Calendar

08/02/2014

My Thoughts

Question 6: What happens when a person dies?

Each worldview question helps to crystalize your worldview. As you've been thinking about questions 1 through 5, maybe you've been experiencing a perspective shift. You've been trying to figure out how to answer the questions so as to make sense of all of them. By that I mean, you can't answer that Matter is prime reality but then think God has a purpose for Man. If there is no God, then there is no purpose. If there is only Matter than knowledge can only come from our observation and not from an all knowning God. If there is nothing that knows all there is to know than we have no source of knowledge of anything that we can grasp. Right and wrong cannot come from an external source who is all Good and knows all, it must come from observations of survival (but even survival requires killing at times. I do like the TV show 24 because it's always questioning what's right and wrong and portraying why people make decisions to do bad things).

According to how you've answered the questions leading to question number 6, I could answer this question for you.

If you are a materialist, you will answer that man's experience is terminated when his body dies.

If you are a body and soul person, you will answer that man's experience continues when his body dies. That continuation could be:

1. Re-incarnation to a different level of the physical and the migration of the soul to nirvana, or to a lesser state depending on how 'good' you have lived. (Nirvana; a state of energy where there is no thought or individuality but like a drop of water in the bucket you merge with all the other drops and cease to exist individually yet join in the universal energy of eternity without pain or sorrow or suffering. This state really sounds like death to me as if I loose my identity then I'm gone.) A side note: Have you ever wondered why people of India aren't more into helping the less-fortunate of their land? It's mainly because the less-fortunate are that way because they are 'paying' for their bad behavior of a previous life and if they don't experience that bad to the fullest, their pain will only be delayed. Therefore the best thing for you to do in helping a less-fortunate is to ignore them, let them die and after their suffering life, they will come back in a healthy, rich life. This is where you see a clash of cultures when Westerners go in and try to alleviate the pain of the poor diseased in India because the physical body is the most important to care for WHILE the Indian people of Eastern perspective look beyond the physical, into the next incarnation of the soul as the hope to come.

2. A detached state where the soul exists elsewhere in the universe, maybe on earth for awhile to 'haunt' the places where you lived and then you go somewhere else. I'm not sure if this belief holds that the soul is eternal or not.

3. Heaven or Hell. Heaven is where a person can and does live a life to the fulfillment of their purpose. Hell is where a person is incapable of living life to the fulfillment of their purpose.

In other words, Heaven is living out the 10 commandments in community where there is no death, no deceit, no lying, no wanting anything, no cheating, no dishonor. Where as in Hell there is deceit, lying, wanting, cheating, dishonor, pain. It's up to us to choose the door back into Heaven, like I mentioned: man walked through a door at the detriment of the universe, causing it's contaminated state. Likewise you too now have the choice to walk through the second door back into a place where all this suffering ceases to be and you can live your purpose. Jesus said I am the door. So depending on you 'walking' through His door, either you free yourself of the contamination or you remain in the contamination, forever. You may say that's not fair. Actually it is. Fair would be to allow us to remain in our contaminated state forever for we chose to walk through the first door. (Sure we say it was Adam and Eve but if everyone had remained perfect up to me then the story would state John bit the apple, or walked through the door setting himself apart from God. And you would do the same. So instead of the shaming and having our names as the culprit we don't have the bad press for which I'm grateful.) What Jesus prepared as a Door was to satisfy a perfect justice in his death, that instead of overlooking bad things 'just because' there is complete justice in extending to us his forgiveness, to those who believe.

'I stand at the door and knock.'

Love,
Dad