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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is part of our series on controversial questions. A NO post will normally follow a YES post. Join in by posting your comments.]

by Bob MacDonald

That is the question.
As I was walking to the medical clinic for my quarterly blood test – following up on cancer treatment, I was muttering away to my God about semantics and things like that, wondering if the unassigned category in my Hebrew data could be reduced with automation. On my return walk (a little under a mile to the clinic) I heard my Love say “and what about that question from Steve? You know – about time and such?” And I heard a distant voice in a serious spondee pulse, “God has a Plan for you.” And I laughed. People were sparse on the street, so no one turned. But perhaps I laughed to myself. I don’t quite remember now.
Beloved, did I need to say all that to get you to laugh? Did you laugh with joy or with disdain?
What can we say about time? About the Future! I would not want you to be without hope. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
Well I should stop here, shouldn’t I? Obviously Time is constrained. The future is done.
A long time ago, but still with me, is an essay I wrote over 50 years ago in University on Time and Space in Paradise Lost. I was also studying Physics and particularly the Special Theory of Relativity. I found Milton harder than Einstein. I had little use for theology in those days, but I loved Physics class. Every new revelation from Einstein left me speechless. Time dilation to the point of zero passage of time at the speed of light made me see that life was not and could not be what we think it is, i.e., a race to get the most goods, a traumatic beginning and a fearful dead end.
Time is not linear. It is relative. Time depends on the speed of light and that speed is limited. It used to be thought that light moved instantaneously. I am sure you will find citations in Aquinas to this effect.
A quick search reveals this (now there’s light – the internet).
Now no local movement of a body can be instantaneous, as everything that moves from one place to another must pass through the intervening space before reaching the end: whereas the diffusion of light is instantaneous.
But we know now that Aquinas is wrong here. Light is both a body (a particle) and a wave. And it is not instantaneous. And – mind-blowing to our parochialism – time is dependent on light. Time slows to zero. God is in the light. (God is light.) The present is therefore everything and the Presence is in the present.
There is no foreordaining to do for all is open, revealed, and present to the one we have to deal with.
If there is no future, but all is present, then our perception of future is deceptive! When they first sinned, time began, they were born as human, and they knew something other than the present. They could plan, they could kill, they could accumulate wealth, they could exploit. They did not have to be present to their evil. They could put it behind them. They could pray about it and ignore the object of prayer. They could make laws and take refuge in them. They could use weapons of mass destruction, pocket sized nukes. No more dependence for me, they say. I am my own refuge.
It’s all in the psalms of course. And it’s, well, sort-of, indicated, if you can read slowly in my book, Seeing the Psalter, in which I touch on many human things like time.
But there is no index entry for time, Bob.
No? – Look under Hurry. Psalm 22, “But you, Yahweh, be not distant, My hart, to my help, hurry.” And similarly in Psalm 38, the last verse, 40, 55, and its first double in Psalm 70. Psalm 71 a special psalm for the gray-haired, another plea for presence, and finally in Psalm 141. Such urgency is expressed nine times in eight psalms.
Well I suppose I should spell it out. Everything in the Psalms is for us to learn how to get back into the present and do the right thing with God. That is where Jesus learned from – the Psalms, how to be a child of God, how much it costs, no sword, no shield but the shield that is God, utterly naked and vulnerable, a refugee, drinking the cup to the dregs. It’s all in the Psalms. And that’s why Peter can say in his epistle – “Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you….” You can read on. But don’t just get the words right. Get into the present and the past and the future with that Uniquely Anointed One, whose birth we recall this day, and in him, let us change our minds about the gifts we have, so that all humanity, rich and poor, one with another, (Psalm 49:3) may share that immense and inexhaustible wealth.
Then we will make the future, the hope of all the earth, present, and the One who is Present will be God With Us, Emmanuel.
Merry Christmas.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is part of our series on controversial questions. A NO post will normally follow a YES post. Join in by posting your comments.]

