On Being Human

Dear Art, you seem to be a genuine human and your experience in faiths and circumstances is worthwhile. As for a personal experience with the living Christ, that is a great claim. I have no way of verifying this spiritual experience, except to add that you have such experience and it is genuine to you. I have no such experience, When I was growing up in a charismatic church, it was full of people who claim to have such and such experience. Some had visions, others prophesied, and some had the experience in heaven and hell. While I do not personally have such, neither will I seek such, for it no longer gives meaning to me and what I am today.

I am, by the grace and love of my fellow humans, been given a place to live and work, and hold a lovely family. I have to work for this way of life, and I am not a man without life struggles. But I find it meaningful to be human, and to live in a wonderful community. I find it puzzling after I walked away from this type pf existential faith, that rests on personal experiences in the spiritual and divine matters. I no longer find this fulfilling or real. Instead, I notice that there is a lot of tension for people to assert such divine grace in their lives, that when questioned, or disbelieved, they have a real problem, and a cognitive dissonance about their ‘real’ experience. I do not feel it is my right to question what had happened to you in your near death experience. I do however, like to point out that I enjoy this life, and I no longer find faith and its answers fulfilling to life’s most urging and difficult problems. I stopped seeking this type of answers a long time ago, I do however, believe in love and justice and peace, and in these immaterial aspirations of human, if you will, call that divine. I see this impersonal immaterial being(s) at work. I appreciate the beautify of the sun rise, and sun set, and as the seasons change, we are indeed blessed with this ‘divine’ grace. I however, no longer look to this thing, to find fulfillment, and I find it puzzling to hold a conversation with my former self, such as yourself, who asserts the reality of this faith. I appreciate the nature and the love of a human community, In this, I will affirm Ruth’s aspiration to love and to live as true humans, and not to seek a mental construct such as faith in order to derive one’s meaning of existing. I find this view not ‘sad’ or dejected. Rather, I see this as the first step to be human and to live a life worthy and examined. When I die, I will find out all this stuff you talked about, whether it is a mental construct, or is it the biblical and ancient way to describe it as falling asleep and be gathered to ones ancient family, where memory is no more (Eccel), and to live fully and to love wastefully and to enjoy, that is the lot of man.

I don’t think I can persuade you to change your personal experience just as you may not be able to change my personal view on being human in this world and all that I can see, is in this human community and the place we call home.