Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary

What happens when we die?

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Pastor Matt has been reading again. This time it’s a book on theology by Australian New Testament historian Michael Bird. In this recent blog post, Pastor Matt explains what people can expect to find after they die.

Excerpt:

Luke 23:39-43 records the following:

39 One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Is “Paradise” heaven? Michael Bird points out in his new book Evangelical Theology (Zondervan 2013),  that while the Greek word translated as “Paradise” is used to describe heaven in 2 Cor. 12:4 and Rev. 2:7 it cannot mean heaven here. Why? According to John 20:17, which records Jesus’ resurrection encounter with Mary Magdalene, He had not yet “ascended to the Father”.

So where is “Paradise”?  Most likely it is an intermediate state for the dead known by ancients as Hades (see also Acts 2:27, 31 and 1 Peter 3:19-21).  So, during the three days that Jesus’ body lay in the tomb, He joined the dead in Hades.  But after his resurrection and ascension, He goes to heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father (see Acts 7:55; Eph. 1:20-23, etc.).

So do people still go to Hades? Christians don’t.  The Apostle Paul writes that when we die we go to be with Jesus who is in heaven (2 Cor. 5:1-10; Phil. 1:20-24, etc.) but we will not stay there forever.  Jesus will return to create a “new heavens and new earth” (Rev. 21) where we will dwell in eternal physical bodies like Jesus’ resurrected body that cannot decay or die (see 1 Cor. 15 and 1 John 3:2).  The idea that we sit on a cloud for eternity while playing a harp and wearing a diaper is from Tom & Jerry cartoons, not the Bible.

What about non-Christians? The Book of Revelation still speaks of the existence of Hades (20:14) and that it will one day be thrown into hell.  Thus, it is implies that non-Christians do not go directly to hell but to Hades until the final judgment of all humankind.

The rest of the post has a helpful breakdown that summarizes what the Bible teaches about life after death. Recommended.

Commentary

Doctor shortage: how Obamacare makes Americans lose their doctors

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Mysterious Tim sent me this article from the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

Everyone now is clamoring about Affordable Care Act winners and losers. I am one of the losers.

My grievance is not political; all my energies are directed to enjoying life and staying alive, and I have no time for politics. For almost seven years I have fought and survived stage-4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2% after diagnosis. I am a determined fighter and extremely lucky. But this luck may have just run out: My affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31.

My choice is to get coverage through the government health exchange and lose access to my cancer doctors, or pay much more for insurance outside the exchange (the quotes average 40% to 50% more) for the privilege of starting over with an unfamiliar insurance company and impaired benefits.

Countless hours searching for non-exchange plans have uncovered nothing that compares well with my existing coverage. But the greatest source of frustration is Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act health-insurance exchange and, by some reports, one of the best such exchanges in the country. After four weeks of researching plans on the website, talking directly to government exchange counselors, insurance companies and medical providers, my insurance broker and I are as confused as ever. Time is running out and we still don’t have a clue how to best proceed.

Here previous private health insurance plan was doing a good job of honoring her policy:

Since March 2007 United Healthcare has paid $1.2 million to help keep me alive, and it has never once questioned any treatment or procedure recommended by my medical team. The company pays a fair price to the doctors and hospitals, on time, and is responsive to the emergency treatment requirements of late-stage cancer. Its caring people in the claims office have been readily available to talk to me and my providers.

I think that this is what Obama was talking about when he cautioned people about insurance companies that “screw you”. Yeah, private companies always screw people, Obama, never the government. What does this man know about how anything actually works in the real world, anyway?

More:

What happened to the president’s promise, “You can keep your health plan”? Or to the promise that “You can keep your doctor”? Thanks to the law, I have been forced to give up a world-class health plan. The exchange would force me to give up a world-class physician.

For a cancer patient, medical coverage is a matter of life and death. Take away people’s ability to control their medical-coverage choices and they may die. I guess that’s a highly effective way to control medical costs. Perhaps that’s the point.

Another factor that is going to make this situation worse is the widespread decline in the number of doctors caused by Obamacare.

Investors Business Daily reports on a recent poll of doctors by Deloitte.

Excerpt:

When our polling showed four years ago that doctors planned to leave the profession if the Democrats’ interpretation of health care reform became law, we were ridiculed mercilessly. But, as a new poll shows, we were right.

In 2009, our IBD/TIPP Poll asked 1,376 randomly chosen practicing physicians from across the country what they thought about the health care “reform” being considered at that time.

It found that 45% of doctors “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” if Congress passed the plan the White House and the Democratic majority in Congress had in mind.

[…]But almost a year later, we were vindicated. An August 2010 Merritt Hawkins survey of 2,379 doctors conducted for the Physicians Foundation revealed that 40% of doctors said they would “retire, seek a nonclinical job in health care, or seek a job or business unrelated to health care” over the next three years as the overhaul was phased in.

Those three years are up, the country has found out what’s in ObamaCare, and the story remains the same.

The Deloitte 2013 Survey of U.S. Physicians found that six in 10 doctors say “it is likely that many physicians will retire earlier than planned in the next one to three years” — that is, in the age of ObamaCare — “while more than half believe that physicians will retire (62%) or scale back practice hours (55%) based on how the future of medicine is changing.”

