Q: When a person dies, what happens to his or her soul?

A: It dies too. They are the same. When the person dies, so does the soul.

The best way to see this is to read the first mention of soul in the King James Bible. It reads of Adam: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7) He wasn’t given a soul. He became one.

It’s like when a man becomes a doctor. He is one. He doesn’t have one. If he dies, the doctor dies too.

The Hebrew word is nephesh. In the Old Testament, soul is always translated from nephesh. In the New Testament, the Greek-equivalent word is psykhe. Sometimes nephesh is translated as at Genesis 2:7, meaning the person itself. Sometimes it is translated in a closely related way, with ‘my soul’ meaning ‘myself.’ Sometimes it is translated to mean ‘my life as a soul.’ But, in no case is it some shadowy thing that lives on after the body dies. Far from being indestructible, plenty of scriptures say the soul can die. “The soul that is sinning—it itself will die,” for example. (Ezekiel 18:4)

Does anybody recognize this other than Jehovah’s Witnesses? Immortal soul is a mainstay of churches. The teaching is well-nigh universal that when a person dies, it is only the body that dies; the soul lives on in heaven or in hell. Universal though it may be, it is not a scriptural teaching. Moreover, it just serves to confound people. What possible use is a resurrection to one who is not already dead? If they are living on in heaven or hell, what’s to resurrect? 

Uncovering what is the soul is one of the few times you are better off in the King James Version (or Catholic Duoay-Rheims) than in a more modern translation. Modern translations will render Genesis 2:7 along the lines of Adam becoming a living person, or living being. That makes for smoother reading, since that is what nephesh means. But, it also obscures the roots of the unscriptural ‘immortal soul’ doctrine. 

If it is not a biblical teaching, just where does it come from? Take a few excerpts from The Big Questions of Philosophy, a 24-part Great Courses lectures series—delivered by Professor David Kyle Johnson, Professor of Philosophy at King's College in Wilkes-Barre., author of about 20 books. He is not a believer. These guys almost never are. But you can be sure his background facts will be correct. Turns out that what he says, Jehovah’s Witnesses have been saying for 100 years.*

“The ancient Jews did not believe in souls, . . . only ruah, a word often translated as ‘spirit’ but [which] only really means ‘wind’ or the ‘breath of life,’” he says.

Furthermore, “‘they did not really believe in the afterlife, at least not a conscious one where you go to live after you die. Instead they believe in sheol the place where the dead go to rest.”

From where comes the existence of an immortal soul?

”The belief that the soul continues its existence after the disillusion of the body is a matter of philosophical or theological speculation rather than of simple faith and is accordingly nowhere expressly taught in holy scripture.”

Is it? Can anyone point to where it is? As universal is the belief that good people go to heaven when they die, you would think it would be on every page of the Bible! Instead, you never see it.

But that is the Old Testament. What about the New?

“And you might be surprised to learn that the early Christians did not believe in souls either, since their roots are in Judaism and since Jews don't believe in souls.”

Yes. Of course. That is why Jesus likened Lazarus’ death to sleep! (John, chapter 11) When he resurrected the man, he had been dead for four days. You don’t think he would have been annoyed to have been yanked out of heaven if that’s where he was? 

“In fact, belief in the resurrection of the body doesn't make any sense if you believe in souls. At best, it is superfluous. There is no need for a resurrection of the body if the soul survives into the afterlife without it.”

Bingo! It makes no sense! The belief in immortal souls confounds efforts to understand the Bible! It’s the kind of thing that makes people pull their hair out, trying to read what they think is an obligatory doctrine into a book that doesn’t contain it!

But, if it is “nowhere explicitly taught in holy scripture,” where does it come from?

“The western notion of the soul was a philosophical invention defended by Plato that got integrated into Christian theology by the likes of Augustine. He studied Plato and liked what he said about the soul, and so incorporated it into his Christian theology.”

It is not Christian! It is an import of Ancient Greek philosophy! Infused from the days of Augustine, it long precedes the Protestant Reformation. Thus, you find it in Protestant Churches as well as the Catholic Church—and Orthodox and any other offshoot from that time.