by Jody Neufeld

 Euthanasia as a concept of supporting someone as they were dying is attributed to Francis Bacon in the 16^th century. He wrote of helping a soul prepare vs the exterior preparation with less pain and suffering. It would be another 300 years until Dame Cecily Saunders birthed the hospice and palliative care movement. That began a global interest in medical care that included the relief of suffering in the labor of death. Interestingly, during the same time period, the development of care for working with laboring mothers also grew.
For over twelve years, I attended the deaths of many people in my work with hospice. Some may wonder why or how I could do this. I was honored. I learned much from my patients and their loved ones. In the early years, we were learning so much about what medications worked and what didn’t. We discovered relaxation therapies and, as medical people who are more comfortable with absolutes, we accepted that in the care of the dying, medicine was also an art, not a science. The music of Yanni might be relaxing to one patient, but the squeals and giggles of a four-year-old may also seem like music to another.
With the advancement of our knowledge of palliative care, it is my belief that the previous belief that the dying process of someone with a life-threatening illness can, and should be, a time in which “pain and suffering” is not part of the description. Yes, there are still practitioners and too many, in my opinion, government oversight bureaucrats who may spew the ridiculous rhetoric that in the care of such individuals we must be primarily concerned about pharmaceutical addition. But more commonly, physicians are embracing palliative care and working with nurses, social workers and families to provide those who are actively in their transitional journey with the physical and spiritual care they need.
Active euthanasia is the legal tenet that is being proposed to become law. What I have discussed here so far is passive euthanasia. A patient’s decision not to seek further curative or aggressive treatment or utilize a feeding tube or antibiotics would fall under passive euthanasia. Passive euthanasia does not seek a definitive time for death but instead says, “I’m not going to prolong this journey by trying to do treatments that will not cure the underlying, primary problem.”
I read a quote from Annie Besant, a woman’s rights activist and reformer, who said it was “a duty to society to die voluntarily and painlessly when one reaches the point of becoming a ‘burden.’” It is this extreme concept that is part of the slippery slope for me in the concept of active euthanasia. Who determines when and if someone is a burden? How can euthanasia be limited to strictly a patient’s decision? What about those who are unable to verbalize their wishes or haven’t written a Living Will or signed an Advanced Directive document?
While I do believe that a person’s healthcare decisions are personal decisions, I would also submit that truly “no man [or woman] is an island.” The decision to end one’s life does have a profound effect on everyone around them. Loved ones, even when a death may be anticipated, always have regrets & wish for “just one more day.” And how would The Day be determined? Who has the wisdom to know that?
Based on my hospice years and my time with my son before he died*, I can tell you many stories that profoundly affected families and friends that no one saw coming. Not all of the stories were made for “happy ending” movies, but even the painful ones often brought people to consider their own lives in ways they could not or would not have foreseen.
By faith I believe that our Creator, Father God, gives us life and He alone has the wisdom and sight to determine the number of our days. If I had been given the power by Him as to when my son would die, would I choose 3 days, age 12, or age 15 or was that night when he was 17 the best night. I don’t know. Even in retrospect, I don’t know. I do know that even on that last night, there was laughter in memories, beauty in music and peace when I lay down in the quiet empty house. I’m not sure that would have been my description the night before. Time is such a fleeting, nebulous thing and a factor that I rarely see the point of it for good or bad when I am in the moment.
I do not believe active euthanasia is good. But loving, kind end-of-life care can be a profound spiritual experience for everyone involved.
*James was diagnosed at age 12 with rhabdomyosarcoma in his soft palate. Statistics said he had a 25% chance to survive 1 year. He received a year of chemo and radiation, 2 years of remission, another surgery then another year of remission. He did high school marching band and a season of basketball. Five years after diagnosis, cancer came back in his lung, heart, spine and kidney. He saw his niece and nephew and his brother pitch in Yankee Stadium before he died.

