Sheep and Goats

Category: Death and Old Age

  • Bounced out of Heaven?

    I used to work with a young woman who’d been brought up without religion. She knew God’s name was Jehovah because she’d seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. And from Dogma, she knew that God’s original purpose was for humans to live on earth forever; our planet was never a launch pad to heaven or trap door to hell. And that angels were a separate creation; they weren’t former "good people" enjoying their reward for being good.

    From two movies she had more Bible knowledge than 90% of church folk who’ve spent a lifetime butts glued to pews! If you don’t approach the book determined to read in teachings that aren’t there, it becomes much easier to understand.

    For instance, just try to reconcile the heaven/hell dogma with John chapter 11, which relates a resurrection Jesus performed:

    He [Jesus] said these things, and after this he said to them: “Lazarus our friend has gone to rest, but I am journeying there to awaken him from sleep.” Therefore the disciples said to him: “Lord, if he has gone to rest, he will get well.” Jesus had spoken, however, about his death. But they imagined he was speaking about taking rest in sleep. At that time, therefore, Jesus said to them outspokenly: “Lazarus has died, ……

     

    Consequently when Jesus arrived, he found he had already been four days in the memorial tomb. …….

     

    Hence Jesus, after groaning again within himself, came to the memorial tomb. It was, in fact, a cave, and a stone was lying against it. said: “Take the stone away.” Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to him: “Lord, by now he must smell, for it is four days.” Jesus said to her: “Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” Therefore they took the stone away. Now Jesus raised his eyes heavenward and said: “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. True, I knew that you always hear me; but on account of the crowd standing around I spoke, in order that they might believe that you sent me forth.” And when he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice: “Lazarus, come on out!” The [man] that had been dead came out with his feet and hands bound with wrappings, and his countenance was bound about with a cloth. Jesus said to them: “Loose him and let him go.”  John 11:11-44

    He’d been dead for four days. Where was he during this time?

    You don’t think if he’d been in heaven he would have said something upon being dragged back to earth? When Johnny Cash had a near-death experience during surgery and imagined he’d seen heaven, he was steamed to wake up again in the hospital. Even with his sweetheart June around. Yet Lazarus had been there four days, long enough to check out his room and settle in, if it really is so that the good all go to heaven.

    For non-judgmental types, let us allow that even if he’d not gone to heaven, but spent those four days in hell, and Jesus still brought him back, letting bygones be bygones, Lazarus still did not mention a thing. And he didn't right away run for a bucket of water to sit in, as you can be sure I would have done.

    No, the account suggests that Lazarus was nowhere during those four days; he was DEAD, non-existent, not conscious of a thing. Didn’t Jesus suggest as much when he likened the man to being asleep and not conscious in some other realm?

    Jehovah’s Witnesses are unique among Judeo-Christian groups in not buying into the heaven/hell routine. For them, a future resurrection (foreshadowed in places like the above passage) is the hope for all who have died, or nearly all. In the meantime, dead people really are dead; they don’t exist; they’ve gone back to the dust from which they came.

    Once we get this through our heads, so many scriptures make instant sense. Like this one about John the Baptist, one of the nicest people around, in fact, the fellow who baptized Jesus:

    Truly I [Jesus] say to you people, Among those born of women there has not been raised up a greater than John the Baptist; but a person that is a lesser one in the kingdom of the heavens is greater than he is.   Matt 11:11

    No one of humans better than John. Yet the janitor in heaven is higher up than he. So John didn’t go to heaven. And if he didn’t, being top of the heap, no one else did, either.

    Or this one about David:

    It is allowable to speak with freeness of speech to you concerning the family head David, that he both deceased and was buried and his tomb is among us to this day…..Actually David did not ascend to the heavens….. Acts 2:30-34

    Or this one:

    All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol, the place to which you are going.   Eccles 9:10 

    Many Bible translations render sheol in this passage as “the grave;” but the New World Translation simply transliterates the original Hebrew word, for which the Greek equivalent is hades. Although sheol and hades are two of the three wordsoften rendered into English as “hell,” their actual meaning is “place of the dead“, without reference to being good or bad during life.

    All basic scriptural teachings, which you could have learned by staying out of church and going to the movies.

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    Tom Irregardless and Me     No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

  • Atheists….the Next Generation!

