The other day, an elderly woman stopped me on the street and, after asking me to sign a petition, which I did, told me to listen to 94.7 FM. I understood from what she said that it is a Christian station.
So after lunch that day, while washing the dishes, I tuned into 94.7 FM. It was playing pleasant songs whose melodies were soothing, much like the warm water with which I was rinsing the dishes. Since I’m a bit deaf, it was easy not to pay much attention to the words. But then the music stopped and a man spoke about parents who had been starved of parental love, and, not having had the experience of being loved by their parents, starved their own children of love. The only one who could break this vicious cycle, he said, was Jesus.
At this point, my wife came into the kitchen. “How long are you going to listen to this?” she asked me. So I turned off the radio and never learned how Jesus would help those who had never known parental love. But I didn’t need to listen any further to be pretty sure that the Christian faith of the old lady who had stopped me that morning was helping her bear the vicissitudes of life. And perhaps it would also help her face death calmly, if she also believed she was eligible for a place in heaven. On the other hand, if she dreaded eternal punishment, the prospect of death would be terrifying. As I finished the dishes, I wondered what is better - to believe in eternal life, when one is uncertain as to one’s ultimate reward or punishment, or to believe that there is nothing after death, that this life, in all its pleasures and pains, is all there is.
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