Hope for the Dead, the Maimed, the still Living

I want this message to be very clear to any who may read it.  It is a religious message that is all about why we Christians celebrate Easter.  It is why even non-Christians have good reason to celebrate Easter.  It is why those who seemingly ‘lose’ loved-ones every day in every part of the world through the natural processes of life (it is estimated that 153,000 people currently die per day in the world) or even through the unnatural and obscene atrocities of terrorist actions that have most recently happened Brussels, Belgium, can have hope.

 

It is why the very Son of God came to this earth 2000 years ago to also die.

  

After Jesus died an early death (age 33) because of the decisions and actions of evil men, and after a short period as a disembodied spirit (as we all will be following our death) he was resurrected as the first person to do so in the history of man on this earth.  He overcame death.  (How and why is beyond the scope of this essay, but the knowledge is out there.) Because He overcame death He had the power given to him by God, the Father of his spirit and of our spirits, to be the recipients of His grace and likewise at our appointed time be resurrected from the dead. 

 

We will, following our death, remain for a longer time, depending upon how we lived in our mortality, as a disembodied spirit in a post-mortal Spirit World than did Jesus, but we, too, in our merited and appointed time will be resurrected.  This means that our living spirit will be rejoined with the elements (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc.) that made up our mortal body and we will become a living soul (spirit+body=soul).   In short, we will live again.  This is the essence of the Gospel (‘gospel’ means ‘good news’) of Jesus Christ--our Hope.

Most of the Christian world basically believes what I have written above, and it is Good News indeed.  But there is more!

 

The truths of the pristine Gospel of Jesus Christ that have been restored by revelation in our time to the earth teach that “The [spirit] shall be restored to the body, and the body to the [spirit], yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame” (The Book of Mormon, Alma 40: 23).

Ponder the implications of that—for the ill, the elderly, the handicapped, the maimed! 

The best news, though, is the qualitative nature or type of a life after death with a resurrected and perfect body that is possible for the qualified.

   

If you would like to learn more, ask a Mormon missionary or any informed Latter-day Saint, for we are enjoined to “be ready always to give an answer every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in [us]” (Holy Bible, 1 Peter 3:15).

It is my absolute conviction that there is a sure hope for all of us.  The first step, though, is to develop Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who rose from the dead on that first Easter day.  Hallelujah!

America’s Social Crisis

There is a social and political crisis happening in America –few can deny it.  But I believe a case can be made that the chaos in Washington, and in our disgraceful political campaigns, and in the streets of our inner cities and the polarization between blacks and the police, between ‘straights’ and the LGBT community, with the destabilization and fragmentation of families—most of this chaos is an outgrowth of an educational and religious crisis in our institutions of traditional stability and in our homes and hearts as individuals.

 

For two centuries America has been a Christian nation. But in mainstream Christianity now there is often a disconnection between what many Christians say they believe and how they act.  Many are Christian-ish, or ‘Almost Christian,’ as a recent and illuminating book by Kenda Creasy Dean on teenagers and the American church is titled (Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian, Oxford University Press, 2010; from the report of the hugely significant National Study of Youth and Religion). Our youth and young adults have a lukewarm religiosity at best.  Few are deeply committed and passionate about their faith—with one conspicuous religious denomination as an exception. (See the chapter titled ‘Mormon Envy’ by this Princeton University Theological Seminary non Latter-day Saint professor.) But America’s young people can’t be too harshly faulted; they learned it from their parents’ shallow hour-a-week (at best) or hour-a-month religiosity that is insufficient to build moral character or a moral base.

In education, especially higher education, the disconnection with religion and traditional values is intentional. It has been eroding at an increasing rate for the last half century.

Our young people, Millennials most notedly, lack an understanding of the past and a vision of the future and find themselves in an impoverished and nihilistic present.  Self-aggrandizement in social media, video games, banal television and movies and violence in sport, escapism drugs and pornography have supplanted good books, creative work, broad study, wholesome recreation, community and public service and committed family-building as the focus of life for far too many.

    

Moreover, there is now more of a focus on ‘self’ than at any time in my life.  New York Times and radio media columnist David Brooks,  in a recent newspaper column titled ‘The Shame Culture has become new moral system’, says social media has created a shallow and insecure Shame Culture’ that is terribly damaging to our youth. But it is different than the old-school traditional ‘shame culture’ (shame on you!).  In today’s ‘shame culture’ it is how many ‘friends’ young people have on social media (if you don’t have many you are a ‘loser’) and their judgments on ‘likes and dislikes.  Many only look outward long enough to say they are ‘tolerant’ and ‘inclusive’ (their highest stated, but not internalized, virtues) but the mobs and demonstrations and rallies belie their professions.  Their method of persuasion is incivility and ‘shame-ing’ and belittling  others to believing their way.  And what is their ‘way’?  Few could tell you their world view. 

    

Question:  How are we taught to respond to our environment—political, social, moral, demographic, even ecological?  Do you even remember being taught?

My answer for young or old:  Get involved.  Get involved with your family, your church, your community; get involved with those who need you, who you can help.  Put down your cell phone and give of yourself.  In short, JUST START SERVING.  David Brooks’ 2015 book, The Road to Character is a wonderful resource to helping us become involved politically, socially, and personally by showing us real people who made a difference how it is done. 

The marquee to my university invites: Enter to Learn; Go forth to Serve. I think of it every day. 

 

I end with Theodore Roosevelt, from his April 1910 speech in Paris, Citizenship in a Republic, which summed it up well in a paragraph from that talk that was later titled “The Man in the Arena”:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Would it be asking too much from our political leadership and from ourselves to re-subscribe to these noble words [paraphrased] from our greatest president over 150 years ago?

“We here highly resolve that these dead [or any who have given their all for the values this country once stood for] shall not have died [or lived] in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom [and of families and a noble citizenry] -- and that government [and institutions] of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

                                                      President Abraham Lincoln