Cancer Journal # 73 April 1

 I did Vitamin C infusion with my friends, Maria and Jan yesterday.  We had great fun.

Jan sees a counselor that she told Maria about.  Now, Maria sees him too.  Although he specializes in cancer patients, I don't think I'll join them.  A little late in the day.  Jan reports that he is big picture, as in what happens to us after we die.  His proof texts are books written by people with near death experiences.  I see my own belief in an afterlife as based on something more sturdy but less material than someone telling of a tunnel lit up with a happy light.  But I should not be disdainful.  Not long before I became a Christian, I read Life After Life, a book reporting on near death experiences.  I found it intriguing and strangely comforting.

Maria reported that the counselor believes that the fundamental direction of our lives are based on choices we make pre-birth.  I heard that and some things fell into place for me.  There is a book by M. Scott Peck ( who wrote The Road Less Traveled) called People of The Lie.  The idea is that there is a certain portion of the population that seems to be innately bad;  untrustworthy, bullies when they have the chance, the truth an unpleasant obstacle to whatever is on their agenda.  Although it seems innate, we nonetheless find such people blameworthy, as though they had a choice.  On the other hand, Jesus reported to Pontius Pilate that he came to bear witness to the truth and that those who are "of the truth" hear his voice. John 18:37.  Pilate's response, "What is truth?" disappoints me.  Not the question but the fact that he didn't give Jesus a chance to answer the question.  Anyway, Jesus suggests an innate characteristic too--being "of the truth".  Innate and immutable but also, paradoxically, the product of a choice.  

I wonder if Jan and Maria's counselor believes this choice is made pre-conception, indicating an eternal soul, stretching into a time infinity both before and after our life on Earth.  I'm agnostic on that one but do enjoy the thought of an soul, present at the beginning of time and staying on to the end (and after).

Although it is standard evangelical Christianity to believe that whether we go the Heaven is dependent on whether we have made an explicit "Choice for Christ", confessing our sins and accepting the work he did on the cross etc., I have never felt comfortable with that requirement in all its particulars.  I do accept what Jesus said when he announced, "I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father but by me."  John 14:6.  I think there's not wiggle room but something like that.  C.S. Lewis in his Narnia book, The Last Battle had all sentient creatures face the Christ character, Aslan, in the wrap up of the age (and the book).  Those who looked into those eyes and feared and hated them went one way.  Those who looked into those eyes and feared but loved them went another way.  This line for the Great Separation included both Narnians and what C.S. Lewis quaintly refers to as "heathens."  That seems right to me.

A universal Heaven that included The People of The Lie would call for Heaven to include inhabitants for whom the light, the truth, the love which will be the distilled essence would be fundamentally uncongenial.  They would say, "I don't belong here." Maybe there's some kind of reformation process to make them appropriate Heavenly citizens but I don't see it.  The fundamental nature is "of the lie", not "of the truth".  How do you reform that?  You either love the eyes of truth and love or you hate them--it's innate but arising from a choice we made somewhere along the line.  Those "of the truth" would finally find the thing they've always longed for even though they may not have known they had longed for it.

On the other hand, Jesus, at the end, says to those who have led what certainly sounds like an exemplary Christian life, "Depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you." Mathew 7:23.  A rather sobering scripture but explainable if it is based on a decision made outside of our life on Earth.

Am I sure that we make fundamental life choices before birth?  No, not totally.  Who knows what goes on.  And then there is God's grace, the wildest of wild cards, making our pronouncements foolish and empty.  Whatever is is surely right though.  Of that, I am sure.