What Have You Done for Jesus?

 

A cardiologist who sees many people revived after heart death believes that 50% of near-death experiences are bad ones. So much for the claim you sometimes here that everyone experiences gardens and flowers and a complete lack of judgment. That’s just what we want to believe. He thinks these bad trips are less often reported for obvious reasons: people are reluctant to tell others they have been judged evil and are bound for hell. But immediately after people revive, their reactions are less filtered. Terror is apparent.

We also hear often from hospice nurses of how people approaching death have visions of dead loved ones welcoming them to the next world. And we hear how comforting these are. But one study suggests that 30% of them are not comforting, but disturbing.

These are things we do not want to hear. But they conform with the wisdom of the ages. 

One man studying medicine when he had a “near death experience” was confronted by a figure in white whom he understood to be Jesus; and the figure asked him, “What have you done with your life? What have you done for me?”

And he was told that studying to be a doctor did not count.

What are we supposed to do with out lives? What does count?

We have written elsewhere of the commission Jesus gave to those he identifies in the Beatitudes as his own: 

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

As discussed elsewhere, “being salty” and “letting your light shine” has to mean the creation of art. Heaven is the New Jerusalem: it is an artifice, a town built on a hill. We build it together with God.

But what if we have no talent?

I came across a letter to Dear Abby recently, from a housewife who laments that she is not actually very good at anything. She has nothing to offer the world, so what is the point of her life?

Surely there are such people. Gifts are gifts; they are given to some, not to all. And God must have a plan for those he does not give gifts as well. Indeed, it must be at least as honourable.

And the mandate for those without talents is perfectly obvious. 

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

That is what all of us “do for Jesus.” Moreover, as the Beatitudes make clear, there is no cause for those without talents to feel mistreated or disfavoured by God. The blessed given talents are given suffering to go with it: poverty, mourning, rejection, spiritual hunger.

Abby gives this distraught housewife just the right advice, and it applies to all of us who might feel our lives are meaningless: get involved in volunteer work with some charity. 

Safely Dead

 

There are a lot of YouTube videos recounting “near-death experiences” (NDEs). In one I was watching recently, the woman reported feeling an overwhelming feeling of relief, a sense that she had made it safely.

Safely? She’s dead. Safe from what?

She does not say, and perhaps does not know. But the answer is obvious. Safe from sin, safe from hell. I expect the sense is instinctive. 

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

We all die. That is not the struggle for which we live. 

Purgatory: The Evidence

 

There are reasons to be suspicious of Near Death Experiences. There may be secrets that those who are ultimately going to return to life must not take back with them. Other secrets, shameful things, those returning might not want others to know. I imagine all we hear of is the vestibule of the next life. But such as it is, I learn from more than one researcher that people near death most commonly report a “life review,” in which they experience all the pain or pleasure they have caused others.

It has always seemed to me that, given a just God and a just universe, this must be so. This is what purgatory is about. One cannot enter heaven until the slate is clean. 

It also follows that anyone who has undergone great suffering in this life must be compensated in the next. This is promised, indeed, in the gospel of Luke, and in the story of Dives and Lazarus. 

“Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.”

“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh…. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.”

Not at this point, in purgatory—it would delay entry into heaven, and so would be no compensation. Nor would it seem proper to elide any harms caused to others to compensate for this suffering. That would be an imperfect life review. 

Therefore, we must assume a hierarchy; some are greater than others in the kingdom of heaven, beyond purgatory. As, indeed, the gospels tell us. 

“he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

“anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

It all seems to fit, on the initial premise that there is a God.