My stay in hospital was for eight weeks (I think!), late in 2018. I began to write to fill in the time, so here I go with the first of seven essays.
A First Letter From Hospital.
Lying in bed in hospital, wondering what God's plans are for me, praying to Him and asking Him about His plans if He is willing to reveal them, I am inspired (directed by God?) to write this letter.
My worldly motive for doing this has come from beginning to read the latest SDA Quarterly (Oct. to Dec. 2018) "Oneness In Christ", but it is only demonstrating to me the hypocrisy of the Church. If only they would practice what they write about, and I guess, they preach. The Quarterly itself is excellent in its discussion of the universal church of Christ, and I must quote from it:
"Adventists do not claim to be Christ's universal church".
My response to this is immediately to ask why, therefore, do Christians bother to become members of institutional Churches, resulting in the paying of tithes from which leaders earn large salaries? As a Pentecostal minister once said to me, himself on a large salary, that through his church board they run his three churches as a business. Of course, this is the world we live in, and I know that Jesus wants us to be in this world but not part of it, and this message is continually advocated throughout the Quarterly.
Being in this world, I would not object to paying at the door to attend a service in any denominational or institutional Church, as I am willing to pay for any spiritually uplifting concert, live drama, dance, films, books, videos and recorded music. However I must get back to focusing on my prayers to God for guidance in my life.
To emphasize again, although motivated by the SDA Quarterly and noting their non-condemnation of alternative denominations and the various theological interpretations of the Scriptures, my position is for "the universal church of Christ" and "what it means to respond to the most profound questions we all may have." This last quotation is from an IADPA advertisement in the Quarterly for a book entitled "The Truth" by George R. Knight. The profound, or we might say fundamental, questions in the advertisement are, and I quote:
1. "Creation or Evolution?"
2. "What happened to God's Perfect World?"
3. "What is God like?"
4. "What happens when we die?"
5. "What is Jesus doing now?"
And I will add one more at the moment:
6. "What does it mean to be a Christian?"
To begin with Question 4: "What happens (to us) when we die?" I must describe what has happened on my ward during my first week in hospital. There have been two deaths. This prompts me to compare a well-known atheist with a well-known writer of Christian apologetics, both of whom have now passed away.They were both profound intellectuals, Stephen Hawking in theoretical physics and C. S. Lewis in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Neither of them were scholars in theology.
I am not as familiar with the personal life of Hawkins as I am of Lewis, but I understand he held onto his staunch atheism until the end. His work, however, remains supremely influential in his field, but I do not think by only staying within the comprehensive human endeavour we call science, which is a gift from God, he gets anywhere near to providing significant commentary on our fundamental questions. Using now the word fundamental reminds me of my interest as a young teenager in atomic physics, now pursued in greater depth as fundamental particle physics. The Large Hadron Collider at Cern recently claims to have identified the Higgs Boson, a particle so fundamental in theoretical partical physics that, when the physicists announced its possible existence in the 1960's the popular media referred to it as "the God Particle"!
Stephen Hawking's specialism was in the study of time and space, therefore I think here lies our disinclination, as believers, to accept his work and its practical impact in our world as attempting to answer our fundamental questions. Theologically God is beyond time and space as we know them.We have to believe in the supernatural before we can even begin to accept the existence of God.
A patient on my ward suffered a back injury at seventeen years old, and paralyzed from the waist down he has been in a wheelchair for eighteen years. He is now 35 years old, totally bed-ridden in hospital needing everything done for him, lying on his back all of the time. I asked him if he was a believer and he replied that he was probably agnostic. I asked him about his motivation for life and he said it came from his employment with his father on their plantation, as an engineer looking after all of the machinery on the farm, his particular interest was in engines.
Atheists and agnostics do not need God to lead a successful life and contribute to our worldly progress. It appears believers only need God for His promise of eternal life, mercy and the forgiveness of sins. This eternal life is not the mortal life we know, but a spiritual life with God, and we gain it through grace as a free gift from God through our belief in Him, and as Christians through our belief in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
However, to be honest none of us really know what happens to us when we die. We can speculate, we can hope, pray and have faith, or we can accept along with atheists that after death there is nothing of us, just as before we were born. Of course, our hope for the future is not just for our selfish selves, but for the continuation of the human race after we are dead so that others will enjoy greater equality of wealth, and better living standards and health into their considerable old age.
This is not so for most of us now and if we are not taken suddenly our old age can be uncomfortable, perhaps painful, and we will endure a lowering quality of life. We go on in this world for our loved ones and do what we can to contribute to worldly progress. To keep us going we need accessible activities according to our well-being to enale us to make this contribution to the natural world. I am not moving towards doubting the existence of God, and I will illustrate my spiritual development when I write about C. S. Lewis. But it appears that belief in His existence is not a requirement for leading a good moral life, and a beneficial one to others. Apparently we only need to believe in Him for eternal salvation, mercy and forgiveness of sins and we should not be frightened into believing by hell-fire and damnation.
