Satan has his devils too.
Halfway on today's cycling trip, my thoughts turned to a man I met the day before. He was reading a book on Catholicism, and I came to talk to him, to find out a little more on what he was in for. He was in a bad state. The doctors suspected nasopharyngeal carcinoma, yet they couldn't find anything so far. Still, there was an extremely high chance he had nasopharyngeal carcinoma. The markers and everything was elevated.Anyway he seemed at peace with his disease. I was very curious to find out what his perspective on death was, since he was a very staunch Christian. He talked about death and sin, and how sickness is the result of sin. Children were born disobedient, and hence sinful. Jesus cleanses sin and defeated death, but you have to die first, before you can be reborn with eternal life.
And eternal life comes only after the Rapture, which he described very beautifully, much in depth. All the dates and times and the first coming and second coming of Christ. How the Christians will be ultimately victorious, and the non-believers be judged. I can't remember the details exactly, but he looked very eager to experience that future he believed in.
I asked him, "You are now sick, and dying. And you believe that is because of sin. How do you reconcile that with Jesus cleansing you of sin?"
I asked him, "When judgement comes, will you bear to see your non-believing friends cast into the hell that was made for Satan?"
He replied, "They chose not to believe. They chose to follow Satan."
At that point in time, I intensely disliked the man for his selfishness. But then I said to him, "I am not facing what you are facing. I am still young. Maybe, one day I might understand this."
Outwardly, it was a very peaceful conversation. But inside, I felt affronted. How can a mainstream religion still propagate such thought and still be accepted by this kind old gentleman?
When I was cycling today, the parallels to Nazism and this old man's Christianity just kept coming back to my consciousness. What is the difference between the two? They are both concerned about racial purity, both misguided, and both dangerous. And the truth is, even if he did not like non-Christians enough to reserve hell for them, I liked him as a fellow human being. I'm sure I would have cared for him, if he was my patient. Would he do the same for me?
I love him, even though he may not love me. He may not like non-Christians, but he is suffering and still a patient.
When I decided on Medical school, this is why I decided to join the profession. I wanted to help people, regardless of what they believed, or what others believed. Patients should receive full care, in accordance to what they believed. They should not receive care based on what others believe, myself included. I can guide, but only for their benefit, from their perspective.
I thought about the right reaction to him, to his view that many of us are confronted with every day. Views of bigotry, views of discrimination, views that mean us no good. I thought about confronting his belief with my belief. Confronting his faith, with my truth. There was no solution there.
Faith and belief can only last a lifetime. Faith and belief is as transient as the wind. Only truth lasts forever.
We don't have to debate on beliefs, or faiths. We don't have to debate on what is right, or what is wrong. All these are perceptions that will change with time. They are of the transient nature of things. All artifice are doomed to end. Only truth lasts.
I don't need a book to tell me what my reality is. I don't have to believe in anything. Reality is. Truth is. They are both part of the constant nature of things. If I look for truth, and find it, I'll have found it forever.
That's why I don't believe.
posted by Downhere. @ 8:42 pm
1 Comments:
Hi KT... :)
A part of me feels like asking you to bring me to visit this man, to talk to him, I can't tell if I can help him, and I'm frequently not brave enough when speaking to strangers too, but... if he really was Catholic, then there are a few things that he supposedly said that are severely misguided views. I have no doubt that your opinion about him being a kindly old gentleman stands, but I think that a person's burden might feel especially great if he believed that sickness and disease is born directly out of sin, that is not what I have been taught to believe. He is not the only Christian who has slightly misguided views about the faith either...and I suspect that you have been meeting many of such people hence you believe that Christianity blinds people from the truth, when in fact, it is simply that these people have misunderstood some things about Christianity, and haven't realized the full truth and have been saying things that do not actually go in line with Church teaching...
