A Thought About Funerals

A typical service in a Christian church has two main parts of the program: A time of musical worship, and a time for a sermon to be preached. Worship followed by learning, adoration leading to instruction.

This order enables the congregation to first focus on God and their relationship with Him. The sermon that follows can then be engaged with in a good frame of mind, in a more accurate sense of context. Worship enables me to momentarily break the habit of focusing on myself, of placing myself at the centre of the universe, and instead focus on God, placing Him in the centre of everything. When biblical teaching is received, we should first apply it to our relationship or understanding of God, and only to mankind after this. Worship could be said in this way to not only provide an accurate context for any sermon, but for any part of our daily lives.

If a typical church service consists of worship and then practical application, then I propose that funeral services are the reverse of this.

Do you remember how big Cars are?

There could be a scale of human inventions, sorted by size and simplicity. Where on this scale will you find the most common vehicle in the western world?

The Small, The Big...

On the small end of the mechanical scale, we have examples like wrist watches, light bulbs, and pens.

These are simple enough that we can use them every day without effort, and also small enough to be replaced without much care if one stops working. If a pen that I was writing with ran dry, it would be more likely that I would reach for a new pen, and less likely that I would burst into tears.

On the large end of the mechanical scale, we have machines which construct skyscrapers, dig tunnels through the earth, and look good in James Bond movies.

Pessimistic Faith

Picture a monk in your mind. Make his facial expression quite clear in your thoughts, because I am about to ask you a question about what he looks like.

My question is, is he smiling?

Mine wasn't. My stereotypical image of a monk was a medieval man in a brown robe, with a mostly bald head and a serious face. Historical Christianity has an image of sombre, serious people. Some images could even be said to be of people weighed down by their belief. Maybe God is a kill-joy.

An atheist wrote an article a while ago in which he commended the relatively pessimistic view of religion. He was comparing this view with what he considered the unrealistic optimism of his current culture. He didn't mean that a pessimistic person was moody all day long- he made a point to say that when good things do happen, a pessimist can be as happy as an optimist. The difference is that only the pessimist will also be surprised.

I have faith in God. But am I a pessimist?

2 Reasons to Trust Authors

There are lots of non-fiction books by religious and spiritual people. They often contain views and explanations about life. They often disagree. How do you sort through the masses of material for something worth some of your time?

If you trust the writings of a person, you must trust the authority of that person. I have found that when I look for books to add to my One-day-I-will-read-this list, I am more likely to decide that I trust an author if the following 2 reasons are true.

You don't want Heaven

Most people in the world claim they want to go to heaven. I think that most of these people are wrong- either because they don't understand heaven, or they don't understand themselves.

If there is an afterlife, it consists of Heaven and Hell. Out of the two, everyone says that they would prefer to go to Heaven, and most of the time they assume that they are heading in the right direction. But have you ever stopped to wonder what it is you are looking towards? If you haven't, why are you so sure you want to get there?

Short Story: What Thaniel Can Do

Travel through the stars, and observe the alien planets. There are two, one the size of our Jupiter, and the other bigger by half again, about to collide. In this universe, they are able to fall into each other because they have not intended to, and rock and debris will fly into space as they destroy each other without malice.

Now back up a few stars in this galaxy, and focus in on the only inhabited planet in this sector of space. Zoom into this blue and red planet to an individual called Thaniel Remington. Thaniel was a man not too different from any man you might know in most ways, and right now he is deeply sad. In fact, deeply sad doesn't quite cover it.

Thaniel is lying face down on a large mat of hay, and crying the tears of a man who has given up, and then found that even giving up isn't an option. His mind wanders through the last few weeks of his life.

Death and/or Gloom

Many people are scared of death. But doesn't that seem odd?

Death: the 'ultimate statistic', the one thing that every living thing can be certain will occur to it, must surely be analysed as the most natural thing that can happen to us, since it happens with so much more certainty than anything else in life.

But for some reason, something that we could call natural, feels quite unnatural. Most people put great effort into avoiding it for as long as possible. It is currently still considered a taboo subject in England.

Does this unnatural feeling perhaps point towards a built-in part of ourselves that knows it was never meant to die?

Short story: Screwj

It is not the night before Christmas. Instead, it is a nicely warm night in the middle of spring. The rich Mr. Evan E. R. Screwj has just settled into bed, when the ghost of his old workmate, Matthew Scrimp, appears in room.

Scrimp warns Evan that he has not given to charity, friends or family in his life enough, especially friends, nudge nudge, and will be visited by three ghosts over the night. Evan mentions in a cautious voice that Scrimp kept on loosing all his money on cards.

But the ghost of Matthew Scrimp has gone now, and is replaced by a fat, jolly ghost who calls himself the Past. He takes Evan through time to see a piece of his own history. They observe a large gathering where his family met for a large meal. He sees his cousin, Phil, stuffing everything he can lay a hand on down his gullet, and remembers that he died of heart failure later that year. His family, who were all quite large, had practically been proud.