    Is there a trend hotter today then atheism? When Christopher Hitchens penned "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," his publishers thought 40,000 copies was more than enough. That's how many they printed. Since then they're printed 256,000 to keep up with demand. And a rival publisher has engaged the same author for a follow-up: 'The Portable Atheist.' Sam Harris, who City! gushed over for his 'Letter to a Christian Nation,' is now an also-ran. Only Richard Dawkins, the grand old man of atheism, sits on top, with 500,000 copies of 'The God Delusion.' "This is atheism's moment," says publisher David Steinberger. [WSJ 6/23/07]

    It had to happen. Religion has acted too outrageously for too long. Isn't that really why, starting a generation or two ago, people started defecting for the mystical individual faiths, where you could be "one with the universe?" But now people have gone further still. Now they're willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater, dumping, not just religious structure, but even God.

    These new atheists are fierce. They are in-your-face. They are almost evangelistic. They have pride. No longer will they lay low. Now they assert themselves, and thus they join the universal trend of self-assertion. They join the proud nationalists, proud racial groups, proud ethnic groups, proud disabled groups, proud sexual orientation groups, proud transgendered groups. Isn't there a modest person left on the planet?

    Mr. Hitchens, as part of his book promo, challenged a panel that included an Orthodox Jew and a Buddhist nun. "I now wish I hadn't participated," say Nathan Katz, a professor of religious studies at Florida International University. "he was utterly abusive. It had the intellectual level of the Jerry Springer Show" [ibid WSJ] Actually, I got that impression myself when I "took on" a web atheist called Ebonmuse. (the abusive part, that is, not the Springer part)

    These are "Atheists – the Next Generation." The first generation had a decidedly different tone. They came in the wake of Darwin's theory, and the floodgates really opened wide following the bloodbath of WWI, in which clergy on both sides eagerly urged their parishioners to maim and kill each other. Thus was founded atheism's initial surge, but it was a "sad" surge. It was mournful. Atheists then despaired of God's existence. They weren't happy with their conclusion. They knew they were giving up on the hopes and dreams of mankind from time immortal, that this life, so fraught with hardship and suffering, wasn't all there is. And, they realized, the death of faith had a deleterious effect even on this life.

    For example, H.G. Wells, who turned atheist over time, observed: “The Darwinian movement took formal Christianity unawares, suddenly. . . . The new biological science was bringing nothing constructive as yet to replace the old moral stand-bys. A real de-moralization ensued.” Then, connecting that attitude with an increased appetite for war, he continued: “Prevalent peoples at the close of the nineteenth century believed that they prevailed by virtue of the Struggle for Existence, in which the strong and cunning get the better of the weak and confiding. . . . Man, they decided, is a social animal like the Indian hunting dog . . . so it seemed right to them that the big dogs of the human pack should bully and subdue.” [Outline of History]

    They concluded God was dead. They didn't disagree with their own conclusion, but they were saddened by it. They knew they had lost a lot.

    Not so atheist's Next Generation! They gleefully saw off the branch upon which they sit, in return for the ecstasy of no one telling them what to do! Our 70-80 years, with nothingness looming beyond, seems to them a great bargain. No matter if it ends in the nursing home with someone changing our Depends three times a day! In his time, Ronald Reagan was, arguably, the world's most influential person. Ten years later he didn't know who he was. Does this faze the "next generation?" Not a bit! For the first time in human history, relative comfort and ease is possible for most of us, provided we play our cards right and aren't terribly unlucky, and live in privileged nations. We can have fine homes, fine cars, cool technology. And that's good enough for them! What could God possibly add to that?

    It's sad to see. But it had to happen.

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    The wicked one according to his superciliousness makes no search;
    All his ideas are: “There is no God."      Psalm 10:4

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    Tom Irregardless and Me      No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

  • The Grumbling Slave

    "I never thought I'd ever be this old." The circuit overseer was addressing a circuit assembly. He looked at his hands "I didn't think I'd have wrinkles or my hair would turn gray. I thought this present system of things would long have passed, but isn't it fine that many people have come into God's organization over the last decades?" The notion went over well. People clapped.

    It doesn't always go over so well, not with everyone. If there's one thing we know about life today, it is that people are restless. In turmoil. Uneasy. Society has broken down in many areas, be it family life, finances, public health and safety, integrity and trust. People are unsettled. And where is the master? Wasn't he supposed to be here by now?

