Thursday, March 9, 2017

A Firm Grasp on the Truth

Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. - John 18:37

Last night I posted an article on Facebook concerning a bizarre phenomenon where people who were pronounced dead (albeit a small sample), 10 minutes later displayed significant brain activity. When I shared it, this is what I had to say concerning the article:

"In a bioethics course I took, we were not allowed to invoke religious beliefs to build an ethical case on any matter. When it came to the topic of assisted suicide, I ultimately argued that it was wrong because, aside from religious convictions, nobody knows what happens when you die. I got docked for using a bad argument. Well well well, looks like my argument wasn't so wrong after all. If you have a strong grip on the truth, conclusions like this are not hard to deduce.."

Now, this is a little tricky because I was referring to truth in using an argument to state whether an action was ethical or unethical, while placing my convictions aside and making a secular case concerning why something was either right or wrong. I am not secular. Thus, when I stated that "Nobody knows what happens after we die" is not something I actually believe, but was a blanket statement to say, "Not everyone agrees what happens to us when we die."

My secular, probably atheist, professor (whom I never met face-to-face, due to it being an online course) more than likely knocked my grade because the assumption was, "If you die, your brain ceases to operate." Scientifically, at the time, I agreed. But because of my conviction that something does happen after we die, I could not bring myself to accept the premise that we know that the atheist premise, concerning what happens after we die, was true.

So my thought process was, a lot of people have different beliefs regarding what happens after we die; we know what happens to the body after we die; but we still don't understand what the mind and spirit are in a scientific sense; to simply say that the end of the body is the end of existence does not need to be true in a physical sense. To someone who does not believe in God, of course this would sound absurd. The mind would be nothing more than the product of the system of one's body. If the body dies, the mind ceases to exist. And what's this talk about a spirit?

What is fascinating about this observation, with brain activity after death (mind you, I only skimmed the article, so I could have missed something) is that as a Christian I believe in the Resurrection of the dead. That does not mean I fully understand what that entails. What I can say with certainty, as a Christian, was that when Jesus rose from the dead, he rose in his own body but his body was glorified. It was the same, but greater. Could brain activity after death be an indicator of a pre-resurrection status?

This goes into a much deeper theological point, and I am just throwing out ideas without believing nor endorsing any of them at this point, but Jesus himself may have given hints at such a phenomenon. We are quick to dismiss it when he states, "It is better to enter heaven maimed..." hold the phone here; enter heaven maimed? (notice he doesn't indicate that someone will remain maimed in heaven, but enter heaven maimed). We simply conclude, he's speaking in hyperbole. Was he?

Sin is a very serious thing and I believe he meant what he said. It's not to say you will enter heaven maimed, but who are we to say, contrary to the words of Jesus that the physical infirmities that we bore in this life will not be carried with us to the judgment? Were not Jesus' scars present when he appeared to his disciples?

And this is not to say that these infirmities would remain in heaven, of course they will not, but we have not even come close to tapping into the mind-body-spirit connection that is a reality in this life. My professor made an error to assume that death was the end of everything, physical and otherwise. Having a firm grasp on the truth, however, will lead us to discoveries that at the present moment we cannot grasp.

www.williamhseng.com

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