, but easy to laugh with. Who can understand the businessman?

Can you?

On Ghosts And Roles

When ghosts are depicted in stories and film, they often continue to do in death the same thing they did in life.

For example, if you visit the Haunted Mansion at DisneyLand, the last thing you see as you go up the escalator is a dead bride standing in her wedding gown. "Hurry back!" She calls out, as if you might miss her wedding.

It's almost like finding a husband was her only identity in life. When eternity stripped her of this task (for certainly the dead become like angels and do not marry and they do not give in marriage) there was nothing else to her. So she continued to wear the gown waiting for an infinitely delayed wedding.

An hour north of where I live there's an excellent magic show my wife and I attended once. The magician was a living, breathing human being, but the pianist was (in the story) a female ghost.

We read about her life on the back of the brochure. Her fiance had hunted foxes, and before he left on what was to be his last expedition she had told him she would sit at her piano and would not stop playing it until he returned.

The fiance had a hunting accident and passed away before he could return home. The young woman continued to play the piano until one day she passed away and (the legend says) she continued her sorrowful songs even in death.

I'm not into ghost stories. They tend to creep me out.

The frightful thing to me is the way the ghosts do not give up their roles. It's almost like they don't know who they are anymore and so they cling tightly onto their job perhaps because that's all there is to them.

"Without the mask, where will you hide?"

There is something about these ghost stories I can relate to. At times I wonder to myself, "What if I lose my job?. What if I don't get accepted to grad school? What if I do something my parents strongly disapprove of?"

These are all questions I have worried about or been tempted to worry over. And they are all role questions. The role of a husband to keep a good job. The role of a student to be accepted into a good school. The role of being a son.

But what about the role of being oneself? Or is that a role?

At the hour when death comes for a person, will they be able to accept themself as they are? Or will they cling tightly to the rules of their role?

When Jesus cast the demons out of a man among the Garasenes, the demons asked to be sent into a herd of pigs.

One could speculate why they made this strange request. Perhaps they desperately wanted to dwell inside something so they won't have to be all alone in who they were. Or perhaps I am mistakenly reading human behavior into the realm of unclean spirits ...

The unclean spirits often use any pretext they can find to be in a person's life. Jesus, on the other hand, stands at the door and knocks. On the one hand we have restless desperation in pursuit of an earthly goal. The other option is to recognize the choice one has in his or her short time on earth.

Jesus described the generation at the time of Noah as people who were marrying and giving in marriage and knowing nothing of what was going to happen to them. They were following their roles in search of distractions -unaware of the judgment waiting for them.

Ghost stories are often based on the lives of people who lived their lives in the words: "If I could just...". And to accomplish their aim they employ calculation, shrewdness, and often times anxiety.

But however often they tell themselves, "If I could just ...", there is one thing the unhappy spirits avoid: accepting themselves as they are. Unlike the world with its fleeting desires eternity asks very little: to love God and to love thy neighbor as thyself.

However urgent a task may seem in this life, it is far better to remember the task eternity has prepared for every person.

The True Problem

Politics ... politics ...

Just when I think every concern has been solved - or at least addressed - new ones pop up and old ones develop new sub-concerns.

The accessibility of medicine for the elderly
The effects of global warming on remote jungle species
The broad ignorance about AIDS
The prevalence of war and military aggression in video games

But the truth is there is a sickness killing far more people than poor health care, global warming, AIDS, or war. Whatever your view on Iraq is, this disease has killed more people than all the wars in history combined. It has killed more people than all the murders combined. It has killed more people than global warming ever will. This sickness is far more serious than any issue I see touted in the news, and yet no one ever talks about it.

The sickness I am referring to is suicide. So far, the statistics I have mentioned are uncontested and not difficult to verify, but they are merely the tip of the iceberg. Camus once noted that people often put on masks, but suicide is a confession: a confession that their life was not worth living. Yet there are many who hate their lives silently without making such a confession.

And, of course, these people cannot be counted, recorded, or estimated in any statistic. It is hard enough for a person to be honest with another, let alone the task of being honest with oneself. For this reason a poll cannot convey even a glimpse of the magnitude of this problem.

Growing numbers of people are conscious of their despair, but how can this compare to the number of people who are unconscious of their despair?

Politicians often tell us what a burden it is to be poor, to breath dirty air, and to live in a high-crime area. And these things are burdens. But what a burden to hate one's own life!

Unfortunately no politician has offered any consolation to solve or even approach this problem.

As an example of the inability of politics to address this issue, I submit that the biggest governments are the ones with the highest suicide rates. The socialist governments of Europe have much higher suicide rates than the countries with smaller governments.