    The master, of course, is the one referred to at Matt 24:48-9. Matt 24 and 25 are the apocalyptic chapters of Matthew. They're concerned with the "last days" of human rule on earth. Matt 25:13, for instance, advises Christians to "keep on the watch, therefore, because you know neither the day nor the hour."

    If the day and the hour are out-of-bounds, Jehovah's Witnesses have nonetheless tried to nail the year more than once, most recently in 1975. It's not just them, either. Isaac Newton, the grandpa of science, who wrote more about spiritual matters than math and science combined (to the annoyance of Richard Dawkins, I suspect), decided 2060 was the final year. And even outside Christian circles, didn't the Mayans come up with some date – 2011 – a date rapidly approaching?

    And why should people not wonder about such things? Give us a few decades, and we'll all be senile and in diapers. And that amidst an ever-decaying world. Who is so dull as to not be curious about what lies after our 80 years?

    We Witnesses learned our "date" lesson for awhile (perhaps) and for some time Armageddon has merely been "soon," even "just around the corner." Armageddon, remember, is not the earth's destruction, but the wiping clean of rebellious society that accompanies Kingdom rule coming to power. Still, that is one heckuva corner.

    So some do what Jesus said in 24:48-9:

    "But if ever that evil slave should say in his heart, ‘My master is delaying,’ and should start to beat his fellow slaves and should eat and drink with the confirmed drunkards, the master of that slave will come on a day that he does not expect and in an hour that he does not know…." and will not be pleased.

    The "master" seems to be "delaying," and so some of his slaves start to beat up on the other slaves, apparently the ones not so concerned about timing. . "I was misled! It's  mind control! They're false prophets!" You hear people say such things about the Witness organization.

    No question about it. There are older JWs who literally never thought they'd see old age in this system. Because of that, some have found themselves "out of sync" with practical life, sometimes seriously so.  Undeniably – a great inconvenience for anyone in that boat. (though there's the other type of person who adapts to anything – nothing inconveniences them! Ah. I wish I were more like that. Tom Whitepebble, for example, who's never worried a day in his life. His goal, he tells me, is to take his last dime out of the bank two minutes before he has his final heart attack. Then he will die with a smile on his face!)

    But some are like the "evil" slave, beating up their fellows. Other slaves, who may also have gone out on a limb, simply suck it up and move on. That is not necessarily easy and some opportunities, when they pass, never return. Life in this system is smoother, certainly more predictable, if you do things in a certain order. But the Christian faith, after all, holds that this is not the "real life."

    Give orders to those who are rich in the present system of things not to be high-minded, and to rest their hope, not on uncertain riches, but on God, who furnishes us all things richly for our enjoyment; to work at good, to be rich in fine works, to be liberal, ready to share, safely treasuring up for themselves a fine foundation for the future, in order that they may get a firm hold on the real life.    1 Tim 6:17-19

    Faithful ones can expect to be a bit like Abraham, an alien in a foreign land.

    By faith he resided as an alien in the land of the promise as in a foreign land, and dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the very same promise. For he was awaiting the city having real foundations, the builder and maker of which [city] is God.    Heb 11:9-10

    Have some Witnesses been disappointed with aspects of their personal life? Probably. But only in matters relevant to this system of things, which is not the real life. After all, it's not as if a botched end prophesy is the only grounds for disappointment today. This system of things disappoints people all the time. Ask them about that in Iraq.

    Are not our times, at least compared with recent centuries, the most materialistic, individualistic, and self-centered ever? That's not to criticize anyone coming under their spell. It's the world we're born into and it permeates our being. It's harder on the younger generation because the backdrop has become more and more pronounced.

    When all is said and done, the real question may be the one Jesus raised in Luke 18:8:

    "….when the Son of man arrives, will he really find the faith on the earth?”

    Frankly, you cannot but have great respect for the JW governing organization. They alone are unafraid to go out on a limb. Everyone else hedges their bets. Everyone else covers their rear end. Everyone else tries to have it both ways. They don't.

    It's not as if they personally benefit when timing doesn't turn out. They live in dormitories, for crying out loud! Nice dormitories, to be sure. But dormitories, all the same. Should they decide to leave, they don't walk away with a pension or 401K.

    Yes, in hindsight, it might be well if dates had never been given. But they're the watchman. Conditions Jesus foretold have long been upon us. So they peer all the harder for details. Mist and fog can mess up a watchman, interfere with his vision. But what good is a watchman who sounds the alarm only when the bow of the approaching ship is scraping your toes?

