They Will Not Be Persuaded if Someone Should Rise From The Dead
by Deacon Bob Schnell
One of my classmates in the diaconate formation program had a so-called "near-death experience" when he was about 12 years old. He was at that time a poor swimmer and had gone swimming in a lake without adequate supervision, and he drowned. He could still recall the experience, some 45 years later, of being at thre bottom of the lake, leaving his body, and then hovering near by watching as people desperately did CPR to try to bring him back. He said he met Jesus, was told it was not yet his time to come to heaven, and was sent back to his body. Of course, he survived. His experience is not the only one like that. There are lots of accounts of near-death experiences, and they share a common theme of leaving he body, engaging with God or Jesus or a bright light, and coming back. Google books on the subject and you'll find a bunch. Yet, even though these experiences are well-documented and pretty consistent, there remain plenty of people who do not believe-- do not believe that they happen, do not believe the common narrative, do not belief in life after death. If you ask them why, they'll probably say that just don't think the accounts that are given could be true, that something else is going on. In the end, they don't believe because they don't want to believe. It is a choice. Maybre that phenomenon explains why Jesus says in today's Gospel (Lk 16: 19- 31) that people will not believe the reality of life after death, and of heaven and hell, even "if someone should rise from the dead." The context is the story we all know of the rich man who dies, and finds himself in a place of great suffering but can see the poor man, Lazarus, at "the bosom of Abraham"-- in other words, in comfort. The rich man begs that someone from the dead be allowed to go back to earth to tell people of the reality of life after death, and that request is denied because, as Abraham says, people didn't listen to Moses and the prophets, and they won't listen even if someone comes back from the dead, so there is no point in sending someone back. Of course, this is a reference to the fact that Jesus will come back from the dead, and not be believed. But it is true across the board-- from the prophets to the sort of experience my classmate had. There are people who won't believe. Why? Why won't folks believe in an afterlife? Belief is, after all, a choice. We choose to believe in God. Yes, there is a gift of faith, but we have to decide to accept it. God does not force Himself on us, and does not force us to believe in God's existence. I'm reminded of the line by Tim Allen in "The Santa Clause" when, after a very-long night of delivering presents on Christmas Eve, the Tim Allen character is fed up with the idea of being Santa Claus and says: "What if I choose not to believe the whole Santa Claus thing?" So why make that choice, the choice not to believe? Perhaps the answer lies in the oldest sin in the book, the sin that our first parents committed, the sin of wanting to be in control, wanting to be "like God." Maybe we choose not to believe because, if we believe, there is a lot that goes with that belief. Believing in God means believing that God is in control, that God has given us rules for life, and all the rest. Believing in God means we aren't free agents, and we're not self-referential, and we don't make all the rules, and we're not in charge-- and we love to think we're in charge. Jesus has come back from the dead, and we would be wise to choose to believe Him. The alternative-- thinking that we can be in charge-- is ultimately an attractive self-delusion. So as we said to the kids when they were little: "Make good choices."