There is almost nothing the government can do to make a person's life worth living. Yet when the individual looks at his or her choices and decides to make changes, all things can become new.

The solution is this: to stop living to have a valuable life in the eyes of the public, to stop longing to be other people, to stop controlling other people as a substitute for controlling oneself.

Kierkegaard's View of Suffering

In the last moments of his life, Kierkegaard endured heavy physical trauma.

In times of physical agony, one often asks what meaning the suffering has and why he was chosen for it. Kierkegaard provides a profound description of how God sees the devotion of those who suffer:

What does God really want? He wants to have souls that can praise, adore, worship, and thank him-the business of angels. That is why God is surrounded by angels. Because the sort of beings of which there are legions in 'Christendom,' the sort who for 10 rixdollars will roar and trumpet to God's honor and praise-that sort of being does not please him.

No, the angels please him. And what pleases him even more than the praises of angels is this: When, during the last lap of this life-when it seems as if God transforms himself into sheer cruelty and with the most cruelly devised cruelty does everything to deprive a person of all lust for life-when a human being nonetheless continues to believe that God is love and that it is from love that God does this-such a human being then becomes an angel.

And he can certainly praise God in heaven, but of course the time of instruction, schooltime, is always the strictest time. It is as if a person had the idea of traveling the whole world over to hear a singer with a perfect voice: That is how God sits in heaven and listens. And every time he hears praise from a human being whom he has brought to the most extreme point of weariness with life, God says to himself, 'Here is the voice.'"

How I Came To Despise Apologetics

Apologetics can be defined as the practice of using evidence to defend Christianity. A few years ago I was keenly interested in it.

I labored for a long time investigating philosophy, forensics, and science, but at one point my interest died suddenly and completely.

How do I begin?

Over a period of three or four years I had read a number of non-Christian materials and some apologetics material with the express intent of having a ready Christian response. I read the Book of Mormon (cover to cover), Farewell to God by Charles Templeton, The Case for Christ, an intro to Derrida, The God Who Is There by Schaeffer, and lots and lots of Plato. I read a lot more than that, and I'm not even counting the ones I had to do for class!

At some point in my reading I began to do devotions less often. I couldn't fit the words of Christ into any system described by an apologist, and I began to favor the message of the theologians and scholars.

One day I had to go to the hospital in Lafayette for an appendectomy. I was reading Strobel and I came across an interview with a professor who said faith was more important to the Christian life than reason. How I hated those words! In my spirit I demanded he have "justification" for his claims. He quoted Jesus saying:

"Blessed are those who do not see and still believe."

And so I spent hours and hours doing mental gymnastics with myself trying to explain Christ's words.

While I sat in my hospital room they brought in a Mormon who I got to know. He was a youth group leader and his kids were so devoted to him. They brought him all kinds of cards and even made a giant postcard, which they all signed.

I considered myself an expert in witnessing to Mormons. I spent hours discussing the Bible with a certain bishop who (I believe) still lives a few blocks from my house. I also spent a spring break in Utah witnessing to the Mormons at BYU and St. George.

I shared my faith and I was very careful to sound as intelligent as I could about it. The more intelligent I tried to sound the more futile my words sounded to me. Part of the problem was a voice in the back of my mind saying: "You can say anything you want because you are so superior to him!"

This was my flesh speaking to me. The voice my apologetic training had cultivated.

The Mormon man said, 'Look, I was going door-to-door in England and I met a guy who covered his hands over his ears and shouted as loud as he could. Then he slammed his door in my face. I don't want to stop listening to people, but to me faith means trusting God even when things look different.'

At that moment I considered the Mormons to be full of lies. I still do.

But I thought about how he had resolved to trust God even when everything seemed to demand the opposite response.

Logic, reason ... even objectivity itself.

The anesthesiologist came in and said, "Now listen ... strange things happen in the operating room. People get attacked by Zebras in the streets. It's terrible, but it's very rare. Don't worry about it."

As silly as it probably sounds this was one of the first times in my life I had seriously considered dying. I looked at Stobel's book and asked myself if the materials I had read had given me one proof that there was going to be an afterlife if I died during surgery.

I thought and thought.

I considered many persuasive arguments, but nothing convinced me. They started to pull me into the operating room and I thought to myself, "Wait! Stop! This is madness! I could die here! I need to do something!"

As my thinking slowly gave way to sleep I thought about the Mormon believing without seeing and I envied him. In the secrecy of my thoughts, nothing seemed more beautiful to me. In a moment of infinite clarity, I found it was the most wonderful thing I had ever considered (and to think I would have despised it a few hours earlier!).