    Son of man, a watchman is what I have made you to the house of Israel, and you must hear from my mouth speech and you must warn them from me.    Ezek 3:17

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    Tom Irregardless and Me     No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

  • Violet in the Old Folks Home. A Dirty Trick

    They like Violet at the nursing home. She's good natured, always says "hi," and doesn't complain. She's lived there four years.

    Once she presided over her own country farmhouse kitchen table, peopled with family and neighbors. Though they might not get along in all contexts, the table bonded them, cementing various degrees of familiarity, love, and dysfunction. Over the stove hung a plaque that read "Kissin don't last, cookin do"

    Uncle Vic thought it a great joke when I "got religion." Over cards, he would challenge "you're prayin against me, aren't you Tommy? I'll bet you're prayin against me." I was only praying he'd take his turn.

    Violet lived for years in that farmhouse after Vic died. Then she lived with one daughter, then another. When she got so she needed round the clock care, the daughters didn't know what to do. She fell a few times – no small matter for someone in their 80s. About that time she entered the nursing home. One daughter or the other visits her nearly every day.

    Pop comes over from Rochester, 300 miles away, to visit his sister a few times each year. "Charlie, it's so good to see you! And Tommy, what a pleasant surprise!"  On a pleasant day, we wheel her out to the front walkway, where she remarks on trees and greenery and family history. "Gram will be so disappointed that she missed you," she laments. "Violet, Gram's been dead for years," someone says. "Oh yeah, that's right," and she resumes contemplation. That's how it goes. She freely mixes several generations, some living, some dead. Sometimes we correct her, and sometimes not.

    She used to caution as the afternoon wore on "It's getting late. You'd better be going." Lately she's been including herself. "It's starting to get late. We ought to be going." "Violet, you're staying here. You live here now." "Oh that's right," she says.

    "So who's cooking tonight," she observes after a bit. "Do you want me to cook?" Pop again explains that the home will cook, the home in which she lives, but she's not so sure anymore.

    "Well, we should be going Vi," he says. "Okay, I'm ready, let's go" "You're staying here, Vi. You live here now." "Not me," she says. "You do," Pop says. "You have a room here, for several years." "I know, but I'm not ready to go just yet."

    She gets progressively resistant, then alarmed, then pleading, then angry. "Well, that was a dirty trick!" she charges. "I wouldn't have come with you if I knew you were going to stick me here!" In the end, the staff wheels her back.

    That evening, sitting at the cousins' own long kitchen table, a table that Violet rarely sees now, Pop wonders aloud how tomorrow's visit will go. Maybe it will be unpleasant. "No," the cousin says, "she will have forgotten all about it." And it turns out just that way.

    Until the end of the visit. After initial maneuvering, Pop and the cousin tell Violet we have to be going. But isn't she going too? "Oh no, you're not sticking me here!" she snaps at us. But the nurse distracts her. "Violet, we're having vanilla cookies with dinner tonight. Would you like to have a couple now?" "No thank you," she says. "I'll just wait till dinner and have mine with everyone else."

    They all want to go home. But none of them will.

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    More on Joe in the books GoWhereTomGoes, and Tom Irregardless and Me.

     

  • The Two Trees of Eden

    In general, churches portray the earth as a launching pad from which to leap into an eternity of heaven or hell. We don’t. God did not put us on earth because he wanted us somewhere else. He wanted us here and he wanted humans to expand the boundaries of Eden to embrace the whole planet. He did not create humans to die at all, but to live indefinitely, which they would have done had they not rebelled against him.

    The Genesis account tells, not of one tree, (the tree of the knowledge of good and bad) but of two. The one we don’t hear much about is called the tree of life. They are both introduced to us in Gen 2:9:

    Thus Jehovah God made to grow out of the ground every tree desirable to one’s sight and good for food and also the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.

    Though real, neither tree conveys magical properties. Their qualities are symbolic. The tree of the knowledge of good and bad represents God’s right to rule over his creation, that is, his right to determine what is “good and bad,” as opposed to humans usurping that function. The second tree, the tree of life, represents God’s guarantee of life. That guarantee was withdrawn after the first humans ate off the former tree, disobeying his direction and rejecting his rulership.

