1 | kinzi

September 30th, 2009 at 11:34 am

Bam, I don’t appreciate this one much.

2 | BamBam

September 30th, 2009 at 11:47 am

I apologize for the way it ends but in its defense i think it raises a interesting conundrum regarding heaven and hell …

3 | kinzi

September 30th, 2009 at 9:46 pm

It definitely does, and it is not a simple conundrum. The cartoon just makes it look like the standard answer is fairly callous and ignorant. It was quite a personal trigger for me, I had to think about what to say coming back here.

I spent most of my life praying for my parents. My mom did trust in Christ just before she died. My father, who, until two weeks before he died, continued to make obnoxious advances toward me (as well as his usual round of stealing, lying and drunken emotional mayhem). I forgave him regularly, chose to love him, and prayed he would receive Christ’s forgiveness. Just before he died, a stranger walked into his house and ’shared the gospel’ with him, in front of my eyes.

It gave me hope there might be change, especially after my mom’s complete 180 at the last minute. I wept over him, and very much feared the thought of his eternity, forever separate from me. He died alone soon after, no cool story of salvation.

I thought I would crack from the pain. Instead, I had amazing peace in God’s mercy, justice and faithfulness. What I feared all my life, the thought of his punishment and separation from God, was overcome by trust in God’s character.

That is too long for a pithy cartoon, tho

4 | bambam

September 30th, 2009 at 10:17 pm

sorry that it hit such a personal trigger kinzi really am.
Actually when i saw this cartoon i thought about how my parents would feel, and that would be something that i think you can empathizes with.
The sheer way that people equate those matters of destiny into mathematical 1+1=2 kind of situation and they just caste you into a certain corner in their belief of the post mortem.
It sadly doesn’t stop there, that vision that they ascribe to your place there after starts rubbing on you in their ideas so they change … they just start seeing in a different prism and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
Now on the other hand forgiveness is not an easy act, but if you manage to divorce the person from his deterministic path you will be able to appreciate another layer of complexity and it will let it a lot more greys and a less bad and good boxing. (i don’t wanna come off like i’m talking to, or down to you i’m just trying to convey whats going in my head)
Once that starts to happen you begin to appreciate how complex morality is and how rash it would be to start to cast people based on singular over lifetimes of actions and you just put away that and place it in a greater hand and attempt to see some good some where and hang on it and nurture it.
Thats where i hope i would be otherwise i might end up being a cynical and paranoid person because to face reality with that prism you will realize that you mostly live amongst bad people and you will end up only interacting with your own people.
Again really sorry that it brought all of those issues back, and I didn’t put there for the laughs since i didn’t see it that way i just thought it communicated a very complex chain of thought in such a concise manner that would be lost if i put it into words myself. hope i managed to explain why its there a bit better now.

5 | NasEr

October 1st, 2009 at 3:48 am

applies to all religions .they’re all based on the same principles . but I don’t wanna get into a religious debate here ,to each their own .

6 | bambam

October 1st, 2009 at 9:02 am

wow ur back in town, ahlan wa sahlan.
Naser its not really about it being in all religions or not, to me its how it affects us in our lives having that thought about a person we care about
a lil religious debate never does anyone any harm

7 | Haitham

October 1st, 2009 at 1:20 pm

If u would like to look for illogical things in religions, then this would be the last one to think about!

The thing about heaven and hell is a mere joke compared to other incompatibilities in most of the religions!

Now that I did say so, u think am an atheist, agnostic or what ever, but the truth is no! I am not!

Believing in a God, is easy, but believing in a personal God and the other illogical things is hard when u are using ur brain! So you either gobble it down or spit it out and never try to think about it again! It will try to hunt u again, but here comes ur role in circumventing it!

This is only my philosophy! Nothing imposed on anyone!

The purpose of this life is something elusive, and apparently from our current point of view it is inherently impossible to figure out for good what it is about! May be one day we will know when we leave it, and may be not!

I just learned from quantum mechanics that our minds are so limited that they can not understand anything that does not make a sense TO US! In reality, even Einstein, could not learn this lesson and he kept fighting back! We think that this life is all about humans! And if we see something as illogical then to hell with it, because we think that we are the center of everything that goes around!

Doing the same mistake as the church some centuries ago about the earth being the center of the globe! We are mocking them for doing so, but in a way we are doing the same again!

8 | bambam

October 1st, 2009 at 1:29 pm

Avoiding the temptation of getting into an epistemology and the nature of our Precieved “reality” so i’ll just inquire about this point.
If you see it is as difficult to couple brains and a personal god. Then how can you differentiate between you and an agnostic or an athiest in terms of your relationship to god. since if its not a personal god, then there is no need to go to him or refer to him in your earthly matters since he won’t listen and hence the whole praying and catering to god system collapses if its not a personal god.

9 | Haitham

October 1st, 2009 at 3:04 pm

I did not say I do not believe in a personal God! I just said it is hard to believe! Yet I do believe!

This is what I meant by gobble it down or spit it! In my case I gobbled it down! In atheism case it is spit out!

10 | NasEr

October 2nd, 2009 at 4:37 am

It doesn’t harm anyone,it just gives u (me actually,after a thousand times or so) massive headaches .

anyway,thx of the “I’m back in town” was for me

11 | Lynn

October 17th, 2009 at 6:39 am

Like I’D be in heaven!! HA HA HA HA