The surgery was successful and I went back to school three days later, but even as I left the hospital I distracted myself with the expressed intention of forgetting everything that had happened there.

The task at hand was convincing teachers that I understood Boethius and Aquinas. I hid my reflections in a distant, dark corner of my mind. I told myself never to go looking there again.

Now it so happened that one day I decided my work load was so small (15 units) that I could be studying more non-Christian material to bring people to Jesus.

In highschool I was introduced by my philosophy teacher to an obscure Danish writer who a lot of unbelievers were reading. And so I decided to read some of his material for myself.

So one day at the university library I looked up 'Fear and Trembling' in the card catalogue. I spent two months reading the book looking for a way to bring these people to Jesus. After all, he was writing about Abraham. I thought I knew a lot about Abraham.

Instead of finding a way to bring them to Jesus, I instead found that not only (1) did I not understand Kierkegaard's arguments (2) I did not even know what he was trying to say! But my spirit was drawn to his writings.

I forgot about the strange writer for a while.

One day I found myself in the philosophy section of Borders. I saw a book titled, An Introduction to Kierkegaard. I was glad to find a simple explanation of what this man was saying. It was here that I read this sentance:

"All decisiveness inheres in subjectivity.
To pursue objectivity is to be in error."

My first thought was, "No wonder these people need Jesus! They're nuts if they think like this!"

I was enraged as I walked toward the exit. "How could anyone think this way?!".

I stopped in the aisle and thought, "If I'm going to tell these people about Jesus, I need to know what is driving them to accept this absurdity. But when have I ever viewed anything in this way?"

My eyes widened as I recalled a distant memory. When was it?

My devotions.

And so I began to rethink my relationship with reason and evidence.

I considered that there were a number of Bible verses which seemed to categorically oppose apologetics. "If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not know as he ought to know." "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding." "Knowledge puffs up but love builds up". Etc.

For my purposes here it is enough to say that they weighed heavily on my thoughts and the more I tried to reason them the more it felt like I was really trying to explain them away.

My roommate in college, Christopher, had a large collection of DVDs. One day I went through them and saw a movie called Meet Joe Black. This seemed like a movie that was trying to say something, so I figured it would be good to have a Christian response to it. The movie blew me away.

Here was the story of a man, Bill Perish, who was trying to live an honorable life. Early in the movie he encounters death, and this encounter changes his entire perspective on everything.

He suddenly learns the importance of being honest about his priorites ... even if they cost him everything. About listening to that inner voice the rest of the world cannot hear. And it is only by finding this inner strength that he is able to oppose death, which he does. He wasn't trying have a valuable life in the eyes of others.

If that description seems a little funny, I understand.

I simply cannot explain it.

After watching the film I was a different person. The person who pushed play to watch the movie was not the same person who pushed stop. When it was over I sat on the couch and I wept.

I wept and I wept and my other roommate, Eric, had no idea what to think about it.

I decided right then, that very night that my relationship with God was going to be under completely different terms. I didn't have a secret stash of marijuana or a party lifestyle, but I was certain of this: my spiritual life was a big lie.

Except I wasn't lying to my parents or my friends. I found that I was lying to myself and to God.

I decided I was going to do it for real - even if no one understood what was going on.

To sum up my change in perspective: there are only two domains, the world everyone can see (the external domain) and the heart that only God can see (the internal domain).

In the world everyone runs after two things: the acceptance of other people (which is external) and distractions (which are also external). What are they distractions from? They are distractions from simply this question: "Is MY life worth living?"

... A question the theologians have hardly any interest in answering ...

In matters of spirit things are different. Here the important person isn't necessarily the one with the most popularity, the most money, the most good appearances. Here the question is not how "good-looking" a thing is, for the spirit knows exactly what it finds good - and if it finds itself to be good. This is the only place a person can find to exist as themselves.

Consider the merchant who found the treasure in a field. He buried it, and he then sold all his possessions to buy that field. To the world around him he must have looked crazy. Why was he spending so much money on this piece of property? Who could understand it?

Perhaps only the merchant could understand before he could show off his physical treasure. As believers we cannot show the riches God has in store for us right now, and so who can understand us here in this life?

So much for explaining subjectivity - to live as a single individual. You either want to live that way or you do not - I can't make that choice for another person.

To me apologetics is a great evil - a betraying of Jesus with a kiss - a supreme slander against God - a total failure of expressing devotion to Him.

On Greek Immortality

Ah ... the ancient Greeks. Their accomplishments - their epic poetry, their skill in fighting, their intelligence in philosophy, their pathos in tragedy and wit in comedy continue to be remembered. And this was their ultimate desire: to be remembered.