A First Letter From Hospital.
Lying in bed in hospital, wondering what God's plans are for me, praying to Him and asking Him about His plans if He is willing to reveal them, I am inspired (directed by God?) to write this letter.
My worldly motive for doing this has come from beginning to read the latest SDA Quarterly (Oct. to Dec. 2018) "Oneness In Christ", but it is only demonstrating to me the hypocrisy of the Church. If only they would practice what they write about, and I guess, they preach. The Quarterly itself is excellent in its discussion of the universal church of Christ, and I must quote from it:
"Adventists do not claim to be Christ's universal church".
My response to this is immediately to ask why, therefore, do Christians bother to become members of institutional Churches, resulting in the paying of tithes from which leaders earn large salaries? As a Pentecostal minister once said to me, himself on a large salary, that through his church board they run his three churches as a business. Of course, this is the world we live in, and I know that Jesus wants us to be in this world but not part of it, and this message is continually advocated throughout the Quarterly.
Being in this world, I would not object to paying at the door to attend a service in any denominational or institutional Church, as I am willing to pay for any spiritually uplifting concert, live drama, dance, films, books, videos and recorded music. However I must get back to focusing on my prayers to God for guidance in my life.
To emphasize again, although motivated by the SDA Quarterly and noting their non-condemnation of alternative denominations and the various theological interpretations of the Scriptures, my position is for "the universal church of Christ" and "what it means to respond to the most profound questions we all may have." This last quotation is from an IADPA advertisement in the Quarterly for a book entitled "The Truth" by George R. Knight. The profound, or we might say fundamental, questions in the advertisement are, and I quote:
1. "Creation or Evolution?"
2. "What happened to God's Perfect World?"
3. "What is God like?"
4. "What happens when we die?"
5. "What is Jesus doing now?"
And I will add one more at the moment:
6. "What does it mean to be a Christian?"
To begin with Question 4: "What happens (to us) when we die?" I must describe what has happened on my ward during my first week in hospital. There have been two deaths. This prompts me to compare a well-known atheist with a well-known writer of Christian apologetics, both of whom have now passed away.They were both profound intellectuals, Stephen Hawking in theoretical physics and C. S. Lewis in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Neither of them were scholars in theology.
I am not as familiar with the personal life of Hawkins as I am of Lewis, but I understand he held onto his staunch atheism until the end. His work, however, remains supremely influential in his field, but I do not think by only staying within the comprehensive human endeavour we call science, which is a gift from God, he gets anywhere near to providing significant commentary on our fundamental questions. Using now the word fundamental reminds me of my interest as a young teenager in atomic physics, now pursued in greater depth as fundamental particle physics. The Large Hadron Collider at Cern recently claims to have identified the Higgs Boson, a particle so fundamental in theoretical partical physics that, when the physicists announced its possible existence in the 1960's the popular media referred to it as "the God Particle"!
Stephen Hawking's specialism was in the study of time and space, therefore I think here lies our disinclination, as believers, to accept his work and its practical impact in our world as attempting to answer our fundamental questions. Theologically God is beyond time and space as we know them.We have to believe in the supernatural before we can even begin to accept the existence of God.
A patient on my ward suffered a back injury at seventeen years old, and paralyzed from the waist down he has been in a wheelchair for eighteen years. He is now 35 years old, totally bed-ridden in hospital needing everything done for him, lying on his back all of the time. I asked him if he was a believer and he replied that he was probably agnostic. I asked him about his motivation for life and he said it came from his employment with his father on their plantation, as an engineer looking after all of the machinery on the farm, his particular interest was in engines.
Atheists and agnostics do not need God to lead a successful life and contribute to our worldly progress. It appears believers only need God for His promise of eternal life, mercy and the forgiveness of sins. This eternal life is not the mortal life we know, but a spiritual life with God, and we gain it through grace as a free gift from God through our belief in Him, and as Christians through our belief in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
However, to be honest none of us really know what happens to us when we die. We can speculate, we can hope, pray and have faith, or we can accept along with atheists that after death there is nothing of us, just as before we were born. Of course, our hope for the future is not just for our selfish selves, but for the continuation of the human race after we are dead so that others will enjoy greater equality of wealth, and better living standards and health into their considerable old age.
This is not so for most of us now and if we are not taken suddenly our old age can be uncomfortable, perhaps painful, and we will endure a lowering quality of life. We go on in this world for our loved ones and do what we can to contribute to worldly progress. To keep us going we need accessible activities according to our well-being to enale us to make this contribution to the natural world. I am not moving towards doubting the existence of God, and I will illustrate my spiritual development when I write about C. S. Lewis. But it appears that belief in His existence is not a requirement for leading a good moral life, and a beneficial one to others. Apparently we only need to believe in Him for eternal salvation, mercy and forgiveness of sins and we should not be frightened into believing by hell-fire and damnation.
