To die or to die? That is the question...

This post was about half completed when my wife, Linda, suffered a major heart attack on June 17th. She was 15 days in the hospital, 11 of those in ICU. She is progressing day by day with her recovery. We hope to be back in Cancun by the end of this month or the first part of August. "Thank you" to those who have so earnestly prayed for us!

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“...Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone:

but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” (John 12:24)

Hamlet's well-known soliloquy has been quoted so superficially, that it almost seems trite to make any reference to it at all. However, it was famous for a reason and is still worthy of reflection.

Can we get past living for ourselves and the present just for a moment? It's healthy to ask the hard questions,  to shuck the presuppositions and prejudices that stuck to us like nasty thistles as we grew up:

• Is it worth hanging around on the planet another day or not?
• Is there an afterlife? If so, how do we attain it?
• Is there anything bigger than ourselves worth sacrificing for?

If there is no God, no afterlife, then there is no purpose for being here; nothing but void and extinction after physical death. Might as well be a pedophile, a serial killer, a suicide, an ascetic, a hedonist, a church-goer, an unscrupulous player, a religious fanatic, a politician, a terrorist, or a selfish seeker of order and tranquility... it all amounts to the same thing: NOTHING!

The idea that you get to do what you want with your life and maybe, if you are a moral person and you work hard at it, even God will be on your side... dream on!

• You were never here for you; you are here for Him.
• You are not the center of the universe; God is the center of the universe.

“To be or not be”...  wrestling with the enigma outside of the context of God, becomes an arbitrary decision based on a very personal set of criteria... leading to not much beyond a subjective, relative satisfaction with having done with one's temporal existence more or less what one chose to do. Whether that carries any eternal consequences or not, who knows, right?

Whereas the Bible approaches the enigma from a different angle. If you choose Christ, you live forever. If you choose yourself, you still live well -maybe- but only for a while.

So then, "to die or to die" is the sort of question that genuine seekers wrestle with...

• to die: choose Christ over self; deny self to follow Him; cut loose of a former life to embrace the new life He offers... a life that bears fruit, now and in eternity.
• or to die: choose self over Christ; ignore His claims and follow the whims of our own ego; defend what is "rightfully" ours... and die alone... fruitless.

I am not trying to be cute with words... some things in the Bible are up front, user-friendly; others are staggeringly profound. When you look into God's well, the water is clear, so perfectly clear and refreshing; and yet you know that you will never see the bottom - at least not in this life.

Remember the final scene of the movie, "The Last Samurai"? Following the death of Katsumoto on the battlefield, Captain Algren appears before the court of the Japanese emperor to present him with the Samurai's sword.

      - Deeply moved, the young emperor approaches and asks, "Tell me how he died."

      - To which Captain Algren replies, "And I will tell you how he lived!"

The quality of a Christan's living is a reflection of the quality of his dying.