The ambulance was called out in the small hours of Tuesday morning. Frank had woken up with severe chest pains. His wife had the presence of mind to call the paramedics. Three days later Frank was back at the Men’s Shed... even if it was only for a cuppa and a chin-wag. We compared notes because both of us had now undergone an angiogram and the insertion of a stent in the circumflex artery of the heart.
But there was another reason why I was keen to engage Frank in conversation about his ‘cardiac event’. I wondered where he was at, in terms of his relationship with God and his prospects of facing eternity. He was a decent enough a bloke... a little too critical of others perhaps... but helpful to a fault.
“Do you realise, Frank, that if we had lived in the days of our grandparents we’d both be dead now?” “Yeah, it sure makes you thankful for progress in medical science.” I agreed with him and then asked, “So, if you hadn’t survived you heart attack, Frank, do you know where you would be now?” My Men’s Shed colleague became quite animated and with a great deal of conviction pointed to a dead worm on the floor of the shed that had crawled in to find some shelter from a recent Coffs Harbour deluge. “See that worm John? As far as I’m concerned, when we die we’re all going to be like that worm: dead and shrivelled up and nothing else.”
Stone the crows, what a pessimistic view of life! I told Frank that I found his outlook rather depressing and said that one can have a much more positive outlook on life than that of ending up like a dead worm. I told him that I believed God had created us in His image for the purpose of spending all eternity with Him. Frank, shook his head and changed the subject.
So why does Frank think that our death is no different to that of a worm? Well, why shouldn’t he? He’s part of a generation that has been bombarded all his life with the teaching that we are merely the product of time plus chance. We evolved from amoebas in some primordial swamp, eventually crawled out onto dry land and over the space of several million more years evolved enough brain cells to be able to socialise in a Men’s Shed. That kind of thinking has little space for the idea that we were made in the image of our Creator – and made for fellowship with Him.
Frank’s problem is that he is a strict materialist. Only that exists which he can see, touch, taste – only what you can squeeze into a test tube or put under a microscope is real. For the numerous “Franks” in this world there is no possibility of another dimension to life – the spiritual and the eternal.
That also helps to explain why there are two kinds of Easter celebrations today. There are those for whom it is all about the materialist rituals of chocolate eggs, Easter bunnies and a long weekend to spend with the family. What a contrast to those who know that Easter is the Christian Church’s celebration of the glorious reality that we are more than worms when we die. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is proof that there is a huge difference between human beings and the critters that are busy in a gardener’s worm farm. The difference is not just that we’re much further up the evolutionary ladder either. The difference is rather that God made humans – the climax of creation – beings for whom death is not the end. The resurrection of Jesus is proof that like Him we will one day be raised to live forever.
Recently I read the story of a lady who had a near-death experience. She was later quizzed whether she had experienced a tunnel of light or angelic beings. She had experienced nothing like that – merely being unconscious for a time and then waking up in hospital. One commentator saw that as proof that there is nothing after death. Anyone who argues that way has to come to terms with the reality that Jesus really died and on the third day was really raised from the dead. Paul claimed he could get some 500 witnesses to authenticate the Easter event and so prove that humans have a far more glorious end than dead worms.
John Westendorp