How did Jehovah’s Witnesses figure it out? Are they students of philosophy? Have they taken Dr. Johnson’s course? No. They are not students of Ancient Greek thought. But they were and are serious students the Bible. The saw just what David Kyle Johnson says, the belief is “nowhere explicitly taught in holy scripture.”

Johnson even says: “Recognizing the philosophical problems that the soul creates for Christians, making Christian theology difficult to defend, and with an understanding that the true origins of Christianity, including scripture, did not include the existence of soul, many Christians want to rid Christian theology of the notion of the soul, and instead return to the Jewish conception of the person as a physical object.”

This, I doubt. It may be so among the high-brow educated types he hangs out it, but my experience with fundamentalists is once that they latch onto a doctrine, they thereafter know it “by faith” and are impervious to reassessment. It is one of the downsides of instant conversion. Once a person has done that, they become intent upon reading their beliefs into scripture rather than allowing for the reverse. 

*see lecture 19: “What Preserves Personal Identity?”

******  The bookstore

See art 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 Part 5

It is almost painful to see the critically-minded exploring biblical passages and, as though by design, discarding every key they come across. Time and again, you find yourself saying, ‘Not that one, don’t toss that one, you will need it, that one’s a keeper!’ Heedless, they say, ‘We are wise and learned adults, far too clever to be sold Adam and Eve (or whatever). What’s next? Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck? We will opt for a deeper meaning, never mind if if doesn’t add up to anything.’ So reliably does this happen that one almost suspects some sinister power at work manipulating the wise to destroy every useful map, that they may wander forever in the critical wilderness, with nary an oasis in sight.

Elaine Pagels writes a book (Why Religion? This one is her autobiography) in which she wrenches apart her soul, chronicling her unrelenting anguish at the deaths of both her young son and, several years later, her husband. She is an excellent researcher and author, and her documentation on her own ordeals is as expressive as anything I have read. It is enough to make one ashamed at better weathering similar trial, except . . .except for the reservation that, through her training, she systematically threw away any key that might have helped her. Untimely death, though still horrific, is infinitely more bearable to one entertaining the Bible’s resurrection hope.

You cannot throw away keys you never had, one might point out. If her education served to keep those keys shrouded, that is hardly her fault. Her only prior taste of Christianity was with the brand that spins the death of an infant as God picking flowers for his beautiful heavenly garden—who wouldn’t be repelled by that?—thereafter leaving her tastebuds for Christianity permanently seared. Consequently, though Pagel’s life work of religious legend and textual scholarship makes a fascinating read, both her education and religious experience have prejudiced her to overlook the keys. She never had them.

Though it has long been a staple of preachers, the analogy of God picking flowers is nowhere found in the Bible. However, there is an analogy parallel in all respects except the moral at the end. It is found in Nathan’s tale to David, the tale of the rich man who slaughtered and prepared for his visitors the sole lamb of a poor man, sparing his own abundant flock. That man did not receive praise from David, but rather instant wrath. “As surely as Jehovah is living, the man who did this deserves to die!” the king said. (FN) Likely, Pagels picked up on the contrast between David’s wholly understandable response and the evangelical model that holds God behaves just like that cruel man. Preachers make a horrific mess trying to extract themselves from the moral corners their doctrines unfailingly paint them into—in this case, the doctrine that the soul lives on and can never die.

One person who, unlike Pagels, did have the keys and did throw them away, all the time imagining she was taking a step forward, even when she desperately needed a certain key, is a woman praised to high heaven by an (one can only assume) atheist professor of theology at Harvard. Something is greatly off-base about the New York Times review (FN) of Amber Scorah’s book, Leaving the Witnesses, and it is not Amber. It is the reviewer, C. E. Morgan, who goes about her task with a humanist fervor that merits a review in itself. One wonders what she could possibly teach at that Divinity School or what might be the outcome for students who attend her class—students who likely went there because they wanted to learn about God. Her lavish praise of Ms. Scorah’s book: “She teaches us how integrity is determined . . . by enduring the universe as we find it—breathtaking in its ecstasies and vicious in its losses—without recourse to a God,” surely should give those students pause—are they truly in the place they thought they were? Or did they somehow get shunted off into Atheist Academy?

