Who's to Say What's Real

Throughout centuries, humans have expressed different perspectives toward a single idea. The subject of religion invites challenging discussions from skeptical minds because religion is diversely interpreted based on personal faith. The authoress sets her novel in a fictional town, Cold Sassy, where religion plays a predominant role in people’s lives. Through Will Tweedy’s narration she explores the religious opinions of the town’s most prominent citizen Rucker Blakeslee, Will’s grandpa. Although Blakeslee spent his whole life in a religiously conservative town, he has a radical approach toward religious concepts such as predestination, suicide, funerals, faith, and God’s will, thus forcing him to challenge the traditional views of

Some adults may live much of their lives with a literal faith. Stage three is group faith Young people start to value the importance of friendship and often come to view God as one who treats them much like a trusted companion. Stage four is person faith. People strengthen their faith by questioning earlier beliefs. Stage five is mystical faith. At this stage of faith the awareness of God’s inner presence leads one to become more aware that God also dwells in others. Interfaith dialogue now becomes not a threat but an opportunity for new understanding. Stage six is sacrificial faith. Jesus, Dorothy Day, and Archbishop Romero are examples of this sacrificial faith. Such people display radical and consistent commitment to the doing of God’s will that is uncompromised by concern for personal security.

Book Review of To Heaven and Back To Heaven and Back, a nonfiction narrative by Mary C. Neal, MD, addresses the claim that God has a plan for everyone and that He will always be by ones side to nurture and lead them onto the right path. Dr. Neal writes that she had died on a kayaking trip in Fuy River, Chile, because her kayak got trapped and weighed down underneath a waterfall. She later comes back to life, which was described to have been God’s plan for her— he allowed for her to remain by her family’s side. This second chance at life also allowed Neal to spread the word of the existence of a beautiful afterlife known as Heaven. While the author’s relationship with God has changed throughout her life, she has no exclusive authority in the field of religion.

The afterlife is a concept that has troubled humans for a long time. For many decades, people have worried about “their ticket” to heaven and what heaven consist off. First and far most, Mouw stresses the fact that there’s more to life than to just make it to a separate world or heaven. He says our life is about redemption of humans, but also transformation of culture. However, people are still and will always be concerned about getting into heaven. Fortunately, Mouw answers these questions with biblical interpretation. Like I said previously, Christians have believed heaven to be a distant world in which saved souls rest after being extracted from earth. Mouw believes heaven to be a renewed creation of God in which the earth is not destroyed, but rather transformed and

Both Brady and Drummond agree that creationism is not a proven theory, and although Brady is a religious man himself, he places the people of Hillsboro in a class lower than himself. He explains, "These are simple people, Henry, poor people. They worked hard and they need to believe in something, something beautiful. They're seeking something more perfect than what they have" (Inherit the Wind). By this, Brady concedes that religion is like a fairy tale; it is not real, yet it makes some people feel better about reality. Drummond's fear regarding religion is that people have blind faith in something that is not real. He mockingly refers to this type of faith as, "Window shopping for heaven," while Brady calls religion the "golden chalice of hope" for the residents of Hillsboro (Inherit the Wind). Here, Kramer presents his

The inner change of mankind is always caused by the irresistible change of situation, which influences people’s cognition. Moreover, due to the change of perspective, people are more likely to accept things that they have resisted before. In the novel Boo by Neil Smith, the main character Boo is an isolated person who believes science . After he is shot at school, he undergoes tremendous changes after his death and starts his new life in heaven, which is a surreal place for Boo. Through the transition of death, Boo changes his perspective of life, allowing him to change himself through friendship and love, which are absent from his living life.

The essay “There is no God” by Penn Jillette is a controversial essay due to his believe that there is no God. The author in the essay declares, ” I believe that there is not god”(129), this statement can be considered as an offence for many people who believe in any kind of god or religion. Furthermore he writes, “No god means the possibility of less suffering in the future”(131). The statements may offend different religions because they believe that God will come and he will save us from all the suffering. Also he says “ Just the love of the family that raise me and the family that I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need a heaven”(130), He is going against many believe of some religions due to heaven should be the place that Catholics and other religions wish to be when they die.

The foundation of our beliefs can be shaken because of traumatizing experiences. Our religious beliefs can be challenged by the thought of death. Why does death happen to good people? Why does it even happen at all? These are questions that go through the minds of people who face and witness death. In the novel Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, Antonio is an attestant to several deaths at an extremely young age. The passing of the people he saw forged an unwelcome path that opened the door to spiritual challenges he never thought to be within the context of his fledgling existence.

