Not thinking THE thing through

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. There is no reason not to follow your heart."--Steve Jobs, hell-bound sinner, speaking at Stanford’s commencement ceremony in 2005.

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There are certain Bible passages people who don’t know much of anything else about the Bible are familiar with. Classic examples include, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,” and “God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son.”

Another big one is from John 14: “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
[3] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

The reason people know these ones is they go to funerals and hear them quoted, explains Richard Jordan. You hear Psalm 23 and John 14 and occasionally you’ll hear John 3:16.

Four simple words, “I will come again,” represent the major message of the Bible. There’s more information in the Bible about the Second Coming of Christ than any other single theme in all of the Bible. The very last thing it says at the end of the whole Book in Revelation 22 is, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

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Here's a passage from an article by Christianity Today:

According to Isaacson, Jobs, a self-proclaimed Buddhist, began questioning the meaning of life and God in the past few months before his death.

"I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden one day and he started talking about God," recalled Isaacson. "He said, 'Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don't. I think it's 50-50 maybe. But ever since I've had cancer, I've been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of – maybe it's cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated. Somehow it lives on.'"

Isaacson continued, "Then he paused for a second and he said, 'Yeah, but sometimes I think it's just like an on-off switch. Click and you're gone.' He paused again, and he said, 'And that's why I don't like putting on-off switches on Apple devices.'"

Jobs also brought up death during his discussions with Isaacson and questioned the meaning of his own existence.

"I saw my life as an arc," Jobs said in a recording aired on the show. "And that it would end and compared to that nothing mattered. You're born alone, you're gonna die alone. And does anything else really matter? I mean what is it exactly, is it that you have to lose Steve? You know? There's nothing."

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Paul says in Galatians 3:1, “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?”

To be foolish does not mean to be stupid. “The fool has said in his heart there is no God.” I talked to a fellow this past week who told me he was an atheist, says Jordan. Now, I can tell you the guy’s not stupid. He’s an educated guy who’s got advanced degrees from the university. He’s not stupid; he’s foolish.

Psalm 14 says that. Jesus said, “O foolish and slow of heart.” But being foolish in the Bible is not being stupid. It’s being slow to use your mind. It’s to not think; to be thoughtless, unobservant, lazy-minded, not to think the thing through.

When I asked the man why he’d be an atheist, he said, “Well, there can’t be a God because if there is a God He would be terrible for being responsible for all the suffering in the world. There can’t be a God; look at all the suffering.” All the suffering and injustice means there’s no God.

Some of the great atheists of our day, Richard Dawkins, for example, that was his same excuse for becoming an atheist: the sufferings of humanity. “There can’t be a God.”

I said, “Okay, let’s say there’s no God. Now, what’s your answer for suffering?” I don’t think he’d ever thought about that.

If the suffering of humanity means there’s no God, what do you put in God’s place? Atheism. So the answer to suffering in the world today is atheism, but how’s that an answer for suffering because if there was no God—there can’t be no God; just look at all that suffering in the world.

I think it clicked with him as we were talking. If you say there’s no God because of the suffering—what is your answer? He didn’t have an answer. If anything, his answer was to be an atheist. But look at all the suffering in the world; how can you be an atheist? The same reasoning gets you to the same conclusion.

If you’ve got a foregone conclusion that you want to be there, though, that’s what happened with the Galatians. They’d come up with another idea. “O foolish Galatians.” Someone had cast a spell on them. There’s a spiritual deception going on here.