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| Mansion on a Hill |
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Imagine a man who lives in a small, sad, dwelling. It's dark and damp. The roof leaks; the walls provide little protection against the punishing cold. There are never visitors, his days are spent in miserable solitude. The land surrounding the little shack is barren. He has little to eat here; the pain of hunger never leaves him. The punishing environment leaves his body weak and broken. However, this man claims that a much different home awaits him just beyond the hills in the distance. He believes that on the other side stands a magnificent mansion. All the comforts and pleasures he can dream of are within it's walls. There will be no more pain, no more hunger. All of the people he's ever cared for are there. He'll live like a king once he arrives. He will, for the first time, know what true happiness is. And this joy will never leave him. But he refuses to go. He clings desperately to his pitiful, suffering existence. Stranger still, if anyone even suggested that maybe he should just leave this shack, and cross the hills to spend eternal happiness in his mansion, he would consider them heartless and cruel. If you were observing his behavior, you might assume that maybe he didn't truly believe in this mansion at all.
So many people who spend their entire lives claiming to believe that a heaven waits for them, where there will be no suffering, no pain, no tears, nothing but eternal love and joy behave as if it is a dreadful thing to actually go to this place. They cling tenaciously to this life. No matter how old they become, they will spend any amount of money, take any medicine, under go any medical procedure necessary to hold on to this existence, even if their entire life is centered around nothing more than the next meal at the nursing home. To suggest that it would be better in some cases, for the person to quietly "move on" instead of living the next however many years in a miserable suffering existence is seen as crass cruelty. Is it wrong to urge someone to hasten their arrival at a place where they will experience nothing but peace and joy for eternity? If we truly believed this as we claim, death would have no power. Funerals would be occasions for a party, not mourning. What cause would we have to be mournful over the death of anyone? There is no reason to be sad for them....they are in Heaven. They're feeling no pain! Of course, we would be sad for the temporary separation from the person we care about...but we will soon follow. If we live for another 20, 30, 40 years, that's nothing compared with the eternity we will spend with this person when we get there.
Our deepest beliefs about life and death seep through into our actions, no matter how much we might try to conceal them. When it comes to death and dying, sometimes it's difficult to believe that we honestly expect a mansion to be waiting.
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Posted by DignaVox on 2009-06-28 10:10:34 | Rating: | Views: 25
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