Ms. Scorah herself, as presented by Ms. Morgan, is more conventional. Hers is one of the oldest stories of time—of someone disillusioned with her present life, so she reaches out for another, which upon seizing, she finds exhilarating. It is a coming-of-age story. It is a staple of literature. Since she is “leaving the Witnesses”—Jehovah’s Witnesses, one must at least consider how the Witnesses themselves might have phrased her departure, perhaps similar to the words of the apostle Paul addressed to Timothy: “Demas has forsaken me because he loved the present world.”

Ms. Morgan cannot be expected to put it as did Paul, but since she teaches at the divinity school, one might at least expect her to be cognizant of that point of view. Instead, Amber’s departure is a tale of pure heroism for her—that of escape from an “extreme” religion—even worse than a “fundamentalist” religion, in her view—and it is “most valuable as an artifact of how one individual can escape mind control.”

It would appear that any denomination of Christianity that has not interpreted away into oblivion the resurrection of Christ would be fundamentalist in Ms. Morgan’s eyes. “The anti-intellectualism of these [fundamentalist] authoritarian movements, their staunch refusal to cede ground to reason and empiricism, often confounds nonbelievers,” and it seems she counts herself as Chief of the Nonbelievers—never mind what her teaching title might suggest. “How can people devote the totality of their lives to the unseen, the unevidenced?” she laments, seemingly unaware that such is the very fabric of faith, of those who interpret “evidence” differently, and who will say, akin to Jesus addressing the Pharisees, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have evidence as our father.’ For I say to you that the devil is able to raise up evidence from these monied and agenda-driven stones.” (FN Matthew 3:9) But she will not say it. “How can faith subsume thinking?” she complains instead. Her frustration could not be more clear—‘We have fired everything we have at them and yet they keep standing!’

As bad as fundamentalism is, however, it is not so bad in her eyes as an “extreme religion” like Jehovah’s Witnesses. To establish that she has done her homework, she relates that from its 1870 inception, the faith “rejected Christian doctrines it deemed extratextual [not in the Bible], including trinitarianism and hell.” You would think she would be happy about that, for it is a distinct step toward reason—Witness leader C. T. Russell was known within his lifetime as “the man who turned the hose on hell and put out the fire.” The Witness description of death, “extinction or non-being,” is exactly the rationalist view, though it will be marred in her eyes by the caveat of a future resurrection from the dead.

The notion that Christianity should return to its default state Morgan finds “dubious.” Yes, of course she would find it dubious, for it freezes religion in place. It halts evolution. It detracts from her authority at the Divinity School to proclaim a new gospel holding that dependence on God is for chumps. No, she wants religion to evolve, as does everything else in her Darwinian world. Witnesses also “actively proselytize, warning of an imminent Armageddon,” she complains, as though it is wrong to even suggest that an earth carved up into scores of eternally squabbling nations might not be exactly God’s dream come true.

In short, she has found people—ordinary people for the most part—who disagree with her, and she oozes disdain for them. Children raised in such religion “experience a totalizing indoctrination that so severely limits the formation of an adult psychology that many don’t ever achieve maturity in the way secular society conceives of it.” Necessarily, this means that she thinks adults of that faith are, for the most part, immature children. None of them will be found among her social contacts or workplace, perhaps barring a support worker or two, with whom she may occasionally exchange a brief word so long as they keep their stupid opinions to themselves.

The patronization is simply too much. Any time someone leaves one culture for another, there is some catching up to do—say, in the case of a person migrating from one country to another. Would Ms. Morgan similarly find it necessary to crow her superiority over the country and culture of emigration, say, where Hinduism is practiced, perhaps, or Spanish is spoken? She would recoil at the thought, but when it comes to religious views that stray from her worldview, it is as natural to her as breathing air. Let her “world” prove itself reasonably “free from sin” before she casts stones on those who have come to see things differently.

