WebMDave

People frequently talk about their inevitable death as if it were going to occur sometime in the future. I happen to know that I will not be dying in the future.  Let me explain.  Nearly everyone I meet seems to be focused on the future. They talk about what they'll do after getting off work, or where they plan to travel to on their next vacation, or what they plan to do once they've completed their education. At my stage of life everyone is talking about how they will finally enjoy life when they eventually retire from work. All any of us really have is today. All we have is the present and if we are not living right now, in the present, we are tossing aside the only life we have. When the longest- and shortest-lived of us dies, the loss is precisely equal. For the sole thing of which any of us can be deprived is the present, since this is all we own, and nobody can lose what is not theirs. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.14 Since I have no assurance of living one momen...

I am aware that nothing lasts forever, but for some unaccountable reason I spent decades behaving as if my life has lasting relevance or meaning. The fact is, once I’m gone, the march of history will pave over and cover all  evidence of my ever having existed. Some shred of remembrance may temporarily  endure in the minds of a few who knew me, but all my memories will cease at my demise. And before long, even those who remember me will be long gone as well. And so it is with every living thing on this planet.  I have seen and continue to see change in myself and others. Relationship dynamics change. Children change as they grow up. Adults change as they grow older. Friends, relatives and even enemies leave us, if we don’t leave them first. Autos rolling off the assembly line are before too long towed off to the junkyard. Fortunes are made and lost. Our pets grow old and leave us behind. Businesses that are worldwide and seem eternal disappear in bankruptcy. Empires are b...

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” — 1933 Inauguration Speech of the 32nd president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Four years after the stock market crash of 1929, in the United States and countries rich and poor were struggling under devastating economic privations. Personal income, tax revenue, profits, and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 25% and in some countries as high as 33%. Then, less than two weeks following Roosevelt’s Inauguration, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany. By March 15, Hitler had proclaimed the Third Reich. The Third Reich was heinous. It was something to fight against. Something to work toward destroying.  The atrocities committed by the Nazi Party were intolerable and after six years filled with tremendous sacrifices it was defeated.  The Nazis ruled by fear.  Resorting to fear to gain and maintain power is not especially or...

Originally posted to ExChristian.net on July 27, 2001. The Shock of Apostasy It is invariably a shock to Evangelical Christians to come across someone who has turned his or her back on “the faith once delivered unto the saints.” Most believers will quickly dismiss an ex-Christian by piously pointing out that anyone who turns away from Christ was never a real believer. Or, as an insider might say, “They were never born again.” There is Biblical support for this assertion. 1 John 2:19, which addressed the problem of First Century apostates, states: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” (KJV) I’d like to point out here that the previous verse, verse 18, suggests that the writer also believed it was the end of history and that the Antichrist was about to appear. It seems that whoever penned 1 John was premature in an...