Death: now, at 115 and beyond

The world’s oldest person just died this on Friday according to the NYT.

But 115 doesn’t seem too old when you read about those who lived before the flood according to Genesis 5.

But I am dying–and so are you.

Jim Savastio wrote the following words:

Perhaps those words are shocking to you to read.  They are somewhat shocking for me to write, but it’s true.  I am dying.

I’m not entirely certain how much longer I have.  It may be a matter of days or weeks.  Lord willing, I will yet have some months and even years, but I am still dying.

I remember some years ago hearing about a man pointing to a grave marker and noticing that the years of birth and death were separated by a dash.  He said, “That’s my life, that dash.”  We all live in the dash.  We are, the Bible tells us vapors, we are blades of grass and flowers.  We are here today and soon gone.  I am temporary, ephemeral.

This knowledge works on me as a man and as a pastor.  I try to live with the consciousness that this may well be my last day.  The sermon I am preparing may be my last sermon.  It may be the last time I ever exhort my brethren, the last time I ever plead with the lost.  What do I want to say?  What burdens do I want to leave behind?

Knowing that I am dying affects my friendships.  I think when I leave a conversation that I may never speak to this brother or sister again.  How do I want to part with them?  Will I be glad with that last conversation?   Was it loving and kind or petty and cruel?   What if that last email I shot off was my last before I died.  Is that how I want to be remembered?

I think of my times with my children or my wife…that parting hug or kiss may be my last.  The words which I have spoken or things I should have said and did not.  I do not want to die with regret.    Yes, I think differently now that I am dying.

Everyone reading these words is dying.  You know that don’t you?  You know you are in the dash?   What do you want your epitaph to be?  What are the things you are fighting for or over that you’ll be pleased you gave your energy to in light of your approaching death?  May God help us not to squander the little time we have left.

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Would Jesus discriminate?

“The early church welcomed a gay man.” “Jesus affirmed a gay couple.”–Actual billboards in TX. What????

This is an example of ” the ignorant and unstable twist[ing] to their own destruction . . the Scriptures”

“You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.” (2 Peter 3:16-17, ESV).

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Disdain for doctrine

Many people don’t like to discuss doctrine.  They are suspicious of it for a variety of reasons. Here’s how one writer describes the disdain for doctrine today. Mind you he is just giving many common objections to talking about doctrine and he goes on further to counteract these perceptions.

“Doctrine!  The very word sends shivers down a lot of spines.  The mental journey between ‘doctrine’ and ‘doctrinaire’ is all too short and easy for comfort.  Doctrine suggests something petty and pedantic.  It conjures up images of hard-bitten theologians, scrabbling furiously and pointlessly over words.  It even evokes painful memories of the Spanish Inquisition, when men and women suffered for not accepting the right ideas.  Doctrine seems like a relic of a bygone age.  It may have been important once upon a time.  But not now.”

“Many people who have had a profound experience of God find that doctrines seem somehow terribly unreal.  Take a woman who has felt herself overwhelmed by the closeness of God at the birth of her first child.  Or a student who experiences an awesome sense of God’s forgiveness as she prays. . . . And if they turn from this experience to consider Christian doctrines, they often feel a sense of anticlimax.  The doctrines seem stale and frigid in comparison with what they know of God.  They just don’t measure up to the real thing.  They seem like mathematical equations, cold and impersonal. Surely God’s not like that!  What conceivable relevance can they have?  Why bother with them?  Surely doctrine has no relevance for the ordinary believer.”

–Alistair McGrath, Understanding Doctrine, vii.

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