by Henry Neufeld

There are those who wonder why Energion Publications publishes fiction. We do this both with our Christian fiction category, our imprints Enzar Empire Press, and Eucatastrophe Press. We don’t require that this fiction be Christian themed. On January 13, 2016 we will start a new blog for our fiction authors, Nurturing Creativity. We celebrate the imagination as a good thing. Why?
Some years ago I was teaching a class on Bible study. One of my favorite chapters in the Bible is the first chapter of Ezekiel, the prophet’s call vision, with its extremely vivid and difficult imagery. I have often used this chapter to talk about visions and how to go about interpreting precisely because of the complex presentation and the difficult elements of the chapter. (I took a full quarter of independent study just on this chapter in college, and I’ve recently discussed it in my Thursday night Bible study.)
Frequently when I talk about this chapter the response is blank looks. The audience just doesn’t get it. No, I don’t mean they get lost in the complexities of the imagery, though they sometimes do, but rather they just don’t get the point. Commentators even seem to fall into a trap here and discuss the chapter as a literary composition. Walther Eichrodt, who wrote an excellent commentary on the book¹, reconstructs the text of the chapter in such a way as to make it shorter and clearer. The resulting chapter is an excellent literary composition. The question is whether it is in fact an accurate portrayal of what the prophet felt and what he intended to convey.
In my class this time there were a number of young people who had been involved in revival here in Pensacola and who, themselves, had charismatic experiences. Some of them testified to such experiences of their own. I’d ask, at this point, that readers lay aside any prejudices about mystical experiences, their source and value, and simply note that such things were part of these students’ spiritual life.
As I tried to describe what I imagined Ezekiel would have felt, and why he described his vision as he did, their faces lit up. They understood what I was trying to say. To some extent, I would say, they understood it better than I did, because it related to something they had personally experienced. It was easier for them to imagine what Ezekiel felt and why he might present it in this way because they could relate it to their own lives.
Much more recently I was discussing keys to understanding the Bible with my Sunday School class and, in response to a question, I told them that getting to understand people better had changed my way of interpreting scripture much more than learning ancient languages. Ancient languages are very helpful, along with the history they open up. In fact, learning ancient languages has helped me learn about people. In turn, understanding people has had a massive impact on how I understand ancient texts.
To some extent modernism, and fundamentalism that arose in reaction to modernism, suffered from a similar error. To the modernist, the purpose of a text was to provide data. Getting the most accurate information was the goal, and to the extent that the text failed to provide that information, it was a failure. An interpretation that did not connect the text to current data points was obviously incorrect. A text that failed to produce data points, a text that entertained, stimulated the imagination, comforted the spirit, or expressed emotion was, by nature, less valuable than one that provided clear information. I may be stating this in an extreme form, but many commentaries from the 19^th and 20^th centuries show signs of this approach.
As an example, a modernist, whether a believer or not, wants Ezekiel 1 to convey detailed and precise information about God. Each element of the vision should not just be a component of an emotional state, mood, or situation, but should somehow be convertible into a doctrinal statement about God.
This sort of result is all very interesting, in its own way, but I think it fails entirely to consider the person involved. Ezekiel is in exile, in Babylon, far from the temple that represented the presence of the God of Israel. There, in Babylon, he had a vision, a theophany. Far from the temple, God appears. In that simple statement we have much of the doctrinal content, and it wasn’t new content. It had been said before. But just because something has been said doesn’t mean that people understand it, or more importantly make it part of their own lives, their own being. For Ezekiel, far from home, there was doubt. Was God still with his people? The vision is an emphatic “yes” in answer to that question. To a modernist, the vision seems unnecessary after that question is answered. Unless it provides more information, why is it there?
This is like asking an artist to stop painting when the essential outlines are finished. They vision itself is an emotional experience, evoking Ezekiel’s imagination of what heavenly things might be like. He’s aware of how far he must be, even in a vision, from understanding, which is why he doesn’t call it “God,” but rather “the appearance of the likeness of the glory” of God.
To participate with Ezekiel in that experience one needs imagination. Imagination is sometimes seen as detrimental to real, practical things. Some take it more positively and see it as a tool. I see it as a simple part of being human. Yes, it is certainly constructive. Human invention starts, I believe, as imagination. Serious, factual discussions often start by imagining. Even a good hypothesis starts by imagining how something might work.
But imagination is also a fundamental part of being human. There can be simple pleasure, joy, and peace. One can settle one’s mind and spirit through acts of the imagination. Imagination can be practical, but it isn’t justified just as something practical. Our emotions, hopes, dreams, and visions are every bit as important a part of us as our analytical abilities and the conclusions we draw from them. I can identify the imagery from which Ezekiel draws in his vision. How much did he see and how much did his mind fill in? We cannot know. But identifying the imagery doesn’t fill in the picture. For that I need to be able to imagine myself there, to try to feel what he felt, and to ask—no, to absorb–how that feeling relates to me.
That is why, I believe, God so often engages the imagination in interacting with people. Imagination leads to change and growth. Imagination allows us to see things we cannot analyze and perhaps incorporate them into our lives. Analysis is a good thing; it’s just not the only thing.
There’s a joke that has made the rounds of the internet in several forms. A philosopher is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. The punchline? Under the same circumstances the theologian will find the cat.
I don’t find it insulting at all. Knowing God is not just difficult. It is impossible. Even with the best sources of revelation, in scripture and creation, I cannot scratch the surface of understanding God. I experience, I imagine, I find a black cat that isn’t there. I feel it and know it even though knowing it is impossible.
¹⁸ I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. – Ephesians 3:18-19, NRSV