Amber ran out on a “loveless marriage,” Ms. Morgan states, and her implication is clear that Jehovah’s Witnesses think loveless marriages are the bee’s knees, since she presents love as the balm that finally wakes Ms. Scorah up. I will take her word for it that Scorah’s book is as she says it to be—an “earnest one, fueled by a plucky humor and a can-do spirit that endears.” And yet it does not completely satisfy the reviewer—it shows too much the “the remnants of a Christian modesty not well suited to the task of memoir.” One can all but hear her plead, ‘Modesty? What’s that?! Come on, SPILL!’ as she redefines “miracle” into “enduring the universe as we find it — breathtaking in its ecstasies and vicious in its losses — without recourse to a God.” Look, if I were a student in her divinity class, about this time I’d be asking for my money back, assuming I wasn’t too brainwashed just then to think of it. I mean, I get it that she’s not going to use her tenure to save souls, but you still wouldn’t think God would be public enemy #1 at the Divinity School.

But, her review has not yet come to the most gripping part. When it does, Morgan foresees another book. “Many readers know Scorah through her viral article in The New York Times about the death of her son on his first day of day care,” she writes. “This, one senses, is her brutal but beautiful route into a new book—a shorter, wiser one, sharp and devastating. Here she reveals a chastened existence, steeped in grief and unknowing without recourse to pacifying religious answers.” It is unbelievable! It is “wiser” to tell God to take a hike! If a religious answer comforts, throw it away! It is as though sawing off the tree limb upon which one has long perched and, as it comes crashing down to earth, whooping for joy at the liberation, like the Dr. Strangelove cowboy straddling the falling nuke!

Scorah must have anguished with the notion that her child might not have died but for the abandonment of her faith—she must have. Pagels thought it—what might she have done differently that might have averted tragedy? Job thought it, especially as his three visitors pulled out all the stops to convince him that he had caused his own downfall. Scorah, too, must have for a time grappled with the notion of ‘retributive justice,’ same as Job. There is no reason to think it is so, but she is human. She must have grappled with it.

She had the key, as Pagels did not. Swayed by the revisionists, she discarded it. She exchanged a backdrop of: “We do not want you to be ignorant about those who are sleeping in death, so that you may not sorrow as the rest do who have no hope” (FN 1 Thessalonians 4:13) for one that urges, “Stay Ignorant. Stuff happens. Get used to it.” Ms. Morgan reckons that exchange an unmitigated triumph of the human spirit! Anyone of sense would reckon it as does Paul, a “shipwreck of faith.” Keep smashing your head into the wall of critical education until you feel better. It is impossible for the biblically-literate not to think of the verse regarding those who, ‘although claiming they were wise, became foolish.’ (FN Rom 1:22)

From the upcoming: [working title]: The Book of Job: a Workman's Theodicy

to be continued here

******  The bookstore

On the one hand, Johnny Cash was freed from the chain gang of prison because he died:

I got rid of the shackles that bound me / And the guards that were always around me / There were tears on the mail mother sent me in jail / But I'm free from the chain gang now.

On the other hand, isn’t ‘chain gang’ his metaphor for a too-hard life? So it is that one can compare Job and the Cash song. Compare Job’s metaphor for a too-hard life:

“Is not the life of mortal man on earth like compulsory labor . . . Like a slave, he longs for the shadow , , , I have been assigned months of futility And nights of misery have been counted out for me.” (Job 7:1-3)

The second stanza of Cash’s version, actually a cover for an earlier artist, is:

Back home I was known and respected / Then one day I was wrongly suspected / So they put me in chains in a cold freezing rain / But I'm free from the chain gang now.

