My Missing Head and the Problem of Death

It’s been a long time since I’ve been down the road I’ll now describe. So long that it is a very vague memory. So vague that I have to make assumptions about me having made that journey. That road is the understanding of the syllogism that says “All humans are mortal. I am a human. Therefore I……well that is…..I….am…..ummm….well you know…..mortal.” 

It seems to me that it took some higher thinking and some assumptions to validate that syllogism.

First, I had to distinguish the set called “humans”. How highly functioning must the thought processes be to recognize humans?  Does a fly cognitively differentiate a human from a cat?  Does a mouse?  I think dogs do.  Dogs likely can distinguish many sets from each other: food dishes, leashes, canine butts.

At some point I made the discovery that things are not always permanent. Food disappears off of the plate. The TV show ends. The sun goes down. Dad goes away for the day. A piece of wood disappears within the flames of a campfire. Probably by such observations, I saw that the status quo changes. The permanent disappearance of humans I knew, combined with somewhat fantastic explanations of death convinced me somewhere along the way that humans do not exist forever.

Third, I had to conclude that I am human despite experiencing myself very differently from how I experience those of you who obviously are human. For example, from within a void above my shoulders I notice things through this giant frameless window through which I see the world. On each the left and right side of my view there is a fuzzy almost nose-shaped thing. Apparently I have two noses if they even are noses. Humans seem to be lacking this big window. Instead, they each have a head, which is a hairy ball with lots of holes and only one nose.  I can see that I have shoulders, and when I reach my hand up above my shoulders to detect a head, the void swallows up my hand.  Nonetheless, eventually I did come to accept, by some leap of logic, or perhaps by brainwashing, that I am human.

Then came the unpleasant realization of the final step in the syllogism. Unpleasant because it triggered the security centre of consciousness discussed yesterday (http://gordon-feil-theology.blogspot.ca/2016/12/my-addictions.html). I don’t recall the moment of that dawning. I don’t know where I was.  Maybe the afternoon of my first funeral.  I must have been about 4 or 5 and was taken by the lady babysitting me to that funeral. I do recall coming back in a state of slightly stunned contemplation.

I think I quickly moved on from that realization. I am pretty good at refusing to acknowledge consequences. And this one is a complicated one, made so by my discovery that perhaps the best attested fact of ancient history is the resurrection of Y’shuah, the son of Yousef and Miriam.

Sir Edward Clarke, a British High Court judge who conducted a thorough legal analysis of the testimonies attesting to the resurrection, and by that I mean as a lawyer he applied the Rules of Evidence to the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, pretending that they were witnesses called on trial to testify to this, had this to say: “To me the evidence is conclusive, and over and over again in the High Court I have secured the verdict on evidence not nearly so compelling.  As a lawyer, I accept the gospel evidence unreservedly as the testimony of truthful men to facts that they were able to substantiate.”

The Guinness Book of Records lists as the most successful trial lawyer in history a man by the name of Sir Lionel Luckhoo, twice knighted by Queen Elizabeth, a man who had 245 consecutive murder acquittals.  That’s why he’s the most successful trial lawyer in history. This former justice and diplomat subjected the facts of the resurrection to his own painstaking examination for several years before declaring “I say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt.”

As British theologian Michael Green said “The appearances of Jesus are as well authenticated as anything in antiquity. There can be no rational doubt that they occurred, and that the main reason why Christians became sure of the resurrection in the earliest days was just this. They could say with assurance ‘We have seen the Lord.’ They knew it was he.”

Yes, it’s an amazing world in which carpenters get resurrected.