    The original command given to Adam:

    From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.    Gen 2:16

    They did eat from it, as noted, and so we come to the second tree:

    And Jehovah God went on to say: “Here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and bad, and now in order that he may not put his hand out and actually take [fruit] also from the tree of life and eat and live to time indefinite,—”  With that Jehovah God put him out of the garden of E´den to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken.  And so he drove the man out….Gen 3:22-24

    The point is that humans were designed to live on earth forever, to time indefinite. Death after 80 or 90 years was not God’s idea.    

    This fits in very well with what we observe about ourselves. For example, we use (what is the correct percentage?) one tenth of one percent of our brain’s capacity. How did that come to be? Evolution can hardly be responsible. In the absurdly unlikely event that super-brain storage could mutate into existence, natural selection dictates that it is passed on to progeny only if it offers a substantial edge in the fight for survival. But the bigger brain hard drive offers no such edge….we have already defined that it is unused. It’s a bit like having a house the size of Europe when we only use 3000 square feet. Wouldn’t you scratch your head and wonder what the realtor had in mind?

    But if we recognize that we were created to live forever….well….then it all makes perfect sense. We would eventually find a use for all that brainpower.

    That indefinite life was dependent on those first humans remaining in harmony with the Creator’s purpose and design. Once that first couple pulled away….well….it’s somewhat like a fan pulling itself out of it’s wall socket. Those blades, spinning like mad, begin to slow and eventually stop. And it’s hardly the fault of the wall socket, especially if you, the fan operator, were told to keep it plugged in.

    But now, how will God yet achieve his original purpose towards earth and humankind? He will, of course. He has a plan set in motion, a plan hatched immediately upon that original rebellion.

    It is cryptically referred to in Gen 3:15 [And I shall put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He will bruise you in the head and you will bruise him in the heel.] and is frequently discussed in the literature of Jehovah’s Witnesses.  The “plan” makes for lengthy discussion. Some of it is here:

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    The bookstore

  • Charles Darwin and Annie

    Two spiritual events can be traced in the life of Charles Darwin, originator of the natural selection evolution theory. Had those events turned out differently, one wonders what effect it might have had on science interpretation.

    The first…..the second will be dealt with in another post…..came with the death of Darwin’s favorite child, his daughter Annie. At age 10, the child contracted scarlet fever, and agonized for 6 weeks before dying. Also a casualty was Darwin’s faith in a beneficent Creator. The book Evolution: Triumph of an Idea, by Carl Zimmer, tells us that Darwin “lost faith in angels.” That’s an odd expression. Why would it be used?

    They probably told him that God was picking flowers.

    Is there any analogy more slanderous to God than the one in which God is picking flowers? Up there in heaven He has the most beautiful garden imaginable. But it is not enough! He is always on the watch for pretty flowers, the very best, and if He spots one in your garden, He helps himself, even though it may be your only one. Yes, He needs more angels, and if your child is the most pure, the most beautiful, happy, innocent child that can be, well….watch out! He or she may become next new angel. Sappy preachers give this illustration all the time, apparently thinking it gives comfort.

    Not surprisingly, the picking flowers analogy is nowhere found in the Bible. However, a close parallel analogy is found in 2 Samuel, where it is used to make exactly the opposite point: that the flower picker should be executed. The setting is when King David took the pretty wife of one of his subjects, and had that subject killed.

    The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle,  but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.
    “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”
    David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die!  He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”
    Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!                 2 Samuel 12:1-7, NIV

    Now, this analogy appeals to us. This is just. The man is not expected to take comfort that the king stole his wife. No, he deserves execution! So how is it that when we’re told God has done the same, we’re expected to feel all warm and fuzzy?

    Wasn’t it Abraham Lincoln who said that he was not smart enough to lie? His meaning was that if you lie, you have to adjust every subsequent statement to be consistent with that lie, otherwise you will get caught. Telling the truth presents no such challenge.

    The picking flowers analogy is an attempt to cover a lie, and as we have seen, it doesn’t satisfy. The lie is that, when we die, we don’t really die because the soul lives on, going straight to heaven if we’ve been good. Thus, death is a friend. It is a chance for promotion, and we are all happy to see good people promoted.

    In this context, the Bible’s hope of a resurrection is meaningless. (Acts 24:15) How can someone be resurrected if they never actually died?

    Better to tell the truth from the start, and then you don’t have to invent ridiculous stories to cover your tracks. Death is not a friend, it’s an enemy. Nor is it God’s purpose for humans; it came upon us due to rebellion. Nor does it bring us into a new state of consciousness; instead we become nonexistent, and can be likened to unconscious or asleep. Nor does God purpose to leave us in this sad predicament, but he’s taken steps to eliminate death.

    Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—  Rom 5:12

    For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.    1 Cor 15:25

    For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten……Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave,  where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.     Eccles 9:5,10

    After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”
    His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.
    So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead…         John 11:11-14

    (all verses from the New International Version)

    How different history might have been had Darwin known the truth about death. Not just Darwin, of course, but everyone of his time, as well as before and after. Instead, fed a diet of phony pieties….junk food, if you will…..he and others of inquisitive minds searched elsewhere in an attempt to make sense of life.

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    The bookstore

  • Telomeres and Old Folks

    Every decade or so, Awake! magazine looks at the research of aging scientists, that is, scientists who investigate aging, gerontologists. The picture changes dramatically. Twenty years ago, they hadn’t a clue about aging. But with success in mapping the genome, some began to think aging itself could be halted, or at least slowed. They got downright cocky, some of them, and there is still much optimism.

    We all accept death as a finality. But there are things about it that don’t quite square. For instance, who hasn’t heard that we use one tenth of one percent of our brain? The exact percentage doesn’t matter. The question that matters is…..how did that come to be? There’s no way evolution can account for it. Mutations survive to be passed on to succeeding generations only if they give one an edge to survival. But we’ve just stated that we never use the 99.9% extra capacity. So where’s the necessary edge to ensure such excess brainpower is passed on? It’s as if you own a house as big a New York State, yet you only use a few hundred square feet for living.

    Our immune system is also curious. Cut your flesh and your body repairs itself. Organs of the body continually replace cells with new ones so that, every few years, you are physically, an entirely different person. Imagine if your Buick did that. Would you ever need to replace it? With life, however, the repair process itself gradually slows down and stops. But why should that be?

    Frankly, the picture corresponds with the Bible account that man was created to live forever, death coming about only through disobedience. Of course, this would require us to accept…..gasp…Adam and Eve, and painfully few, if any self-respecting scientists would ever make such a pathetic mistake. Still, many have come to view aging as a not inevitable human condition.

    Our chromosomes have segments of repeating DNA at both ends that act much like tips on our shoelaces. Without them, the chromosomes would unravel and become unstable. Named telomeres, some scientists view them as key to aging.

    Every time a chromosome divides to form a new cell, the telomere ends shorten. When they whittle down to nubs, after 50 or so divisions, the cell divides no more and soon dies. But a certain enzyme, called telomerase, prevents that shortening. With that enzyme present, cells in the lab divide indefinitely….they do not die. Unfortunately, they also tend to become cancerous. But it offers intriguing possibilities and consumes much energy from the gerontologists.

    Will scientists figure it out, or will it remain always e beyond their grasp?

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  • The First and the Last Adam

    Adam was the biggest letdown, and his rebellion doomed all of us to imperfection and death. Jesus was as good as Adam was bad, and then some. How is it, then,  that he can be called the last Adam?

    And so it is written; the first Adam was made a living soul; The last Adam was made a quickening spirit.  1 Cor 15:45   

    If you have been conditioned to believe in the Trinity, you will never understand that scripture. Jesus, say the Trinitarians, is equal to God. He is God, only in a different form. So how can he be termed the last Adam?

    Set aside the Trinity belief, and the picture clears instantly.

    The key is to recognize that Jesus was a perfect man. That’s why he was born of a virgin, with Joseph merely the foster father. Had he been born in the usual manner, he would have been imperfect, same as all the rest of Adam’s descendants. He would not have corresponded in any way to Adam. It would have been apples and oranges.

    And if Jesus is God, again we have apples and oranges. Adam and Jesus only correspond if we recognize that they were both perfect men, the only two perfect men that have ever been.

    This is a huge point to recognize, because it enables understanding of a central Christian teaching: how does Jesus’ death benefit mankind. Without this one-to-one correspondence, all you can get is a touchy-feely answer to that question, one that pulls at the heart but does nothing for the head.

    God sent his son to die, Trinitarians say, to show his love for humans. Yeah, okay, but why that and not something else?

    Because God wanted to give the most precious thing he had, is the answer. Yeah, but….why not throw in all the angels as well, and the stars? Wouldn’t that show even more love?

    No, that explanation may tug at the heart, but it does nothing for the head. It contributes to the John Coffey (J.C.)…like the drink, but spelled differently….image of Christianity: Christians are big on heart, with lots of hope, and boundless good will….but they’re really not too smart. 

