Candid talk about life expectancy and death

I am especially directing this particular blog posting to you young people, who I always have in mind. Be assured I am not trying to bum you out, because if you think about what I am writing here, you will see its purpose is the opposite, to make you more realistic and thus have more positivity about both life and what to expect after life.

Young people, the first thing you need to understand is that you were raised by a generation, perhaps even two generations, who have taken an "average" or a long lifespan for granted. They have thus passed on to you some legitimate, but also some very bogus, expectations. Those of us who are older, and, more importantly, had very sound scientific and anthropological subject material in school, have a different, more realistic view of not only the biological life and its priorities but also the spiritual life. Your parents, grandparents and your school systems have done you no favors in this regard. It is urgent that you rethink the unconscious assumptions that you have.

First, look at this article, but most especially the chart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

Here is the punch line. Do you realize that until the last century for ALL of human history that the average lifespan of humans was through the twenties, lower thirties, and sometimes the forties? That is what that chart shows you, that as recently as a few hundred years ago most people could not expect to life much past forty.

Let that sink in for a moment. For the hundreds of thousands of years that what is considered to be modern humans existed, until the last one hundred years or so, virtually all humans could only expect to live a MAX of forty years. Most were considered old and "elders" in their thirties.

This should make you realize a few things now about the scriptures. First, it is very significant and indeed a proof of God's existence that at the time when most humans lived only until their thirties, God told them that their maximum years would be one hundred and twenty. Even the wisest prehistoric scholars could not have figured that out and anticipated such an age limit which has been demonstrated to be precisely true.

Second, it means you have to take seriously the immense ages of some of the patriarchs mentioned in the Bible. People simply would not have made up that a FEW specific named people blessed by God in the times between Adam and Eve and Abraham lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. It is exactly the astonishment of such longevity that resulted in those life spans being recorded in the Bible. Think about it..... of all the things that we today think are "important events," during the times recorded in the Book of Genesis, what is the only "facts" that people recorded? Those several key blessed patriarchs and the ages to which they lived. Other than genealogies those are really the only "facts" of those times: not dates of founding of cities, not amount of wealth, not years of battle victories or other "historical" "facts" like we would record today, but the extraordinary statement by God that due to human disobedience and limitations they can only expect natural life to reach one hundred and twenty years AND the recording of very few people in history who, filled with the Spirit of God, lived remarkably extended lives.

Now, my point is not to focus on those few individuals, the likes of which humans will never see again, for they truly lived when God was present among his people in their early rising and faith history. My point is to get you to not take an "average" or a "long" lifespan for granted, and also to explain some cold and hard facts to belie sentimentality that has crept into the modern psyche.

I am very concerned, as I have for decades, about an assumption that has crept into modern thought, which is that somehow if one suffers a "tragic" or "early" loss of life, that somehow God "makes it alright." To be blunt, many young people have been raised to think that if someone dies young, or if someone of any age dies tragically, that somehow, even if they are the most godless person in their life, that a young or "sad" death gives them some sort of bonus brownie points to achieve heaven. Seriously, so many people think that someone who ignored God while they were alive and even worked against his will, living godless and totally selfish lives filled with pointless activities, that if he or she dies sadly, tragically, at a young age, or was "so nice" and "much loved" or "much admired," that he or she gets a free pass card to the heaven that they didn't even believe in or witness to, and that they are "now at peace."

Think about how illogical that is. For most of human existence virtually every human barely made it out of their twenties alive. Duh. God would certainly not have set up a "bonus point" system for sad and early deaths when obviously ALL FREAKING PEOPLE DIED YOUNG FOR MOST OF HUMAN EXISTENCE.

In Biblical times, boys and girls who reached puberty were eagerly looking forward to being adult enough to marry, have responsibility for some sort of household, and start to raise a family. This is why the age of thirteen is such a "coming of age" in many cultures, and of course very much in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions. Get real, people. At the age of thirteen people were already approaching their life expectancy halfway point.

Thus the Bible, and the Qur'an, were written when people who turned thirty were viewed as "old" or "elders." This is why Jesus Christ started his public ministry around that age, by the way. And at his age, around thirty-three, when he died, it was the greatest tragedy and injustice in human history, but to that reality one cannot say that "he died young." The life expectancy of everyone, in general, around the world was their thirties, perhaps to forty.

So you must drop the notion that because human prosperity, health, hygiene and technology have helped many humans reach the average age of seventy (more in developed countries, of course), doubling what humans had expected until then, that God has some particular special treatment for those who "die young" or "die tragically." Um, that actually has been the entire story and lot of all of human history to date, that life was a struggle to survive day to day, to raise a family, to thrive, and to make it to one's "elder" status years, which was one's thirties.

With that in mind, you must realize that God does not "allow" or "bake into the plan" decades of youthful denial and occult or other "experimentation." Again, modern people, being raised by parents who are spoiled by their recent longevity and prosperity, somehow assume that God "understands" if children are raised godless, if teenagers and young adults "experiment with exotic beliefs" and if people are "too busy" or "too artistic" in their twenties and thirties to care about believing in God. That is a total error and one that is dangerous to the extreme. It not only puts decent living and good choices in peril (the old "I've got lots of time to straighten out" myth) but it also is, frankly, delusional to think that God is going to allow into heaven generations that are more unbelieving and disrespectful of him than ever in human history.

