Remnant bog site had an very revealing piece on the deathbed experience.  Pulitzer Prize-winning author and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee identified four common phrases expressed on deathbeds, emphasizing that each had a lesson for a fullness of life.  These four phases are:

            1. “I want to tell you that I love you.”

            2. “I want to tell you that I forgive you.”

             3. “Would you tell me that you love me?”

            4. “Would you give me your forgiveness?”

He also noted that delayed expressions of love and forgiveness can lead to regret as well as hinder personal and professional growth. Mukherjee challenged people, “to imbue expressions of love and forgiveness with genuine meaning, urging authenticity and personal significance in interpersonal connections.”   

I don’t know this man’s relationship to the Lord, but his insights are right on when it comes to the deathbed experiences, I have had the privilege of witnessing.  As a pastor I spent many hours with loved ones and their families, as they give support and encouragement to their loved one in their last moments of life.  These were some of the most sacred and holy moments of my life as a pastor, yet they can also be very challenging when I am not sure of the loved one’s relationship with the Lord. 

Now that I am in my mid-eights, I am able to view the deathbed experience from a completely new perspective, since I am no longer in the center but on to edge of life.  Parker Palmer words seem appropriate. “On the edge of everything you can see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” I assume my reflections is being read by men who are right in “the center” of life.  You are busy, preoccupied with making a living, caring for your family, wanting to succeed  in your vocation and simply keeping up with the obligations of a husband and father.  It is easy to let your personal relationships slip causing, “relational sins” (Larry Crabb).    

This blog, gives me the opportunity to encourage you with the importance of relating well to those closest to you.  Don’t wait till your deathbed experience to say you love those closest to you.  Don’t put off being forgiving in your relationships.  Remember the author’s challenge of sharing expressions of love and forgiveness with meaning and authenticity, knowing how important they are. 

My testimony – I praise God for his mercy and grace in my life.  I am like the blind man who found healing in Jesus.  His testimony was simple, “One thing I do know, I was blind but now I see!”  Early in my walk with the Lord, I did not see the blessing of having good relationships with my immediate family.  I had to  learn  by God’s grace to have a lifestyle of forgiveness, with a desire to love each family member with the love of the Lord.  The author is right  – “delaying expressions of love and forgiveness can lead to regret and hinder personal and professional growth.”

I am not quite sure about his final two phrases.  But I know this, as I try to visualize my deathbed, I can not demand or expect gestures of love and forgiveness.  But I can prepare “the soil” for such gestures by having sown the seeds of forgiveness and unconditional love to those closest to me. 

Men, I can not stress the importance of showing love and granting forgiveness to your family members.  Please don’t wait until you are on your deathbed.  “Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance” (I Cor. 13:7).    

Arron Renn  on his blog site, featured an article entitled “Christian Buddhism” by Dr. John Seel.   The opening sentence got my attention.  “A number of home grown features of today’s American evangelicalism echo Buddhist themes.”  We live in a mix and match world, where religious seekers are described as “Remixed.”  In Seel’s view there are Buddhist-like tendencies in conservative orthodox evangelical Christian circles due to a “low grade of biblical literacy” that leads “to an impotent faith that has little relevance in the real world of day-to-day existence.”  

There is a wide acceptance of a truncated gospel, that views the gospel as narrowly judicial and gnostic.  Forensic justification as a divine verdict of acquittal pronounced on the believing sinner, can make the cross the telos of Jesus’ redemptive purpose.  This view has been called the “two-chapter gospel” (fall + redemption) or the “gospel of sin management.”  But Dallas Willard and N. T Wright favor a kingdom-oriented gospel or a “four-chapter gospel” (creation +fall +redemption + restoration).  

The telos of the gospel is not merely dealing with the forensic guilt of sin but inaugurating a new kind of resurrection life within the believer.  The failure to appreciate a holistic understanding of the gospel is a “foundation flaw” of Christians today. Willard notes,  “The final hope of Christian is not simply ‘going to heaven,’ but resurrection into God’s new creation, the ‘new heaven and new earth.'” In other words, the gospel is not about getting you into heaven, but to get heaven into you via the indwelling presence of Christ through his Holy Spirit. 

An alternative spiritual story differs in three ways.  First, the story begins here, right now.  Willard maintains, “The gospel is the good news of the presence and availability of life in the kingdom, now and forever, through the reliance on Jesus the Anointed. ” Secondly, eternal life is an intimate interactive relationship with Jesus in daily life.  Thirdly, “the gospel is about making this invisible spiritual connection visible in our bodies and transformative in our world now.” Wright summarizes  this view by saying, “the work of salvation, in its full sense, is 1) about whole human beings, not merely souls, 2)about the present, not simply the future; and 3) about what God does through us, not merely what God does in and for us.”    

Seel sees the influence of Eastern religious perspective in three ways.  First, the aim is to connect with the divine spark within which is intrinsic to your being.  This brings about a sacralized autonomy or a spiritualized self-centeredness.  Secondly, this connection is invisible, immaterial, and impersonal. Rather than connecting to a person, we are connecting to a cosmic energy.  Thirdly, these connections do nothing to challenge  the autonomy of self.  These connections are all Gnostic in spirit.  

“But on closer examination, the promise of the gospel requires repenting of your self-centered life orientation, placing yourself before a personal and moral Creator, acknowledging your sin, and then through accepting the grace of the cross connecting to an indwelling incarnate presence of God within that becomes the presence, purpose and power of your life.”  The great tradition of  Christianity tells a much different and better story.  

My testimony – I daily cry out for discernment to have a clear understanding of my walk with Jesus.  I am not a Christian Buddhist.  Why!! 1) I confess I am a beloved sinner,  loved by God is my stink.  He saved me.  2) God lives within me.  I have joined the dance of the Trinity.  4)  I now live in the presence of the kingdom,  and 5) It is God who works in and through me, not myself.  All honor and glory go to Him.