Christianity - Life's Big Questions

This is a point of deep principle, which even non-Catholics should be able to understand as such, even if they cannot agree with it. For further thoughts on this please see our equivalent quiz in the Catholic Christianity strand.

Answer 3 was, at one time, a supposedly softer and more fashionable alternative term. Certain Christians may regard any premature taking of life as 'murder', but that is not a specific technical label within the sense of the question.

In this connection it may be pertinent to quote Arthur Hugh Clough, who died in 1861 (so, writing when medics had barely discovered the anaesthetic chloroform), who in a modern take on the Ten Commandments, wrote:

'Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive / Officiously to keep alive'
(i.e., perhaps there is a point beyond which desperate scientific attempts to prolong a failing life may not be appropriate)

This cynical phrase dwells on the mortal remains; but as the American song puts it, [while] 'John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, his soul is marching on'. There are plenty of other good Christian phrases for this transitional moment in a believer's existence. The analogy of the lumbering caterpillar which re-emerges as a glorious butterfly may seem apposite and helpful ~ except that like most earthly analogies, it falls short, in that the life of a butterfly is also sadly rather brief.

According to Jesus it is possible for the kingdom of heaven to be within the human heart. Quite often he began telling parables in such terms as 'The kingdom of heaven is like when ... '. Of course it is intriguing to wonder what the afterlife is like; but we are told we will come to that each in our due time, and should meanwhile live our earthly life in as heavenly a way as we can. It is worth bearing in mind that an omnipresent and omnipotent God must be able to cover all times and places ~ way beyond the scope of what mere, finite humans can grasp.

One could debate this huge topic a great deal further (see elsewhere!) but the question, as prompted, pre-supposes that religion and science are opposed ~ 'heart' versus 'head' as it were. Maybe that opposition is itself a simplistic mistake?

If you sat two people atop a high hill to describe a sunset, one might describe the cloud formations, windspeed and other technical details while the other reports along the lines of the sky being 'shot with blood and gold'. Obviously they're approaching the same experience from very different viewpoints ... but who's to say either of them is less valid, let alone which?

Beyond answer 2 we seem to be into the realm of the grotesquely conjectural; answer 4 may be well-meant but feels a tad pugnacious as a potential Christian riposte.

There are helpful elements in most of the other answers, though answer 1 cannot be physically practical!

Again, there are worthwhile elements in most of the 'wrong' answers, but answer 1 seems slightly passive-defensive, answer 3 seems (strangely) slightly arrogant ~ there are plenty of other such representatives, so another one, though welcome, may or may not make a crucial difference ~ while answer 4 suggests something that both the believer and God Himself might wish, but it is not of itself the chief object. As Paul wrote, 'It is not given to all to be missionaries'.

Jesus famously observed (as reported in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew), 'The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak'. Generations of Christians have wrestled with ways of subduing 'the flesh' and its appetites, not only during the particularly penetential preparatory seasons of Lent and Advent.

Relatively recently (1943; 1954) Abraham Maslow proposed a 'hierarchy of human needs', with absolute basics such as food and shelter on its lowest tier ~ things without which no form of human life would be possible at all ~ while higher matters such as love, loyalty, belonging and esteem come at higher levels. Of course we need to look after the basics (our physical body being, after all, also a 'temple of God's Spirit'); but beyond that, our priorities ought to be outward-looking in the service of God and others, rather than seeking selfish pleasure in addictions or the temporary satisfaction of our sexual whims. Elsewhere in the Scriptures we are enjoined to 'mortify the flesh', even to the extent of a (surely metaphorical) comparison with the Crucifixion itself; but if we put that physical self completely to death, what purpose would that serve? There is surely a balance to be struck, and with God's help it is the Christian calling to achieve it, even if on occasion we should fail.

Any of these labels might be used, but the most usual formal one is answer 3 (you might like to Google that, carefully, seeking images by great artists of the Renaissance and other periods).

And on that doomful note, that's about 'it' for this particular quiz. By the nature of our subject, we do need to tackle some pretty major issues!