According to Kevin Nelson, a neuroscientist and the author of “The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain,” adults often have a sense of looking back over a life; young children, lacking that perspective, tend to report “castles and rainbows, often populated with pets, wizards, guardian angels, and like adults, they see relatives and religious figures, too.” It’s hard to convey to anyone who grew up without the idea of God just how fully the language, stories and “logic” of the Bible can dominate a young mind, even perhaps especially the mind of a toddler (Nelson, The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain”20-21.) There have been various accounts taken over the years regarding near death or life after death experiences. A known account of this situation is taken from Colton Burpo, in which a bestseller book published in 2010 and motion picture released in 2014 known as “Heaven is for Real” is based on. In 2003 three year-old Colton claimed to have visited Heaven during a near death experience where an emergency surgery was performed on him to save his life. Colton recounts the details of his amazing journey with childlike innocence and speaks about things that happened before his birth... things he could not possibly know. The next is the story of Dr. Eben Alexander, who is a proclaimed neurosurgeon and writer coming from a lineage of scholars and medical doctors. He

Upon everyone’s reunification in heaven they realize that the one thing that paradise is missing is life. They decide that they need to be reborn in order to experience the beauty that is living. Through all of their struggles, they have experienced a myriad of emotions. They have hated life, and yearned for death. Now they look forward towards life with a changed and renewed outlook.

Second, Heaven Gate disconnected its members from the outside. According to one of Do’s speech, he thought human parents did not have the right to possess their offspring. Also, he overstated the problem by using the words “product” and “property”. In his belief, having emotion was a human behavior and was not what the upper human class should do; thus in order to enter the kingdom level above human, all the members should be separated from the people who loved them and who they loved. As, the example shown in the video, one of the group members-David, said that stimulating the attachment to the families in the former lives distract them from their missions,

Bellmont and failures of her good Christian peers often causes Frado’s faith in Christianity to falter as it causes her to question her place as a black woman in the Christian world. Frado attempts to embrace Christianity but cannot fully do so because of the contradictions she sees around her. What she learns of God’s teachings and what she sees in the people around her who are supposed to be professors of Christianity do not coincide and this confusion prevents her from truly connecting with the whites around her. In the text, Frado is described as wishing to share James’s grave as he is being buried, but Wilson states that “she was not fit to die. She could not go where he was if she did” () and she later “mourn[s] over her unfitness for heaven” (). In this moment, we see the effects of Mrs. Bellmont’s repudiation of Frado’s faith. One can see that Frado’s belief in her own salvation with God is destroyed by Mrs. Bellmont’s abuse – that even Frado can no longer even dream to achieve her happiness in the after life. The audience sees that even Frado starts to partake in this frame of mind wherein blacks and whites do not even enjoy the same paradise in the afterlife. Frado’s shows her doubts as she wonder “IS there a heaven for the black? She knew there was one for… all good white people; but was there any for blacks?”(). Frado has internalized the racist ideologies of her peers that reject her right to happiness and see her as unequal. Blackness begins to take on a connotation of sin and rejection from heaven, while whiteness is seen as the mode of acceptance by God and into heaven. Later on, the thought of entering heaven to reunite with James does not make her as happy as it once would have. Frado is seen pondering over Mrs. Bellmont’s entrance into heaven as a “professor of religion; was SHE going to heaven” () and at the thought of this, Frado rejects her own entrance into heaven. Frado struggles to

The message of Richard Bach’s Illusions is based on the concept that the things we interpret in the world as reality are actually illusions. This is made evident to one of the main characters, Richard, through his interactions with his newly found friend, Donald Shimoda. Donald Shimoda is a “messiah”, and he has gifts that he uses to help mankind. A quote that Richard reads is “Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t” (121). During the entire story, Don proves this quote to be true. Donald works to share his gifts and carry out his mission on earth.

One of the strengths that this article has is that they provided a broad hypothesis. It was not specific and that gave them more room to play around with how they want to test the beliefs on life-after-death. They basically just wanted to explore from what was found in previous search on the afterlife and find more detailed data. Another strengths in this article were the specific questions that the participants were asked about their beliefs in the afterlife. The

“Heaven is for Real” is the story of a family who almost lost a son, but ended up getting a glimpse of Heaven. The Burpo family was having a difficult year. Todd, the father of the family, is the main wage earner. He is a pastor, a volunteer firefighter and he installs garage doors as a side business to supplement the church income. In one year he battled illness and a severe leg break. After he recovered, he and his wife decided to turn an church conference into a fun, family vacation. Right before Todd 's wife, Sonja drives the kids to meet their father on vacation; their Four-year-old son Colton shows signs of illness. Fortunately, he quickly gets better so they are able to travel. Unfortunately, he becomes ill again on the trip, and things get worse quickly. After seeing several doctors, they determine that his appendix has ruptured and toxins are seeping through his system.