Meaningless? Meaningful?

Preamble

For very personal reasons, I have sifted down this Life on Earth to one simple belief. For political correctness, I state it is strictly my opinion which I have had to formulate over the course of my simple existence. It is my radar on this journey to the grave. Here it is.

This Life serves only one purpose; to get to the next one, which is everlasting.

This belief gives me vision and mission. I lose the plot most times, yes, straying into lethargy and deep indifference and into all sorts of muck and mire, but at the back of my mind, always, this belief is ever-present.

A Brilliant Man

Dr Stephen William Hawking died on 14 March 2018, at the age of 76. For most of his life, he was a man who was confined to a wheelchair, paralysed by a degenerative motor neurone disease mouthfully called amyotropic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and he was only able to communicate through a speech generating device. What he lacked in physical mobility, however, he more than astonished the world with the brilliance of his mind. He became one of our greatest scientists, accomplished beyond what most of humanity will ever be able to accomplish. He was a theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author. He rose to be Director of the Centre of Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

And...he was a professed atheist against the existence of God.

(All this information is available on the internet. I did not know him personally nor can I supply any angle about him that only I know. He was a stranger who lived and died in my era far away from me.)

A Zealous Man

There also lived a man, another stranger, in a faraway land as well as in another time, called Saul of Tarsus, better known by his Greek name, Paul, the fourteenth and last apostle of Jesus Christ. He also lived to an old age and he died by being decapitated on orders from Emperor Nero. He lived a hectic life, fervently establishing churches all over Asia Minor and Europe. His life of sacrifice and zeal for spreading the Gospel led him into all sorts of tribulations with authorities of the time and he faced many troubles. And to his dying day, he never wavered from his belief in God. He wrote much of the New Testament of the Bible.

He was a professed believer in the existence of God.

(This information is available freely in the Bible. I did not know him personally nor can I supply any angle about him that only I know. He was a stranger who lived and died in a bygone era.)

Stephen vs Paul

Stephen and Paul believed in very different things. I am sure they both made conscious, well informed choices in what they believed. And they had a right to believe what they believed. They were on opposite sides of the spectrum; a firm atheist on one hand and a firm believer on the other. Both men achieved beyond what few of us can ever hope to achieve. Both men left strong legacies. Both men have contributed a lot to our ways of Life.

And I think only one of them got Life on Earth right. They both didn’t get it wrong nor did they both get it right. Only one of them got it right.

Could it be Stephen William Hawking, who lived for years with a degenerative disease yet became one of our most celebrated and honoured scientists, he who delved deep into the mysteries and intricacies of scientific thought and wrote ‘A Brief History of Time’? Could it be Stephen William Hawking, who after careful analysis and close proximity to deep reflective thought and scientific investigation of the cosmos, came to the conclusion that there is no God? He said, “Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t. I’m an atheist.”

Could it be him who got it right?

Or could it be Saul of Tarsus, who after persecuting the Christians and witnessing the stoning of another Stephen, travelled to Damascus and on the way had a theophany? Could it be him who then became a great crusader for Jesus Christ, travelling all over the Roman Empire, spreading the Gospel at great cost to himself and suffering great deprivation in the process? Could it be him, who after many escapades with death, eventually could no longer dodge death but got unceremoniously beheaded?

Could it be Paul who got it right?

One believed in science; the other believed in Jesus Christ.

Opinion

Back to my belief.

If this Life serves only to get to the next one, then I must figure out the way to get to that Life. Since we all have one nose, two eyes, one mouth, one head, two arms, two legs and one torso, we must all have been created the same way by the same creator; either by God or through evolution or some other way. Therefore, by deduction, there would also be one way only to get to the next Life. There cannot be more than one way; is it not impossible for there to be more than one? It has to be through science or through Jesus Christ or through some other means. Whatever it is, it would be the only universal means to get to the next Life for all mankind. There cannot be others who will get to the next Life through Jesus Christ and others who get there through science and others who get there by some other means. All of us get to get there by one particular channel. Or, alternatively, not get there at all, if we choose!

For me, we get there (by choice, of course). And we get there through Jesus Christ, because he left the Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth (BIBLE), a supernatural manual that defies the logic of science and shows why He is the Way to get to the next Life. Science, meanwhile, has yet to write its own manual on how to achieve everlasting life. Nor has any other way written its manual which I think would trump the Bible’s Way.

I am afraid Stephen William Hawking got it wrong.

The world can praise him to high heaven and back. I also praise him. He accomplished things some of us will never accomplish. His legacy will thrive, yes. But as far as he himself is concerned, he lost the plot and got it horribly wrong and his life, in the face of his atheism (if he clung to it until his last dying breath), is meaningless; a chasing after the wind only. He lived and died... and that’s it for him.

Paul, on the other hand, lived and died... and will live again forever.

‘For what profits a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul.’

The Book of Matthew

Chapter 16

Verse 26

The Holy Bible

New International Version