God is one hundred percent truth and one hundred percent consistency. He is constant in his availability to love and forgive even the most egregious sinner. But he is also constant in allowing the consequences of the same behaviors throughout all of human history to determine if an individual is saved (achieves heaven) or not (is assigned to hell for all eternity).

I know that when someone dies young and/or tragically, no one wants (or should) look at the grieving family and say, "Wow, it's too late for him or her to be saved," even if that is most likely factually true. That's cold hearted and cruel, and it is also not recommended that one speaks for God. However, it is equally a disservice for these past two generations to think that someone young who has lived very un-Christian lives, disbelieving and flaunting God, but who was "bubbly" or "artistic" or "sad" and "tragic" gets some sort of bonus points to cancel out their having done NOTHING to merit salvation!

To put it in systems terms: heaven is NOT the default location.

There is advice that I would give to anyone who asks who has suffered a loss in their family of such a person, and maybe I would give it if asked, it's not something that can be easily blogged about, as my advice must tap and utilize the specific level and type of the faith of the persons who are asking. But I CAN tell all of you reading this to understand the facts and be more sane and realistic than your parents' generation (and even some grandparents'). God gave the Bible and the Qur'an to humans for specific reasons: so humans understand the truth, and what God expects from them. As I've blogged before, you must understand the cultural context of the times when the scriptures were articulated, in order to fully comprehend all the fullness and richness of meaning. Here, then, is another example where you cannot read the Bible with modern filters. You cannot be reading the Bible and thinking that an elder is someone in their sixties, seventies and eighties. You cannot read the Bible and think that God is cutting slack for youth. He is not. When God refers to children he means children, as in very young children... God is not even meaning teenagers when he refers to children. As I said, at thirteen most were getting ready to establish their own households. At thirty they were elders. There is no "slack" built in for "young people" to "experiment" and to "choose" "their spirituality" and "whether to 'believe or not.'"

I hope that you have found this helpful.

Understanding God: speaks literally or symbolically

If one thinks about it, the heart of much of the confusion and divisiveness among many Christians, particularly along sect lines, involves confusion about when the Word of God in the Holy Bible is absolutely literal as stated, and when a certain about of symbolism is appropriate.

I was going to write a commentary about Revelation 22:15 for an entirely different blogging topic when I realized that this is a great passage to help people to understand how to correctly balance understanding of "literal" versus "symbolic." That, by the way, is an artificial debate, which results from trying to be lazy in one's discernment about the true meaning of anyone's spoken word, including God's. Excessive literalists are lazy in one direction (they don't want to think about it, just "tell me what to do" is their hope), while excessive symbolists are lazy in the other direction (they don't want to obey some of God's more difficult instructions and thus they hope to be wishy washy and say that it's not literal and thus need not be strictly followed). The truth is that the Word of God must of course be strictly followed, but God speaks in the lingua franca of the people (the common tongue of the time) and thus there will be moments of symbolic speech which takes nothing from the total truth and requirement of those meanings.

Revelation 22:15
Outside are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and everyone who lives and practices falsehood.

In the Book of Revelation John the Apostle has been taken in vision to heaven where he sees all that will take place at the End of Time, the Second Coming of Christ, the Final Judgment. In conclusion of this vision Jesus Christ is speaking to John through Christ's angel. Jesus has given John instructions about revealing all that he has seen and heard, and is giving a summation, which are the final words by him in the Christian Bible. Jesus has just finished praising those who "have the right to the tree of life" (in heaven and in the New Jerusalem), and he now, in Revelation 22:15, lists those who will be excluded from heaven (those who are "outside.")

You can now see why I chose this excellently clear passage to help you to work on your literal/symbolic discernment. What is the first group that Jesus lists will be outside of heaven, excluded from the heavenly city to come? "Outside are the dogs."

I am only half joking when I say that Bible literacy and common sense historical and cultural knowledge have become so low that someday soon young readers of these modern generations will worry that members of the canine species are excluded from heaven. After all, Jesus said that "dogs" will be excluded. This is the perfect example to start a personal effort for you to discern that the Bible is both literal and truthful throughout in meaning, but that one has a responsibility for understanding the plain, historic and cultural context of the language that God uses throughout. Obviously God is not speaking of excluding beagles, mutts, spaniels, retrievers, Pomeranians, etc from heaven. God is using a derogatory term for certain human beings, one that has been used for many centuries in many languages and cultures: dog.

I want to keep this commentary short and sweet so I'm not going to itemize what type of human behavior is so sinful that it renders a person being called "a dog." It was not that long ago that Americans would call someone who was deceitful a "dirty dog." So the term "dog" has an enduring longevity over the centuries to denote certain types of unworthy persons and if one reads about the cultural meaning of being "a dog" from Biblical times, you will realize that it's easier to recognize than to itemize.