That fits Job as well. He was ‘known and respected’ one day, ‘wrongly suspected’ the next:

Satan answered Jehovah: “Is it for nothing that Job has feared God? Have you not put up a protective hedge around him and his house and everything he has? . . .  But, for a change, stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your very face.” (Job 1:9-11)

Job passed that test, only to be ‘wrongly suspected’ once again:

“Skin for skin. A man will give everything that he has for his life. But, for a change, stretch out your hand and strike his bone and flesh, and he will surely curse you to your very face.” (Job 2:4-5)

And so, “they put [Job] in chains in a cold freezing rain,” and finally made him long for an end to his chain gang life:

“Remember that my life is wind, That my eye will never again see happiness. . . . I loathe my life; I do not want to go on living. (Job 7:7,17)

Job did go on living. Cash didn’t. There may be common ground but the two were not the same. Cash’s outrageous conduct nearly ended his career. But after a lull, toward the end of his life, he teamed up with a new producer and released records markedly different from anything prior, hauntingly beautiful, purely acoustic, and nearly all themed the death that soon awaited him and all of humankind—with many fixated on repentance, salvation, and God. And well might he have repented from a life marred with womanizing and substance abuse.

Only then does Cash remake his earlier cover of the same Chain Gang song that does appear to be only a song of prison. Only then does it seem to occur to him that it can also serve as a metaphor for life. He doesn’t change any lines, but he doubles down on some and drops others.

When my friend who had years ago lost his wife to cancer heard Cash’s rendering of ‘On the Evening Train’—on the same album—he instantly broke into tears and shut off the CD player. This particular song features no repentance, nor marked need for it, but only the crushing loneliness of suddenly losing one’s closest companion, coupled with a plea for courage until future resurrection. 

The song is  from the Cash album, American V: A Hundred Highways—same as where Free From the Chain Gang is. It is among my favorite albums. All of Cash’s later works are.

Job wasn’t a womanizer or substance abuser, like Cash had been (though also not a musician). He doesn’t have serious sins to repent of. He knew it well, though under relentless accusation from his three ‘guards,’—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, he said to those guards (and to God, as though He were another):

Will you not look away from me And leave me alone long enough to swallow my saliva? If I have sinned, how could I harm you, the Observer of mankind? Why have you made me your target? (7:19-20)

Job did not know the test he was running, let alone its purpose or the outcome it would supply to benefit all future generations. His course under the most intense suffering answered those taunts of Satan.  He would display that man can keep integrity under the most adverse of circumstances. Answer, supplied, Jehovah chewed out the three  ‘guards,’ sent them packing, then went about restoring God’s life.

For both Cash and Job, it was a rugged trial:

All the years I was known by a number / How I kept my mind is a wonder.

And (prison version only, but it works): And the bare prison cell that was one step from Hell / But I'm free from the chain gang now.

Though it is realized differently with the two men—one womanizer and substance abuser, one blameless and upright, Johnny Cash’s final verse applies to them both: Johnny dies and is subject to future earthly resurrection. Job goes on to have family, wealth and health restored; then he dies and becomes subject to future earthly resurrection; both to commence after the doomed experiment in human self-rule has come to its end:

Like a bird in a tree I got my liberty / And I'm free from the chain gang now.

(I recommend going back to click the links—listen to the two songs.)

Other posts on Job: click here and here.

******  The bookstore

In the manner of the Lord’s death, Roman soldiers break legs to hasten death. But they don’t do it to Jesus. He is already dead. The apostle John says: “In fact, these things took place for the scripture to be fulfilled: ‘Not a bone of his will be broken.’” (John 19:36)

He is quoting Psalm 34:20: “He is guarding all his bones; Not one of them has been broken.”

Yet, if you read the verse in its Psalm 34 context you would never get the impression that the subject dies.

They cried out, and Jehovah heard; He rescued them from all their distresses. (17)

Jehovah is close to the brokenhearted; He saves those who are crushed in spirit. (18)

Many are the hardships of the righteous one, But Jehovah rescues him from them all. (19)

He is guarding all his bones; Not one of them has been broken. (20)

Disaster will put the wicked to death; Those hating the righteous will be found guilty. (21)

Unbroken bones runs parallel to ‘rescued from all distresses,’ ‘saves those who are crushed,’ and ‘rescued from all hardships.’ If you’re rescued from all your distresses, you don’t expect to die. The only one who dies is ‘the wicked’ of verse 21, the one ‘hating the righteous!’

Hmm.