    The Trinity teaching seriously interferes, even prevents, understanding this key Bible point. But if you make Jesus a perfect man, you get a result that satisfies the heart and the mind.

    Adam was not created to die. Endless life was before him. When he rebelled, he pulled the plug on himself. But not just himself, also all his offspring….all of us. No longer would anyone look forward to endless life, now their certain destiny was old age and death. He sold them, Adam did. He sold them into the slavery of sin and death. And there they must stay, unless someone can buy them back.

    A perfect man sold them into slavery, another perfect man will be needed as the repurchase price. Not another disobedient one like Adam, but a faithful perfect man, as Jesus proved to be.

    You can’t find any perfect men among Adam’s offspring, they’re all imperfect. Only if God sends a heavenly son, his first born, to be born as a human, of a virgin, and so free from Adam’s imperfect heritage, can that perfect man be found. And that’s what God did.

    When you free a kidnapped victim, the price you pay is called the ransom. The ransom price paid to release all of us from bondage to sin and death is a perfect human life, exactly corresponding to the perfect human life Adam threw away. Offering his own perfect life, Jesus bought back what Adam lost, he died for our sins. Now the expression died for our sins makes some sense. Jesus’ life is the ransom price needed to redeem enslaved mankind, and it is the exact price required, thus ransom carries the sense of completely covering….not too much and not too little.

    When it comes to righting the greatest wrong ever, God plays by the same rules he made for us: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a soul for a soul…..in this case, a perfect soul for a perfect soul. (Deut 19:21) Thus, the “legal” framework is in place to restore everlasting life on earth to those who desire it.

    The Son Of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. Matt 20:28

    For there is one god, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all.  1 Tim 2:5,6

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    Tom Irregardless and Me    No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

  • Genesis Old-timers…Why so Old?

    How come in Genesis people get so old? That was my question at Presbyterian confirmation class, eons ago. I wasn’t such a hot student, nor was I overly interested. But you have to say something to justify your existence, and so that was my question.

    The answer was disappointing and dull, but I had no reason to think it was not legitimate. They had different calendars back then! What they called a year was really a month. Thus, the eight patriarchs of Genesis chapter 5 who live almost 900 years apiece, give or take, really live only 75 years, just like us in suburbia.

    In fact, the calendar answer is not legitimate, or at least it is not complete. For Arpachshad fathered a son at 35 years of age. Under the different calendar theory…..let’s see….ah!…he was 3 years old when he became a dad! This is clearly impossible, because…..well, it just is.

    Furthermore, Genesis chapter 11 has people living about 500 years, no longer 900. Later, Abraham and Moses lived less than 200 years. By the time Psalm 90 was written, the common lifespan was 70-80 years. So are we to believe there is a regulatory agency sliding time calibration as the Fed slides interest rates? Plainly, something doesn't fit with the different calendar explanation.

    It does, though, fit perfectly with the Bible's teaching that man was made to live forever, and that death only came about after the first man disobeyed God. Of course, this view requires that we accept…gasp… Adam and Eve!…..whadaya think, we’re 5 year olds??!

    Accept it for a moment…you can always take it back later… just as the mathematicians assume certain conditions and then see where it leads. Valuable math has been discovered that way.

    When Adam disobeyed God, yes, in the Garden of Eden, it was as if he pulled the plug on himself. Pull the plug on a fan and the blades don’t immediately freeze. Instead, they gradually slow. So Adam, designed by God to live forever, still coasts to over 900 years after rebelling.

    If you put a dent in a cake pan, any cake you bake will also have the dent. Similarly, Adam passes on imperfection to his offspring. And like the slowing blades, lifespans of successive generations are ever shrinking, from 900 (Gen 5) to 500 (Gen 11) to 200 and less.

    I’d always been taught that Genesis was a fairy tale, for the consumption of dumb people and children, beneath consideration for we wise ones of modern times. When I came in touch with Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, and saw loose ends such such as this example coming together with satisfying logic, it changed my view of the Bible. Assemble a few key pieces of a jig saw puzzle, and you gain confidence that the rest will come together as well. And that is just what happened.

    Greater detail can be found in the book What Does the Bible Really Teach? available from Jehovah's Witnesses.

    Genesis chapters 3, 5, 11, 25:7, Rom 5:12

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    Tom Irregardless and Me        No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash