Friday, 20 February 2009
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Currently
Book of Common Prayer Red
By Bcp7230
see related27 grams and the body and soul....
In my Christian Doctrine class, we have been talking about sanctification, the body and soul and the afterlife, and paradise and hell (which I will write about in another blog) and its really got my wheels turning.
There are all these different ideas about what happens to the soul after death. Daniel 12 talks a lot about death in the context of "sleeping" and that some will wake to everlasting life and some to shame and contempt at the end of days. Then you have 2 Corinthians 5:8 telling us that when we are separated from our body, we are present with the Lord. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Lazarus is in Abraham's bosom and the rich man is in Hades. Jesus tells the one thief on the cross alongside him that he will be with Christ in paradise TODAY. Is there a way to reconcile this?
Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Mass. conducted an experiment with dying patients to test the theory of 21 grams. You can even look it up on Snopes. The theory is that at the moment of death, human beings lose 21 grams of weight. Dr. MacDougall even weighed animals at their moment of death and they did not lose any weight. There are a few flaws to this experiment. The experiments occurred in the early 1900s, science was not as advanced as it is now, he didn't have a lot of test subjects, and his records were not consistent. But he was convinced that the human body lost 21 grams of unidentifiable substance at death. I'm surprised these experiments have not been repeated in a larger scale, especially with the movie that came out based on Dr. MacDougall's theory, 21 Grams.
But anyways, science has explained how the body functions, what it is made up of, etc. Our thoughts are electrical nerves bouncing through tissues in our brain. Science can even tell us what part of the brains control what.
Do our minds, thoughts, memories "travel" with us when we go to heaven (or hell, for that matter)?
I've heard some theories talk about how the body is divided into a physical body, mind and soul. Heres a website that kinda describes that division, but I don't really know if I can believe it...its still interesting to look at though.
So, here is how I come to terms with it all in light of my faith. And I'm sure this is a stream of theology somewhere. I do believe that the soul and body are separated at death. The body is sent to the ground (or burnt, preserved for medical purposes, cryogenically frozen, or maybe even stuffed for those weirdos out there) where it "rests" until the end of age. The soul is sent somewhere, but I'm not sure where-this issue will be brought up in another blog as well. The "mind" persay- I don't know. Haven't quite figured it out yet. Will be still be the same "people" we were on Earth in Heaven? With the same characteristics, personality, mindset? Or is Heaven something that is so far beyond our human imagination that it will be like something entirely different? Guess we will all solve this mystery someday!
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