Are we looking at a bait and switch? Is John doing some ‘quote-mining,’ pulling a verse out of context? Better to think that in applying it to Jesus he adding a new dimension to Psalm 34:20. Was Jesus’s life unbroken? Anyone seeing him impaled, his disciples included, would have to say no. What was unbroken, however, was his integrity.

Bones likened to integrity works pretty well. What gives a body ‘integrity’? What makes it stand up? Bones. Break the bones and it no longer stands.

Bones are often not literal in scripture. They can be “filled with dread,” in the case of a fearful person. (Job 4:14) “Jealousy is rottenness to the bones.” (Pr 14:30) On the bright side, “pleasant sayings are . . . a healing to the bones.” (Pr 16:24) The fear of Jehovah is ‘a refreshment to the bones.’ (Pr 3:8) In all of the above, ‘bones’ are symbolic.

But if the bones that not one will be broken are not literal then probably the other items of Psalm 34 are not literal either. ‘Rescued from all your distresses?’ You may still die, but with your integrity unbroken. It’s a little like the sparrows that “not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.” That doesn’t mean they don’t fall to the ground. It just means God knows about it. This is a downright bummer to those whose sole focus is the present life, and it’s a bit of a check even for those whose is not

Still, in the long run, integrity is life. Jesus was resurrected. Those who keep integrity toward God, though they die, are resurrected. They may yet live forever, just with a little hiccup at the beginning.

This brings no comfort to those whose sole horizon is the short run, but it does to those who have the big picture. See what a difference your time frame makes. People do die in this system of things. Sometimes your faith gets you out of a jam even now, and when that is the case—well, you won’t hear me complain about it. They throw Felix into the hellhole (related Saturday AM at the Pursue Peace Convention) where prisoners are broken, and he emerges with the toughest one of them saying, ‘If anyone messes with you, they’ll have me to answer to.’ It’s his faith on display that protected him, in combination with qualities engendered by the Word of faith—don’t repay evil for evil but repay evil with good, consider others as superior to oneself, treat others with deep respect, keep a primary eye, not on your own concerns, but that of others.

The qualities instilled by application of Bible principles go a long way in safeguarding a person. They are very hard to instill in the absence of Bible study, since they go so contrary to the dominant spirit today. Even now, they bail a person out of trouble. But when they don’t, one is fortified by knowing that keeping integrity means resurrection, and resurrection means life. That confidence, in turn, strengthens the resolve not to break one’s integrity. All the people manipulated to do terrible things through fear of being killed themselves, whom Bro Sanderson spoke of? Doesn’t happen to those who trust in God.

One’s time frame makes all the difference. ‘Keep your eyes on the prize,’ as the song taken from 1 Corinthians 9:24 says. Make life in this system count, but even so, know it is not the ‘real’ one. John Maynard Keynes, the economist, shot back at those who insist the economy would always revert to normal ‘in the long run’ with, “In the long run, we’re all dead.”

He is right with regard to the time frame of persons whose sole reality is the present system of things. But in the time frame of those who trust in God, it is, “in the long run we all live.”

******  The bookstore

Turn off the main road and the cemetery is like all cemeteries, but where the two women are emerging at far left is the historic section.

How can one not be drawn to investigate, if only because there is no paved road, but only a pathway?

A tunnel! One must pass through a tunnel under the railroad. It must be historic indeed to predate the railroad that now cuts it off from its modern section.

Sure enough, there is the historic section on the other end. And can there be any place cooler to be than in the tunnel with a train passing overhead? If I knew the timetable, I’d make it my aim to be there.

Whoa! It is old back here. Many stones have fallen. Many were contoured to the ground to begin with.

It is so historic that fragments of stones have been gathered near point of emergence from the tunnel.

Many are the stones flat and worn—not in very good shape at all—this one from 1855. 

Here is a plaque at entrance to the old section:

“Our family and friends have not been forgotten,” it says. But for all practical purposes, after a generation or two, they are. A plaque is nice—don’t misunderstand—it is certainly better than nothing, but they are still forgotten within a few decades. Since the plaque says ‘six acres’ and the present old section is clearly not that, maybe some of the stone fragments have been gathered from what is outside the present tended borders.

