PZ, Pope Francis, and Oprah--What Happens When you Die

Zahl is at it again--dealing head-on with the facts that:  1)our lives are more like the Book of Ecclesiastes than "Our Best Life Now" or The Oprah Show;  and 2)we're all going to die--as Axl said:  "No one gets out of here alive."

Zahl says that he's been around more than a hundred people when they were near death, and they don't talk about their careers!  They don't even talk about their children.  Yet, this is what men and women focus on--our careers and our children.  Zahl says that, for decades, women were free from the anxiety and heart attacks wrought by obsession with careers--but no longer.

Zahl says that he failed in his goal to change the Episcopal church.  He says that 90% of them are concerned with social justice, but have nothing, nothing at all, to offer to hurting people--nothing insofar as the pain of this life or the apprehension of death.  After hearing Zahl's talk, I turned to a clip of Oprah on Colbert's show.  Oprah says the same thing that Osteen and most churches say now.

Cue Oprah:  "I just love Psalms 37:4--'Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.'"  Oprah says that, if we embrace love, compassion, empathy (which she equates with the Lord), then we will receive the "desires" of our heart.  Hearing her caused me great pain.  Debbie says that Oprah is trying to understand and explain why she has so much money--because she embraced "love and compassion," she received the "desires of her heart."  Sadly, Oprah has no word for anyone (let alone herself) about death, and her word for this life (embrace love and you will be rich) is simply untrue.

Zahl says that dying people talk about one person--the romantic love of their life.  (If you haven't seen "Red Oaks," fly to it.  The opening episode depicts this perfectly, yet poignantly, when the father is having a heart attack on the tennis court.)      

Zahl goes on to say that love is the only thing from this life that will follow us into the next.  Indeed, this is what St. Paul said.  Zahl believes that romantic love gives us a view into eternal life.

He also says that nostalgia points us to remembrances of joy, which also gives us a view into eternal life.  Zahl says that one of his favorite sermons by Pope Francis concerns the nostalgia that the Jews felt for their former lives--while they were in captivity.  Francis said that, without nostalgia, we can have no joy.

When Debbie heard this, she said:  "That's why our son doesn't want the Ginko tree cut down.  He has wonderful memories of climbing it when he was little."

So, if Zahl is correct, here are the views that I have had into heaven:

Debbie--it was truly love at first sight.  I  proposed to her within a week of meeting her, on our second date.  She thought I was crazy, and she was right.  Thankfully we have stayed together through "thick and thin," and there were many, many "thin" years in our marriage, but God has restored what the "locusts" (in my case, the locusts were my career and pride) had stolen.

bike rides in elementary school and junior high with my good friends;

playing army with my sister and Dean Harrison's grandkids when they came to visit every summer.

driving "up into the country" with my Dad and stopping at the same gas station every time for an "RC (or Mountain Dew) and moon pie--no lie, that's what kids in the South actually did.

Church softball games in high school with a "Bad News Bears" cast of players--mostly organized by me (it gladdens me to bring together disparate people and foster their relationships);

pre-game and post-game parties with my college friends at Derric's apartment (particularly those  before and after the games at Legion field);

road trips with friends in law school;

beach recruiting trips with my old firm;

seeing GnR at the B'ham racecourse with Brian Bonds (and giving people rides out in the back of his old pickup);

going "clubbing" with my brother-in-law David:

coaching all three of my kids in soccer;

ski trips with my kids--particularly the one to Mt. Hood --James and I had an adventure getting back to the lodge after a storm rolled in;

Tuesday nights at Jackson's with a varying group of people to drink beer, and the talk inevitably turned to Jesus;

when my mother, at age 90, finally told me how she used to antagonize her high school principal.

According to Zahl, all of these events give us a glimpse into heaven.  If God is who I believe Him to be, Zahl is "spot on."

Let's Talk About Sex (and men's need for affirmation)--and Freedom

Two interactions with slightly older friends are the genesis for this blog post  First, I was discussing church and how virtually all churches tend to segregate us based upon age--whether it's Sunday School classes or small groups--the "Seniors Class," the"Young Marrieds," the "50 Somethings," etc. So, this one church is having a marriage class for "Young Marrieds," and my friend was encouraged to attend another class. But this post isn't about that--it's about a better understanding of sex in light of the love of God.

Here's the wisdom that my female friend said she would give to a class of "Young Marrieds:"

"Men like sex a lot.  Men think about sex a lot.  It's a God-given desire so that the human race doesn't die out.  For women, not so much.  The problem is that men believe a woman's desire for them reflects how much the woman loves the man.  This simply isn't true."

Second, during lunch with a male friend, he furtively glanced at pretty much every woman in the restaurant.  This confirms my other friend's comments that "men like and think about sex a lot since they need affirmation."  I felt for him, because I know what it's like to be trapped by continual thoughts about sex and the concomitant need for affirmation.  Yet, I still felt like his distraction was disrespectful to me and our time together.  If I found it disrespectful, how must his wife feel?  It also was significant that he thought he had to do it furtively, because honesty about men's desires is the first step on the path to freedom. 

The second step to freedom in the area of sex is gaining the knowledge of God's infinite love for mankind and each and every man, woman, and child.  We are indeed "children of God."  God has given me some freedom in the area of sex due to one thing--knowing that Jesus loves me infinitely.  Jesus accepts me just the way that I am.  I don't have to prove anything to gain Jesus' love.

Knowing that God feels this way about me means that my desire to be loved by Debbie doesn't have the iron grip on me that it once had.  So, I'm not nearly as demanding about sex.  When I'm not demanding about sex, Debbie is free to love me.

Finally, I'm not saying that I've got it all figured out or that I ever will.  I'm not saying that I don't still look at other women some times.  But God's love has given me freedom that I never thought I would experience and that's good for me, Debbie, our marriage, and our family.  As I told Debbie: "It was pure bloody hell to be bound up in sex as a way to affirmation--pure bloody hell."