Death, Life, and 1 Corinthians 15

 

The graphic above should is an attempt to portray 1 Corinthians 15:53, which says "For this perishable body must become imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality." The leaves were dying when the photo was taken. The flower bud was ready to wait for 5 or 6 months to wake up and open.

In preparing the graphic, I came across a most relevant statement in a public domain dictionary: "Local death is going on at all times, and in all parts of the living body, in which individual cells and elements are being cast off and replaced by new; a process essential to life." Indeed! Even biologists often don't attach enough significance to the work of decomposer organisms, such as fungi.

Paul (and other Biblical sources) teach that there will be a physical resurrection -- believers will have some sort of physical body, superior to the ones we now have. Christ already has such a body. I don't have a clue as to what that will be like, and you don't, either, although your ideas may be better than mine.

The plant was a dogwood tree, growing near Clemson, South Carolina. That's Lake Hartwell in the background.

Thanks for looking, and reading.

You aren't the same as you were yesterday . . .

. . . but you think you are.

Cells are dying all the time in your body -- and most of them are being replaced at a tremendous clip. (Even brain cells turn out to regenerate themselves far into adulthood.) And yet somehow, despite that enormous cellular turnover, you still feel like yourself week to week and year to year. How is this possible? (Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. New York: Scribner, 2001, p. 83)

I don't really know the answer to that one. Sorry. But part, maybe all, of the answer, may be that our self, whatever that is, is not wholly material. It depends on something besides our neurons.

Thanks for reading.