Thursday, February 5, 2009

The Position I Do Not Understand

Apathy with respect to the "God question" is a position that I do not understand. I'm not referring to the position of skeptics ,who attempt to block out all false information, but rather people who just have no curiosity about their destiny be it worm food or eternal communion with God.

If the orthodox Christian perspective is right, our souls will not only go on, but our souls will even have physical bodies a trillion years from now, and trillions of years after that, and a trillion upon trillion more. If the orthodox Christian answer is right, human beings will never cease to exist, we will simply cease living in this temporary world, but our souls are eternal and will stand outside of and immune from time and change ad infinitum. It is a lot to attempt to wrap your mind around, and makes me dizzy, but it makes it even harder for me to understand people's apathy with respect to these questions.

If the atheist position is right, we live in a closed universe (closed in the sense that no God intervenes in the affairs) of cause and effect--we live, we die--and then we become worm food.

These are rather extreme positions to hold. And one of them, in some way shape or form is right. Which makes it that much more difficult to understand the position of the apathetic. There is plenty of literature ranging from the Bible to the great Christian authors even to great atheist philosophers that can and ought to be studied so as to be without some position. All these books can help someone find their position and belief with respect to their eternal destiny. And, we all have an eternal destiy, we'll either be eternally living or eternally dust.

With respect to the Christian position, there is either a "yes" vote or a "no" vote. An abstention according to Christian orthodoxy is the equivalent of a "no" vote, and holding the position of "not knowing" won't allow you to slide by as a conscientious thinker. If one believes the Christian position is plausible, but hasn't received enough information to make a decision, it is time well spent to read and research the single most important issue that one faces in life.

The puritan minister Johnathan Edwards said along the lines that he could not believe people do anything other than stop and contemplate the after-life.

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