I vividly remember Brother Benner at a circuit assembly playing devil’s advocate with his own argument—that the dead are forgotten, in harmony with Ecclesiastes 2:16:  “For there is no lasting memory either of the wise one or of the stupid one. In the days to come, everyone will be forgotten. And how will the wise one die? Along with the stupid one.” 

His very own made-up interlocutor challenged him. “Ah, but so-and-so may indeed have died, but his music lives on and on!” 

“Give me a break!” Benner snapped back at himself. “Who was the most popular musician of George Washington’s day?” Exactly.

It is why the resurrection teaching of the Bible is so very interesting to Jehovah’s people. As the 1968 book, ‘The Truth That Lead to Eternal Life’ put it: “Is it reasonable that God’s only purpose for man is that he should spend twenty years growing up, perhaps another twenty or thirty years gaining knowledge and experience, and shortly thereafter begin to grow old, suffer from sickness and die? Why should man’s life be so short when even a turtle may live to the age of two hundred years and a tree far longer?”

The book that succeeded the ‘Truth’ book furthers zeroed in on that hope right in its title: ‘You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth.’ For most of those who would enjoy that life forever, it would be by an earthly resurrection. 

Two spiritual events can be traced in the life of Charles Darwin. Had those events turned out differently, one wonders what effect it might have had on his scientific contributions.

The first came with the death of his favorite child, his daughter Annie. At age 10, the child contracted scarlet fever. She agonized for six weeks before dying. Also a casualty was Darwin’s faith in a beneficent Creator. The book Evolution: Triumph of an Idea, by Carl Zimmer, tells us that Darwin “lost faith in angels.” That is an odd expression. Why would it be used? They probably told him that God was picking flowers.

Is there any analogy more slanderous to God than the one in which God is picking flowers? Up there in heaven he has the most beautiful garden imaginable. But it is not enough! He is always on the watch for pretty flowers, the very best, and if he spots one in your garden, he helps himself, even though it may be your only one. Yes, he needs more angels, and if your child is the most pure, the most beautiful, happy, innocent child that can be, well—watch out! He or she may become next new angel. Sappy preachers give this illustration all the time, apparently thinking it gives comfort.

Not surprisingly, the ‘picking flowers’ analogy is nowhere found in the Bible. However, a parallel analogy is found in 2nd Samuel, where it is used to make exactly the opposite point: the flower picker should be executed. The setting is when King David took for himself the attractive wife of one of his subjects and, upon impregnating her, had that subject killed to cover his tracks:

“The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

“Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

“David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die!  He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!” (2 Samuel 12:1-7, NIV)

Now, this analogy appeals to us. This is just. The man is not expected to take comfort that the king stole his wife. No, he deserves execution! So how is it that when we are told God has done the same, we’re expected to feel all warm and fuzzy?

Isn’t this like Abraham Lincoln saying that he was not smart enough to lie? His meaning was that if you lie, you have to adjust every subsequent statement to be consistent with that lie, otherwise you will get caught. Telling the truth presents no such challenge.

The picking flowers analogy is an attempt to cover a lie, and as we have seen, it doesn’t satisfy. The lie is that, when we die, we don’t really die because the soul lives on, going straight to heaven if we’ve been good. Thus, death is a friend. It is a chance for promotion, and we are all happy to see good people promoted. In this context, the Bible’s hope of a resurrection is meaningless. (Acts 24:15) How can someone be resurrected if they never actually died?

Better to tell the truth from the start, and then you don’t have to invent ridiculous stories to cover your tracks. Death is not a friend, it is an enemy. Nor is it God’s purpose for humans; it came upon us due to rebellion. Nor does it bring us into a new state of consciousness; instead we become nonexistent, a state that can be likened to unconsciousness or sleep. Nor does God purpose to leave us in this sad predicament, but he’s taken steps to eliminate death.

