Perspective is everything.

                Go to any restaurant, and the chef will tell you, “Presentation is everything.”  Truly, our brains get our stomachs growling when we see one of those professionally produced advertisements.  We see what looks like a big, juicy burger fresh off the grill, and we can hardly allow our lives to continue until we sink our teeth into – what turns out to be a bone-dry piece of leather inside a cardboard bun much smaller than the picture implies.

                We’ve been snookered.  In fact, the “burger” in question at the time of shuttering had been sitting on the counter for hours until the restaurant manager finally decided he was happy with the results.  The chemicals sprayed onto the carefully constructed meal to make it permanently look “fresh off the grill” would kill us if we were to eat what the picture actually portrays.  And, unless our timing of arrival at the restaurant is perfect, we have to wait in a very long line of snookered people; and the only way the restaurant can get our food to us in a timely manner is to have it ready before we even step foot in the door.  American society is disillusioned.  We’re lied to every day. 

                And we can’t get enough of it. 

                We have been brainwashed into believing that what is good for us tastes bad, looks bad, smells bad, sounds bad, and feels bad.  Like broccoli, soap, classical music, and scarves on a cold day.  And we’re given substitutes not found in nature such as pizza, brownies, and candy.  “Reality” is a horror film – until one realizes that they are not wearing the signature glasses required for this feature.  It’s true that the proverbial “rose-colored glasses” don’t actually make the world pink; but what if it’s our eyes that are incorrect?  Did you know that we all see everything upside-down?  https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/91177/how-our-eyes-see-everything-upside-down

                I have named this blog “Real-er Therapy” because the best therapy, in my opinion, is to realize that something exists beyond that which mainstream society can see – something better than what we see, hear, smell, taste, or feel.  But it is there; and it is even realer than the world we experience with our decaying bodies.  Society calls 64,442-degree video games “Virtual Reality”, but the interface known as “earth” is the VR of Real-er reality.  Before you send the men in white coats to take me to the nearest inpatient mental health facility (or elect me as your conspiracy cult leader), let me explain that I’m referring to what believers (or non-deniers) call the “spirit realm”. 

                As Lawrence Fishburne’s character in The Matrix said, “It (everything you experience with physical senses) is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” 

                When you think about it, the best way to have a better perspective of death is to think that the dearly departed is merely on a long vacation and that we will see them again when our time comes.  I was reared to have faith in the unseen (faith is the evidence that unseen things exist. Hebrews 1:11), and I cannot imagine how depressed I would be if I were to believe that this is all there is.  The best days of my life, my wedding day and the days my children were born, are all behind me; and while I’m sure the second act of my human life will have its ups, I cannot imagine anything else on this planet comparing to the good days I have already had. 

                Ever since I turned 40, I have been diagnosed with blood cancer, high blood pressure, and most recently arthritis.  My body is very quickly falling apart.  But even if I were the healthiest middle-aged man on earth, I would still die eventually.  Then what?  What is it like to think about not existing after death?  No wonder people are afraid of death.  As for me, I am afraid of pain but not death.  Death is just a change of address.  Death is just your vehicle (or “mount” if you prefer to think of it as a living thing) ceasing to function.  I’m not sure if spirits are “luminous” as Yoda said, but I am certain that we are “not this crude matter” in which we travel in this quasi-fictitious galaxy.    

                Once we realize that the galaxy is not as real as the realm from which we spirits come (or “dimension” or “universe” or whatever you want to call it), we realize that everything within the physical Milky Way is also not quite as real or at least temporary, whereas we spirits are immortal, as long as we accept the antidote for the poison apple our ancestors ate. 

                If you’re still reading this, you just might be a Christian.  Maybe this is the first time you have read anything like my perspective on Christianity, but if you are familiar at all with the Bible, you may see the parallel between what I’ve been saying and what the Bible actually says.  God was not born on this planet (well, not originally), so He is alien.  The angels weren’t born on this planet, so they are aliens.  The fallen angels would better fit the description of the stereotypical bad alien.  Thanks to science fiction movies, perhaps the concept of aliens is more easily understood by mainstream society than the Bible interpreted from Hebrew and Greek. 

                Therefore, my perspective on blood cancer is not that different from my perspective when my mechanic gives me bad news:  is my vehicle falling apart?  Yes.  Will it stop working someday?  Yes.  Do I like that fact?  No, but will I trade it in for a better model?  Absolutely.  And no, I won’t be burdened with another decaying, hopelessly temporary living sculpture made of mud.  I will be given a spiritual, immortal, incorruptible body.  See I Corinthians 15:42-44, 53-54.  And the day I receive it will cause all my favorite days as a human to pale in comparison.

                Jesus, Who liked to exaggerate to prove His points, said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate… his life… he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)  My perspective and this verse may incite an attitude of suicide; but another thing that Christianity gives me that the world cannot even understand much less offer is purpose.  Because I believe that God formed me in my mother’s womb  (Psalm 139:13-14), making me different than anyone else (Jeremiah 1:5), for His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13) and not only gave me purpose but will fulfill it Himself in me (Psalm 57:2), and works together for my good because I love Him and work according to His purpose (Romans 8:28), instead of believing that the universe is the result of a chain reaction of accidents caused by a much larger accident and that all living things on this earth accidently change to adapt to their accidental environment and that all those adaptations over millions of years accidentally developed the systems of cells in our bodies which act like biological machines, performing specific, organized functions – because I believe I am not an accident, I believe God would not have wasted His time making something useless.  He made a person who inherited a spiritual disease but who was blessed enough to be born into a family who loved him enough to give him the cure for that disease so that he would live even if he dies (John 11:25). 

                I am not garbage.  And neither are you.  I am not an accident, and neither are you.  My life is not random, and neither is yours.  Bad things happen to us, but for purposes so powerful and wonderful, we could not understand even if God did explain them to us.  See Job chapter 38.  On the other hand, I like to think of them as spiritual exercise machines.  If nothing bad ever happened to us, we would be spoiled brats and would never be grateful to God for anything.  We would not be equipped for having a relationship with God.

                I recently attended the funeral of a twelve year old who died of brain cancer.  Click this link to learn part of his story:  https://pickinsplinters.com/2020/12/05/rochester-boy-wins-contest-to-design-green-bay-packers-cleats/ Just before his change of address, Ethan Haley’s last wish was that his suffering and death would have purpose – specifically the purpose of people being inspired to start relationships with Jesus of their own.  I share this desire with Ethan, that the purpose of my blood cancer would inspire others to receive the cure for spiritual cancer, that is, sin, which we all inherit from Adam and Eve.  Click here to watch a video he had made for his funeral, and for you:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCjAqFPufqE

Everyone dies.  Some of us live forever.  A select few have deaths that are meaningful.  How would you make yours meaningful?