What is the greatest human predicament? I’m venturing a guess that most would answer along the lines of disease, war, hunger, poverty, etc… But that’s not it. The greatest human predicament is so massive and inevitable a predicament, a fate that befalls us all, that it’s hardly even recognized as such. We are so accustomed to this predicament that we overlook it, try to ignore it as long as we can, and then are stunned and upset when we encounter it. That predicament is death.
Death is the elephant in the room. We age and try to stay young, fall ill and hope it not something more serious, and gain possessions and status hoping they’ll satiate and distract us in the meantime. With death ever looming and no one winning against it we begin to live for consolation prizes like living to the fullest, accumulating all we can, and having our name carried on.
In this vacuum of not knowing if this life is all there is we start to imagine and make up ideas of what could be, some ideas getting more traction than others. We imagine we are reincarnated, reconstituted, resurrected, reintegrated into a universal energy, or there is nothing at all and this is it. But certainly they can’t all be true.
How would we even begin to determine if there were an answer to our predicament? Should we listen to the words of a science fiction writer such as Hubbard? Should we listen to the plethora of supposed prophets like Joseph Smith and Muhammad who have not beaten death? Should we listen to theorists like Buddha or Shirley McLain? How about scientists like Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson? Have any of these given us good reason to trust they know what they’re talking about regarding death? Are we truly at a loss and in the dark regarding our predicament?
Who could we trust? What would be the qualifications someone would need to validate they know what they are talking about? Certainly, I would hope, whoever has a true answer to our predicament of death would be able to overcome the predicament and not die themselves by food poisoning (Buddha), an illness (Muhammad), or a stroke (Hubbard). What if a person were to intentionally die and then live again while claiming he came from the beyond? What if that person also brought others back to life from the dead? Have Tyson or Sagan done that?
And that leaves us with only one that I know of, only one that I have ever encountered with credentials strong enough to merit paying serious attention to and turning all others into mere fictional entertainment… Jesus, the most intelligent, powerful, and wisest person to ever walk the earth. Most everyone knows the events of his dying by crucifixion and living again 3 days later. Few however know what he taught. And so I leave you with this… if you want a credible answer to the most pressing human predicament we have, check him out. 😉