I am the resurrection and the life.

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.  Do you believe this?” John 11: 25
This is a passage I’ve seen in various churches at various times. It’s probably one of the most repeated Christian phrases of our times.  “I am the resurrection and the life.”  is definitely a catchy phrase.  It is said that the Council of Nicea 325 ad. was when ‘reincarnation’ as a tenet of the Christian church was laid to rest.  Eastern time is considered more cyclic and western more linear.  Yet here is Jesus at the resurrection of Lazarus speaking to life after death and saying that death can be altered.  The timing of death is altered here. Lazarus dies and Christ intervenes.
I’ve felt I’ve done that repeatedly as a physician.  I’ve ‘resurrected’ people.  They’ve been dead.  I’ve ‘resuscitated” them.  God forbid we as scientists should use a laden word like ‘resurrect’.  Yet that’s been the miracle I’ve seen in my work.  I’ve pounded chests and restarted hearts. I’ve watched people who are ostensibly fully dead take that first inhalation like a new born.  I’ve had nurses with me. There have been witnesses.  We’ve altered the course of the individual life quite dramatically.  There is a whole literature in psychiatry about these individuals.  It’s recorded under the Near Death Experience title.  Dr. Moody studied the phenomena for decades. The neurosurgeon,  Dr. Eban Alexander’s Proof of Heaven is just the latest in this extensive area of research.  Another physician, whose name I don’t remember but whose talk I heard researches the ‘reincarnated’, those children who remember past lives and carry on their bodies birthmarks consistent with the scars received in previous lives.  There’s no way these children can speak other languages and remember former lives by any ‘realistic’ means.
But Jesus says that “Those who believe in me will live, even though they die, and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”  I believe this.  I call this ‘my soul’.  It’s that part of me which transcends ‘reality’, the limits of this space. It’s the Namaste bit of god in me.  It’s the Christ within.  It’s that eternal ness I sense but have so much difficulty naming. It’s the faith I feel.
It’s kept me hoping and praying and believing in quite impossible situations. It’s the connection I’ve had with something that refuses to accept disease and death as ends.  There’s times when I do.  Elderly happy folk looking forward to death have been people I’ve gladly let go. I look to be like them one day.
I have real concern about ‘physician assisted suicide’.  I know I can change the time of death but my life as a physician has been to ‘extend’ life and increase the ‘quality’ of life.  I know that abortionists are all the rage politically. I know that we live in a death culture. I know that I don’t really discuss my ‘beliefs’ with my colleagues a whole lot. Those of us who believe in life share a certain hopefulness and faith that we sometimes complain our colleagues lack.
I see eyes that have gone dead in my work today.  As an addictions I see people who are quite literally ‘zombies’. They are walking about with a lack of ‘life’ in their eyes and their movements. They’re on autopilot.  They’re robotically looking for their next fix or they’re in another dimensional world because they’ve just had a fix.  Not all drug users.  Just those who’ve become chronic and those who sometimes have that death stare.  I like to wake them up. I love to see them come off their drugs and return to the world of humanity. I see them as born again.  Their drug has been their God and religion. Their drug dealer is their priest.  He’s or she has no faith. Money is their God.  As CS Lewis says , ‘why look in the wall for the architect’ but the materialist does this.  Seeking God , the unseen, inside job in the outer manifestation of the world in money and drugs to the end of not being here and now but elsewhere. Escaping.  Dreamlike.  Dead.  Dead eyes.  I like to see the life return. I like to see resurrection.  It’s a daily given in my work today.
But more and more there are those who lack hope for themselves or others.
I like to read this passage.  I believe.
The killers delve into their lizard and animal selves to fight.  The elite are ever at war. The whole nature of this existence is a structural violence.  They call it competition and survival of the fittest but it’s just old news. It’s animal.  What is divine is to me this other thing called ‘life’.  I believe in eternal life.
If I was an atheist who didn’t believe in afterlife, quite likely a loving God would not force that upon me.  It’s not necessary for everyone.  Emmett Fox describes God as giving people what they believe and want as evidenced by their behaviour.  So atheists who insist there is only this material world and there is no afterlife or transcendent reality but just ’tooth and claw’.  Well I think that’s what they get.  Finite reality.
That’s not my reality.
“whoever lives by believing in me’ is my reality and with that comes eternal life.  There’s a certain ‘determinism’ or ‘fate’ in the other idea of existence whereas I freely choose to believe in Jesus and resurrection so I believe in ‘free choice’ and that the ‘String Theory’ is beyond the machine like idea of the world and indeed has possibilities of infinitude and life after death and miraculous occurrence. The Multiverse with it’s infinite dimension and present idea of time has the same possibility. It’s reasonable in this regard to believe in eternity and afterlife and resurrection.  Dr. Mario de Beureagaard, the neuroscientist, who wrote Spiritual Brain, indeed describe those others who believe in a lesser world as ‘pseudoscientists’.
The makers of the UN Agenda 21, lack faith and have that IPCC fear based money oriented outlook.  Their industry is ‘fear mongering’.  There’s no ‘peace’ in their hysteria or in their demand for money.
I’m no so sure about that.  All around me I see death and rejuvenation.  I see the winter come then the spring. I see waves of changes. I see hope everywhere. I have faith but then I believe.