The heart of what I am trying to convey is that here is a very obvious example of where everyone can agree that God is being exact in his meaning but using a symbolic term for a quantity that is not so precise. Compare that to another type of person on the list, which are the "murderers." A "murderer" is a much more precise term than a person who is "a dog." In fact, you can see that those are probably the opposite ends of the spectrum of precision in language, where murderer is a very precise term while "dog" is less precise to modern ears. However, in Biblical times and indeed to the present time in many cultures the meaning of "dog" is very well understood. Someone being called a dog by someone else knows exactly the derogatory tone of the term. Thus it is the Bible reader's responsibility to not gloss over the term "dog," but to understand that one must embrace the symbolic meaning to obtain precision of understanding. Thus one must be somewhat well educated in the vernacular of Biblical times, and that is not so much school smarts as common sense. As a hint much of what is behind the accusation of being a "dog" is a lack of honor. As modern society has lost and continues to lose much of its sense and understanding of honor, likewise it is in danger of missing a very specific admonition given with great clarity by Jesus Christ.

Both the person who thinks that Jesus meant beagles (literal) AND the person who thinks it's just a general symbolic word that doesn't merit much thought (symbolic) are in error. The term dog DOES denote a specific category of sinful and unworthy behavior that is being warned about.

Another very specific term, like murderers, that is easy to understand is "everyone who loves and practices falsehood." That is a literal lover's delight. Jesus Christ is warning that those who lie AND those who love lies will be excluded from heaven. There is no symbolism to obscure the meaning there.

Idolaters is also a specific term, and reading the Bible indicates that anything that is fashioned by human hands and then loved and worshipped by those hands is idolatry. Again, one must understand that a literal term can have a broad list of qualifying behaviors. Everyone should realize that there are many modern idolaters today even if they are not worshipping Baal or another Biblically cited false god, since they worship modern creations of the hands. Likewise the group "sorcerers" have a very specific meaning, though some might try to argue regarding what is a sorcery out of the list of many activities that are forbidden, such as magic, divining and so forth. In other words, idolaters and sorcerers are easy to understand and precise terms, but there is a temptation by humans to quibble about whether specific activities are included in those terms.

There is the remaining group, fornicators, that exactly straddles the literal and symbolic. Again, this demonstrates one must read and study the entire Bible to have genuine understanding of any of the parts. If one reads the Bible thoroughly, one understands that sometimes God is referring to literal sins of fornication (sexual activities) while other times God is using the same term to refer to those who are unfaithful to him, to their faith. It is impossible to study the Bible and not notice that sometimes God uses the terms fornicator, harlot and whore to refer to those who engage in illicit sexual behavior while other times God uses those exact same terms to refer to those who have faith in him and who then fall away from faith, or those who spread false faiths and their followers, to those who perform works on behalf of Satan, and those who, to use a modern term, cheapen God and his people.


So we have seen that in this one sentence we see the range from most symbolic to most literal:

(Symbolic) Dogs...fornicators... idolaters...sorcerers....everyone who loves and practices falsehood...murderers (Literal).

Whether Jesus Christ uses a term that is easy to understand in its literalness or more difficult to understand in its symbolic verbiage of the vernacular language, it makes no difference about how crucial they are to understand and to obey God in these matters. One cannot stand in front of God in Judgment and whine, "Well, I didn't know what you meant by 'dogs.'"

I hope that this has been an easy to understand and helpful place to start in recognizing that there really is NO "literal" versus "symbolic" difficulty in the Bible. One must simply recognize that God means to be understood, and hence he used the speech of the day in very clear terms. Moderns must continue to respect and understand the speech of the day of the Bible in order to obtain full and completely correct personal understanding of what God is saying.

Few things surprise me but here's one

I continue to be surprised at the lengths that people will go to dig themselves even deeper into a hole where there is no exit, rather than do the truthful and decent thing (which is very simple to do).

*cue the tune of The Gambler...."you got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, know when to run..." or something like that....*

The first year I've had no kind 4th of July thought

I loved my country, but it does not exist anymore. It is just the satin covered couch of looters, liars and cultists.

Bible reading: Revelation

And I saw that the Lamb had opened the first of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying, as with a voice of thunder, "Come!" And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and he who was sitting on it had a bow, and there was given him a crown, and he went forth as a conquerer to conquer (Apocalypse 6:1-2).


Um, by the way, that is a bow, as in bow and arrows, and not "take a bow" as in that dreadful "Madonna's" song LOL. As the Lamb (Jesus Christ) is sending the first horseman with a bow from heaven, that is a spiritual bow of conquest. It remains to be seen how that is achieved in reality, not in people's cult sociopathic imaginings.

Bible reading: Luke 1:51-52

He has shown might with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly.

Bible reading: Genesis 37:23-27

When Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of the long tunic he had on.
They seized him and threw him into the cistern, which was empty and dry.
Then they sat down to eat.
Looking up, they saw a caravan of Ismaelites coming from Galaad, their camals laden with gum, balm, and myrrh, with which they were on their way down to Egypt.
Then Juda said to his brothers, "What is gained by killing our brother and concealing his blood?
Let us sell him to the Ismaelites..."