“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned,” says Romans 5:12. “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (1 Cor 15:25) “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten….Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave,  where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” (Ecclesiastes 9:5,10)

“After he had said this, he went on to tell them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.’ His disciples replied, ‘Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.’ Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. So then he told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead…’” (John 11:11-14)

How different history might have been had Darwin known the truth about death. Not just Darwin, of course, but everyone of his time, as well as before and after. Instead, fed a diet of phony pieties—junk food, really—he and others of inquisitive minds searched elsewhere in an attempt to make sense of life.

The second spiritual event revealing another crisis of faith, is to be seen in a letter of Darwin’s to American colleague Asa Gray. Darwin stated: “…I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world.”

Plainly, this statement concerns, not science, but God. His question was spiritual, or at least philosophical: ‘Why is there so much misery? How does that square with a God who is supposed to be all-loving and all-powerful?’

Bear in mind that, in younger days, Darwin trained to become a clergyman. This is not to say that he was unusually devout. Rather, he was undecided as a youth; he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. Most go through such a phase. Many never emerge. At the time, the clergy represented a respectable calling for educated people who didn’t find a place anywhere else.

Why didn’t he know why God permitted suffering? It’s not as though an answer does not exist. It is outlined in chapter 44. If Charles Darwin had been familiar with the answer, yet rejected it, that would be one thing. But it seems clear that he had no clue. The fault is not his. It is that of the church, which was charged to make certain truths, or teachings, known, but which failed to discharge that commission, choosing paths more self-serving. You might say that Darwin was spiritually starved.

Had he known the Bible’s answer regarding misery and suffering, it may be that he, and other active minds of his day, might have put a different spin on discoveries of rocks, fossils, and finches. It is why Jehovah’s Witnesses are so enthusiastic over Scripture, sometimes to the point of being pests. The Bible’s explanation of the causes of suffering and death is tremendously liberating. It affects powerfully one’s outlook on life. (July 2006)

From the book TrueTom vs the Apostates!

Martha sent for Jesus. She knew where he was. He dragged his feet for two days before coming (John 11:6) and her brother Lazurus died.

Martha knew it was Jesus‘ ‘fault‘. She said ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’

Wouldn’t a more ordinary Martha have said ‘What in God's name took you so long?!’

Q: When my grandmother died, they decided to hold a huge lunch at a restaurant. Same thing when a cousin died. I heard that this is common for JW. Why?

A: Because it makes sense and is considerate. Some people have come from afar. Some are in no shape to cook. I don't think it is unique to Witnesses. I think it is more common than otherwise.

In cases of family, I remember in my youth people lamenting that the only time the whole family got together was for funerals., as though love itself would not suffice, but only an obligation. I finally decided to run with it. It is what it is. Death in this system of things is a natural course of life. Use it as a metronome, to reliably bring everyone together from time to time.

Kill two birds with one stone. Bring everyone together and use the power of family to help the bereaved one heal. Stay the course, and the time will come when there is no death.

Ben Franklin courted the widow Helvetius. However, she spurned him because she wanted to be loyal to her deceased husband, whom Franklin had known previously.

Immdediately afterwards, Franklin falls into a deep sleep and has a dream in which he meets the man in heaven. The following are his words, from 'Letter to Madame Helvetius:'

"He asked me a thousand questions relative to the war, the present state of religion, of liberty, of the government in France. “You do not inquire, then,” said I, “after your dear friend, Madame Helvétius; yet she loves you exceedingly: I was in her company not more than an hour ago.”

Leroy Whitehouse passed away the other night. I’ll miss that man. A tall, drawling, deep throated, 80-something-year-old black man from the deep south, I used to jest with him how I hoped he would one day give my funeral talk:

“Yeeeaass, he was a good ‘ol boy, that Tom Harley, but he’d deeeaad now! D_E_A_D!”

LeRoy would uninhibitedly offer comments to the 50/50 congregation about his younger days back home “working for the white man.” Or relate how even long term Bethelites are not perfect, illustrating it with a brother who declared “I don’t give a damn!” Taking the nervous titter in the audience for appreciation, he repackaged the line and ran it through two or three more times: “I don’t give a damn!”

I will miss him plenty. He was a friend.