The Catholic church believes that when an infant or child dies, he is at the mercy of God, but God is a merciful God, and an infant/ child whose conscience and rational thought processes have not been fully formed yet, cannot be condemned to hell even because of what Christians believe in "original sin". Children/humans are not BORN disobedient! They are born without a fully formed conscience so how can they tell at 1 day old whether they are obedient or disobedient? Obedience only comes when a person has knowledge that he has free will and a conscience and a mind of his own to decide whether or not to obey.
I think this is a misunderstanding with regards to humans being born with original sin. To be born with original sin doesn't mean to be born with disobedience. The original sin is from the idea that Adam and Eve and their decendents after that as well, are being born with the propensity to wrong, that humans are born with an inclination SOMETIMES, not all the time, to disobey, as well as to obey. This is not to say that humans are born BAD, just that for example, man might be inclined sometimes to be selfish (for personal survival perhaps).
Also, original sin is not what brings about sickness, well not in the sense of a nasopharyngeal carcinoma atleast; I think what the gentleman was trying to communicate, was his literal interpretation of the casting out of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, but such stories aren't meant to be taken too literally. Just because the two of them can't "eat from the tree of life" anymore after they committed original sin and disobeyed God, that doesn't mean that EVERY human descendent of theirs falls sick BECAUSE of sin. If that were the case, then a very immoral man would probably only live for 10 seconds and a very good person would live till 1000, but we all know that that isn't the case. Good people fall sick and die early all the time.
We are not condemned to hell after death according to whether or not we were "cleansed from original sin", but we are judged according to how much we decided to obey/disobey God in leading a LOVING life, a life that is life-giving to others, a life in search for truth and in pursuit of that truth.
I don't know how the person you spoke to knew exactly what the Rapture/heaven would be like, or the dates and times and second coming of Christ........ as far as I know if he truly knew all that he must be a prophet, or he might be reading something that I have never heard about and sounds highly dubious. So far as I know, nobody knows what heaven is like FOR SURE because noone has ever been there and came back and wrote a book about it!
Christians are judged as well! Not just the non-believers. In fact, Christians are judged even more harshly because we know the commandments...non-believers who have never been taught about the teachings of Christ or haven't fully realized what the teachings entail cannot be condemned because of something they do not know or do not believe in... But for Christians if we are condemned it's because we have purposely turned away from God. Then again, nobody can tell for sure who will be in heaven and who wouldn't. Christians are not GUARANTEED salvation through baptism only... Logically, a good unbeliever who led a good life in search for the truth is more likely to go to heaven than a believer who chose to turn away from God.
But just because a person might not believe fully in God...doesn't necessarily mean that they chose to follow Satan... there are so many people out there who are still searching, that doesn't mean that they follow Satan! Many reject satan and his works, most humans long for good and not evil, so how can they be called followers of satan?
Mainstream religion doesn't believe that all nonbelievers are condemned... really KT...if you would like to hear from the teachers of mainstream religion itself, come join a class with me and then you won't be so mixed up between the heresies (misguided teachings) and what the religion really teaches.
What religion strives towards teaching men is not about baptising everybody just so there "racial purity". The entire human race was already born equally good in the eyes of God, whichever religion or race or whatever we were born into. What religion strives towards teaching men is to give them guidelines on how to help his fellow man, how to lead a life that is full of love, not segregation, the name "Catholic" itself means "Universal"... there are sayings about God seperating the good and the bad, not that God will seperate the baptised and unbaptised! There's such a thing as baptism of desire... people who follows every truth that God has to teach without ever hearing about the religion before; and how much more such a person can do for the world...
It really is difficult to administer and help the dying and I've always admired the amount of love that you have for everybody KT...you're right in the sense that I don't think it might be the best thing for you to CONFRONT him with the truth :) ... but perhaps if he gets better, you could talk more freely with him...and just share your thoughts...
The book is guide, like a map. But the map-readers sometimes read the maps wrongly. That doesn't mean that the map is wrong :)
Don't stop searching for the truth KT... and just because I might have chosen a map, doesn't mean that I've stopped searching for the truth either...I'm with you on that.
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