¹Reference: Eichrodt, Walther, Ezekiel: A Commentary.  Trans.  Cosslett Quinn.  Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1970.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is part of our series on controversial questions. A NO post will normally follow a YES post.  Join in by posting your comments.]

by Rev. Dr. Robert R. LaRochelle

When I think of WAR, declared or undeclared, the following actions and attitudes come to mind:

1. There is something or someone to attack, obliterate, or defend against.
2. In addition, peaceful means to resolve whatever conflicts have precipitated this ‘war’ have been exhausted.

As I see it, those claiming that within our culture there is a ‘war’ on Christmas have misappropriated the use of the word ‘war’. Yet, apart from any exercise in semantics here, it is important to understand why some make the claim that such a reality exists and to examine the evidence they might cite. With that in mind, I list some evidence I have heard stated from those who argue that we are currently in the midst of such a war:

• Organized groups have contested the placement of Christmas displays such as nativity scenes on public property
• Workers in many companies are told not to say ‘ Merry Christmas’ to customers. Instead, they are encouraged to say ‘ Happy Holidays’ .
• Some companies, e.g. Starbucks, have gone so far as to remove any imagery from their products which might convey any notion of such a holiday as Christmas.
• Children in public schools may not participate in school sponsored Christmas pageants or, in many cases, not sing particular Christmas music in their Holiday concerts.

As a practicing Christian and a Christian pastor, I look at it this way:
Christmas is important to me. My wife and I celebrate it within our home. When we were raising our three children, we did our very best to make each Christmas a Christ-centered occasion. Over the years, our home has been decorated with Christian symbols honoring both Christmas and Advent. At my place of worship, I pray, sing and preach about the importance and meaning of the birth of Jesus. Most importantly, I try to live my life in accordance with His life and His teachings.
However, the simple fact is that MY faith in Jesus, who He is and what His teachings mean, IS MY FAITH. Without denying that His values may have influenced our founders (though that is oftentimes an underdeveloped idea), we must also recognize that we, the United States, are a constitutional democracy in which we have both freedom OF religion and freedom FROM religion.
Were the efforts of those who do not celebrate Christmas to infringe upon the practice of any Christian and her/his right to celebrate it, you could make a case that one’s religious freedom is being trampled upon. Depending on the extent and the range of this activity, you might even make a case for an organized ‘war like’ action.
However, NONE of the concerns expressed by those in our culture who seek to adhere to the principles of separation of church and state impede Christian individuals and their beloved from the free practice of their faith. In fact, these principles provide for the possibility of a peaceful coexistence between and among those of different religious perspectives.
My view is that those non-Christian AND Christian opponents of inappropriate public display of a PARTICULAR religion are NOT engaged in any ‘war against Christmas’. Instead, they are acting in accord with the unique constitutional principles of the United States of America. At a time when some political candidates are sowing seeds of religious intolerance and division, we need reminders from people within the Christian community that our faith in Jesus is not dependent upon its public approval. It need not be legislated nor elevated to the level of the nation’s ‘official or preferred’ religion in order to touch the hearts and souls of its adherents.
So, then, I would contend that there really is no war going on here. Instead, there is a worthwhile dialogue about the proper exercise of religious freedom in a nation that has enshrined this notion and value in those cherished documents that inspire our legislation and our practice.