True North

North is just one of many points on the compass. Many of us have never given much consideration to the words, much less the concept of where north really is. I've always wanted to be able to understand what was around where I lived, so I started looking at maps as a very young boy. Even though I knew intuitively where north was, and knew its relationship to the other three major compass points, it took me several more years to realize the significance of True North.

The only north I knew about for most of my youth was magnetic north. I know now that it’s several hundred miles south of the north pole which is actually true north. Not only is it not in the same location as true north, but its location is continuously changing based on what is happening in the earth’s core. The significance of all that means is that it is impossible to accurately navigate with a magnetic compass unless you continually update where true north is with respect to your current compass reading. That was a really big deal before the days of GPS receivers. GPS is pretty good, but has its own problems at very high latitudes.

We have a very similar problem as we try to set our moral compass. There can be a lot of really bad reference points, and depending on where we are in life, the equivalent of true north may be very hard to find. For many years I had that very problem. I tried to set my moral compass with rules established by religion. The problem with that was that the rules changed so much from religion to religion. Not only does each one have a lot of rules, but between religions they may differ greatly, and in many cases are actually in conflict.

I was born into the Catholic religion, attended a non-denominational church for some time, then attended a Methodist church for a while. Not only did the rules change from religion to religion, it became painfully obvious that some contained half-truths or downright lies. I felt that the only thing all religions had in common was a heartfelt desire to control people. The rules seemed to change as necessary to accommodate changing leadership and membership. For me, they could not pass the snicker test. I was searching for true north and they kept presenting different versions of magnetic north.

The god I kept seeing was superficial, sometimes spiteful and often revengeful. Even that god seemed an afterthought compared to the rules. Religion just left a deep void within me. When I was around thirty years old just gave it all up. I found more peace on a walk in the woods, or a night at the eyepiece of a telescope.

Life was pretty good to me for the next twenty five years. Then one day while I was away on a business contract, my wife told me she had found a new church that she thought I’d really like and asked if I'd go with her next time I was home. "Sure," I answered.

A couple weeks later, we attended church in a movie theater. Something clicked. On the way out I told my wife that “these people get it”. They seemed to know the difference between God and religion. I didn't say it at the time, but I am now convinced that I had found the True North I had been searching for.

I have since figured out that for many people, religion is a verb. It is a set of man made rules meant to shape God into someone who will recognize and accept us. Wow! How backwards. The God of the universe wouldn’t recognize us unless we followed a bunch of man made rules? Preposterous! No wonder I never understood what religion was up to.

I now know that in order to enter into a covenant relationship with God, we must accept the fact that He loved us even before our inception; we were created for Him to love and for us to return that love. That’s a lot different than: Don’t eat meat on Friday, don’t dance with anyone, don’t take an alcoholic drink and whatever you do, don’t go bowling. Don’t, Don’t, Don’t. The man made list just goes on and on.

Don’t get me wrong. God gives us rules too. But if you examine them, they are similar to the rules we give our children. Our goal is to keep them safe, not control them for the sake of control. I believe God’s rules are much the same.

But He didn’t stop there. He sent Jesus into the world to teach us who God is. And after around three years of teaching us, Jesus went to the cross to relieve us of our sin problem so we would be pure enough for God to gather us to His infinite loving grace.

I finally understand that a relationship with God is so much more important than any religion could ever be. I know now that my irreconcilable differences with religion came within a hair’s breadth of costing me my salvation.

Are you with God after death. It's your choice!

Here I am lying in this hospital bed trying to piece together what happened. I remember my best friend and I were talking about the existence of God. He got distracted and ran a red light. According to the doctor, that was five years ago. He said we were T-boned by an eighteen wheeler when my buddy ran the light. Then he dropped a real bomb; my buddy was not so lucky. He died instantly. What bothers me the most is that I remember the last part of the conversation like it just happened.

“Look man,” he said. “You’ve been sold a bill of goods. Can’t you see that all this business about heaven and hell is just a way to control people? I don’t believe there is a God.”

“C S Lewis didn’t either,” I said. “So he set out to prove it and came up with the opposite conclusion. He felt like everything pointed to the existence of God, rather than the lack of a God.”

“I don’t have any idea who C S Lewis is,” he replied. “But it’s obvious that you and ole CS have both been smoking the same thing. There is no God. Period. Besides, even if there were a God, I wouldn’t want to know him. Anyone that would let all the pain and suffering continue in this world is not worthy of my acceptance.”

My mind was reeling. Did he really mean those last two lines? Can it really be over just like that with no chance to recant? I can’t bear to think what he must be going through after such a thorough renunciation of God.

__________________________


I can’t be dead. The grave isn’t supposed to be like this. Nothing that so called “group of friends” told me even comes close to fitting.

“Your friend has been pulling your leg,” they said. “He really doesn’t believe there’s a God. He’s just trying to control you like the rest of those religious nuts. There is no God, and he knows it. No heaven. No hell. When you die, it’s just lights out. There’s no feeling what-so-ever. You just go on the long dirt nap. It’s just the end man. Since there’s no God, there’s no judgment. So eat, drink and be merry. Make your own rules. It’s all yours for the taking.”

Talk about being sold a bill of goods. I can’t believe I bought that crap; hook, line and sinker. I don’t know if that was God I saw just before I was sent here, but I do know there was a judgment. The funny thing is that it really wasn’t harsh; it was just mater of fact. I was just confronted by what I had done and said. My last line was particularly damning: “If God exists, He is not worthy of my acceptance.”

So here I am (where ever that is). Well, they were certainly right about one thing. There is no God here. At my judgment, I was pretty much told that since I didn’t want to accept God, He was not about to force me to. I was about to say I had changed my mind when the lights really went out. For good. Inky black with a deafening silence. And I ended up here. Oh I can see and hear just fine, but I’m limited to this plot-less movie of my past that just keeps running over and over in my mind. I can’t make it stop. Hey guys, you may want to listen up; this just may be the hell you convinced me did not exist. You absolutely do not want to come here.

As for the long dirt nap, what a bunch of bull. I’d give anything for the peace and quiet of a good nap. Just to be able to pull the plug on the terrible thoughts that keep running through my ever active mind. We use to joke about sleep deprivation being torture. Well that would be a cake walk compared to all the sleep I’ve been losing. Too bad you guys can’t hear me. Misery loves company, but I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.

“No feeling what-so-ever,” you said. Well I got news for you guys. There’s plenty of feeling, and it’s all bad. That movie continues to run with all the bad things I ever did. No matter what I do, I can’t make it stop. It dominates my mind and pushes out everything else. I just get to remember how bad I screwed up.

“The end,” you said. Yea, right! There’s no way this feels anything like the end. It seems like I’ve been here forever, but somehow I know it’s just the beginning. And I know I’ll never get another chance to try any other way. You guys may still have the chance to do it the other way and reach out to God, but I have no way of reaching back and letting you know you know your choice, what ever it is, will be final. I have no way to tell you that you’re heading straight for the hell you think does not exist.