"'When people ask me how I like being old as I am,' van Rijn said circuitously, 'I tell them, "Not bad when I consider the alternative."'" (p. 384)
I agree but van Rijn claims to believe in Heaven! Beliefs and feelings operate on different levels. Believers are often heartbroken when bereaved. An Irish Catholic curate said that people in his parish simultaneously believed:
what the Church teaches;
what pagans believed about the dead descending to an underworld from which they resent and might harm the living;
that the dead have ceased to exist.
Can entire lives be lived in unreflecting and unexamined contradictions? Apparently, yes.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
But I see no contradiction in being both sorrowful over the deaths of friends and relatives and believing in an afterlife. Catholics death was not desired by God but came to the human race thru the malice of Satan.
Ad astra! Sean
Dang! I should have added "believe" after the word "Catholic" above.
Sean
Sean,
That is a very difficult concept to take seriously: that human beings would have been physically immortal if not for an early wrong moral choice.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Nonetheless, Scripture does say that it was thru the envy of the Devil that death came to mankind. And that Satan did so, by some means, thru tempting a first man, who fell.
Assuming mankind had not fallen, I don't find it that hard to believe immortality would have been one of the characteristics of the human race.
Ad astra! Sean
Believing in Heaven doesn't mean necessarily believing you're going there. In fact, you're not supposed to be sure about that in most denominations -- you're supposed to -hope- you will and strive to secure Grace.
Kaor, Mr. Stiring!
And as a Catholic I agree with you! We are warned to avoid pride, presumption and arrogance. But not all are like that. E.g., many Evangelical Protestants insist that if they are "saved" they will go to Heaven. Catholics like me get denounced if we point out that we should not be so arrogantly and absolutely sure of salvation as long as we live.
Ad astra! Sean
All,
An Evangelical believes that he can commit any crime, even genocide, and will be punished by God, maybe just by being made to feel guilty, but nevertheless will go straight to Heaven at death (not even a Purgatory) - and this contradicts the idea that we will all learn our fate on a remote future Day of Judgment.
Paul.
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