The problem is that when government controls health care, they spend the money on things that will buy them more votes. People who need expensive care like this definitely do not get treated. In government-run health care, government takes control of the money being spent by individuals on actual health care in the private sector. They then redirect that money into public sector spending on “health-related” services. Instead of helping people who are really sick, government-run systems cut lose those sick people and concentrate on buying perfectly healthy people things like condoms, abortions, IVF and sex changes. They spread the money around to more people in order to buy more votes. The main goal is to get the majority of people dependent on government so that they continue to vote for bigger government. The few people who need expensive health care? They can just go die in a ditch.

The really sick thing is when a person works their entire lives, paying into a government-run health care system, and then when it is their turn at the end to finally get some treatment, they find out that they are denied treatment, and their money has all been spent on elective treatments for favored (liberal) minority groups. I’m sorry, but you can’t have treatment for prostate cancer, because we used the money we got from you to provide IVF to a professor of women’s studies who spent her fertile years advocating for abortion and against marriage. We should never be letting government control health care. Never.

Commentary

Does God’s omniscience conflict with human free will?

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Here’s the question from Come Reason Ministries.

Excerpt:

Hello,

Christian doctrine holds that God is all knowing (1 John 3:20), and humans have free will (Deuteronomy 30:19 is my favorite example). however, at my favorite apologetics debate board, I have seen skeptics raise an objection to these points several times. the basic logic behind their arguments is this:

  1. A being with free will, given two options A and B, can freely choose between A and B.
  2. God is omniscient (all-knowing).
  3. God knows I will choose A.
  4. God cannot be wrong, since an omniscient being cannot have false knowledge.
  5. From 3 and 4, I will choose A and cannot choose B.
  6. From 1 and 5, omniscience and free will cannot co-exist.

I have read many counter-arguments from apologetics sites, but they were either too technical (I couldn’t understand them), or not satisfying. so, I was wondering what would your input be on this issue?

Thank you,

Justin

Ever heard that one? Here’s Lenny Eposito’s answer:

Hi Justin,

Thanks for writing. This is a great question as it shows how even those who appeal to logic can have biases that blind them. Let’s examine this argument and see if it follows logically.

Premises 1 and 2 in your outline above are the main premises to the argument and are not disputed. The Christian worldview argues that every human being is a free moral agent and is capable of making choices simply by exercising their will, not under compulsion or because of instinct. Also, it is a long held doctrine of Christianity that God is all-knowing. The Bible says that God knows “the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10).” For omniscience to be truly knowledgeable it must be correct knowledge, so premise number 4 is also granted.

However, point number 5 is where the logic falters. Those who argue in this manner make the mistake of thinking that because God possesses knowledge about a specific matter, then he has influenced it. That does not follow at all. Just because God can foresee which choice you will make, it does not mean you couldn’t still freely choose the other option.

Let me give you an example. I have a five year old son. If I were to leave a chocolate chip cookie on the table about a hour before dinner time and my son was to walk by and see it, I know that he would pick up the cookie and eat it. I did not force him to make that decision. In fact, I don’t even have to be in the room at all. I think I know my son well enough, though, to tell you that if I come back into the kitchen the cookie will be gone. His act was made completely free of my influence, but I knew what his actions would be.

In examining the argument, the assumption is made in premise 3 that because God knows I will choose A somehow denies me the choice of B. That is the premise that Christianity rejects. Omniscience and free will are not incompatible and it is a non-sequitor to claim otherwise.

Thank you Justin for this interesting question. I pray that you will continue to defend the gospel of our Lord and may He continue to bless you as you seek to grow in Him.

That’s a great answer and should work in ordinary conversations.

More technical

J.W. Wartick maps out the arguments more fully with symbolic logic here on his Always Have A Reason blog. But I’ll just excerpt the gist of it.

Excerpt:

It is necessarily true that if God knows x will happen, then x will happen. But then if one takes these terms, God knowing x will happen only means that x will happen, not that x will happen necessarily. Certainly, God’s foreknowledge of an event means that that event will happen, but it does not mean that the event could not have happened otherwise. If an event happens necessarily, that means the event could not have happened otherwise, but God’s foreknowledge of an event doesn’t somehow transfer necessity to the event, it only means that the event will happen. It could have been otherwise, in which case, God’s knowledge would have been different.

[…]Perhaps I could take an example. Let’s say that I’m going to go to classes tomorrow (and I do hope I will, I don’t like missing classes!). God knows in advance that I’m going to go to classes tomorrow. His knowledge of this event means that it will happen, but it doesn’t mean that I couldn’t choose to stay in and sleep for a while, or play my new copy of Final Fantasy XIII, or do something more useless with my time. If I chose to, say, play Final Fantasy XIII (a strong temptation!), then God simply would have known that I would play FFXIII. His knowledge does not determine the outcome, His knowledge is simply of the outcome.

If we choose A, God would foreknow A. If we choose B, God would foreknow B. His foreknowledge of our choices is contingent on our making free choices.

I had to learn symbolic logic and Bayes’ theorem in college for my computers science degrees, and it’s pretty useful for understanding these philosophers. Philosophy is a lot like computer science, at least for analytical philosophy.