I'm skimming through today's top stories and I ran across an article in the Boston Globe, "Religious dying patients more likely to get aggressive care".
Patients who rely heavily on their religious faith to cope with terminal cancer are more likely to receive intensive life-prolonging measures in their last week of life, Boston researchers reported yesterday.
In a study at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, and five other sites, 345 people with advanced cancer were interviewed about the importance of religion in dealing with their illness, and their preferences for care. Most of them were Christian.
I don't know about you, but the results of this particular study strike me as exceedingly odd. I would expect such people to invest more in prayer than science!! I mean, these are the folks most likely to believe "Ask and it shall be given", yet it seems they're asking more of doctors than their God.
Even more astounding to me is that, instead of desiring to go be with the angels, such individuals seem more interested in hanging around here with the rest of us sinners.
Maybe it doesn't strike you as odd, but it does me.
Even more astounding to me is that, instead of desiring to go be with the angels, such individuals seem more interested in hanging around here with the rest of us sinners.
Maybe it doesn't strike you as odd, but it does me.
Well... when one clings to something that on some level feels "too good to be true" such as the idea of the Christan milk and honey heaven, then I imagine that same person is very scared of finding out it's not true and therefore clings to the only thing he knows IS true - the reality of the here and now. It's quite sad that many people do not begin to appreciate their lives until they death know as imminent. And death is imminent for each of us at every moment anyway...
ReplyDeleteLive life. It's so much more fun that way.
What ambiguous journalism!
ReplyDeleteIt would appear that Christians are more likely to get cancer.
I really can't make sense of the message.
But it's 5:30 am and I have had no sleep.
But fear is what most people seem to spend their lives focused on anyway.
I should be selling courses on how to overcome fear :)
But I am afraid nobody would come.
Val,
ReplyDeleteYou speak my mind so well or could it be the other way around? :)
Crow,
You're right! No one would come; they'd be too scared too.:)
I still consider myself a Christian in most respects, but I don't wholly understand my brethren's focus on death and the afterlife. We still have to live in the world, for good or ill, and along with that goes some amount of suffering. It seems fairly obvious to me, at least at this point in my life, that much of life is about acceptance of what is, and that includes pain and inevitable (physical) death.
ReplyDeleteBut it also seems like, with that acceptance, comes some alleviation from fear. If one really does believe, "if God is with me, who can be against me," then what does a person have to fear? I've never thought that God wants me to be afraid of anything. If you don't have to ponder the fear of death anymore, if that whole immortality thing is squared away with you, then it seems like your daily life would be much more centered and balanced and things wouldn't throw you off so much.
I guess most Christians don't pay much attention to that sort of thing, and they stay mired in all of their personal neuroses.
Just rambling.
CBL,
ReplyDeleteThis is the place to ramble!! Besides, I think you made several excellent points. Thanks!
I love how everyone ever who is not a question thinks that because the Bible says God answers prayer; it means that when we pray for something and it doesn't happen, God doesn't exist. NO THEOLOGICALLY SOUND CHRISTIAN would ever claim that God is going to give you everything that you pray for. God answers prayer- either with a yes or with a no. He may answer yes in a way that we do not expect. As Norm Geisler puts it- Prayer is not a way for you to change God and to get things from him, it is a way that God changes your heart and works through you. Christians don't pray "God please let me not die from cancer". they pray "God, if it is your will, let me not die from cancer, however, if it is your will- then i pray that through my death you will be glorified and that others will come to know you. I know everything has a purpose."
ReplyDeleteEven Jesus realized this. check out
matthew 26:39
I love how everyone ever who is not a question
ReplyDeletewhoops. I meant Christian not question. lol