Where did the Greeks find the reserves for such great talent and art? In their appearances. Here, the bravery of a soldier running into battle was nothing, but the appearance of bravery was everything. Here the grief one endured in suffering was nothing, and the pathos on the stage was everything. And everything was done to be seen and heard by the others.

But could such appearances provide consolation in one's final moments? To the Greeks the answer was "Yes" ... in being remembered. This was the nature of Greek Immortality.

In the Greek view of Hades, certain people received punishment (i.e. sysaphus), but before Plato people didn't see death as a place where people were personally judged for their actions. To the ancient Greeks, Hades was the domain of the jibbering shades ... where the dead talked endlessly about one's accomplishments. The best one could hope for was to be remembered by the living and talked about by the dead.

When Odysseus went to the underworld and found the warrior Achilles - remembered and praised by all - his conclusion on death was this: better to be an obscure farmer and die after a long life than to die at the celebration of the many. Such is the case with all esthetics: the approval of the crowd - and here the approval of world history - is a terrible reward when one does not approve one's own choices.

A Polite Encounter with Death

In October 2003 I was in the Orlando International Airport on my way home from visiting my girlfriend in Georgia. My mind was scattered. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get to my probability class in Los Angeles before 9:30 AM. I was also lost in sorting out the details of my long-distance relationship ... questions like: Where am I going to live? Can I find a job in her state? Would she like the place I live?

While I was walking to my next terminal, I had a vague sense that a presence ... someone or something was following me. I felt like ... like in all my thinking there was something I was leaving out, and it was after me. Something critical. Something serious.

"Is it death?" I wondered to myself.

Usually when one thinks of a person being "chased by death" someone is in a hospital with cancer, or - as in the case of For Whom the Bell Tolls - they're in a bull fight. Perhaps the spirit of my probability class was trying to reassure me. My morbid imagination was not relinquishing anything. "Death can come at any time." It said.

As I was walking a tall, omnious shadow began creeping up from behind me. It felt like someone really big was close behind.
I turned my head to get a look. I doubt my glance was inconspicuous. Frantic might be a way of putting it.

The man behind me was fairly close. And he was very tall. I'm six feet tall and he was significantly taller than me. He was wearing a black business suit with a black tie. He looked young. And he looked ... friendly. His clothes strongly fit the profile. In a strange way his youth and friendliness did as well.

I nervously moved toward the McDonald's kiosk in the terminal. There's a bumper sticker that says, "Jesus is coming soon ... look busy." This was something like my manner, except it was more like, "Death is coming ... look busy." And the busier I looked, it seemed the closer I was followed. I got into line at McDonald's and he got in line right behind me.

The lady behind the counter seemed to be in more of a hurry than I was. I guess that's typical for airports. When she gave me back my change (a dollar, some coins, and a receipt) I fumbled as quickly as I could to get it all tucked away, but she was already looking at the next customer - nonverbally asking for him to start his order.

The man behind me didn't order right away. He paused and said, "Take your time, I'm not in a hurry."

"You're not in a hurry?" I asked.

"No." He said seriously.

So I sorted it out and moved to the pickup window ... contemplating everything. Even though I was hurrying to escape from death, death was not in a hurry to find me. I wasn't thinking I would live to an old age necessarily ... it was more like: when death found me it would be at just the right time. In one sense I was so worried about death - I was no longer alive. Unlike the bush Moses witnessed, the flames of my anxiety were consuming me.

Life is full of risks. It's one thing to live in fear of the possibility of failure and it's another thing to own one's choice in taking the risk. After my experience at the airport, I found that "making the right choice" was not as important as the way I made the choice. For example, choosing McDonald's brought me (figuratively speaking) closer to death, but if McDonald's was a "true priority" for me then I wouldn't have regretted dying for it. Of course we all do things that aren't "true priorities" for us ... few people are willing to lay down their lives for the chance to eat breakfast in the morning or turn off the lights before bed ... the important thing is that when we encounter death our present-term choices reflect our true priorities.

Before that day I was certain I would fail probability ... and never graduate college. And before that day I couldn't see how I could stay in a committed relationship with someone who lived so far away. I didn't even have a good job yet. But I don't regret the gamble I made on my schooling ... even if the worst had happened. And I don't regret asking my girlfriend to marry me ... even when the details looked so uncertain.

I'm not saying I don't struggle with facing death anymore. It's a daily battle for me. However, in my experience, I've found that the people who live at peace before God and before they die are the ones who have faith. Faith is a strange assurance ... it is positive of what it cannot verify. It is certain of what is unseen. It is willing to lay down everything and expects to be given back everything ten, twenty, a hundred times over.