I’ve pretty much determined that agnosticism is the only reasonable conclusion I can make to the big questions of life. And yet, there are many times in our lives when we cannot not decide. We have to make at least a provisional decision.
The first is, how do you live, given the uncertainty?
The second is, what do you believe when you die?
For me, the answer to both is based in Jesus of Nazareth. The man, not the icon of doctrine that churches have created about him. I will live in such a manner in which I pursue, however imperfectly, those things that Jesus considered to be important: love of God (however vaguely I understand God) and love of humankind. Jesus also loved the Earth, upon which all humans (the poorest most directly) depend. And, at the moment of death, I will still not know whether there is something that will come afterward, or if Jesus is actually alive in some way, but if there is anyone in that afterlife, I believe it will be Jesus.
The uncertainty of my statements will not satisfy fundamentalists or even mainstream Christians. Certainly fundamentalists will call down the seals, trumpets, and plagues of Revelation upon my head. But if Jesus still exists and is waiting for us, I believe he will be happy with my sentiments. Not the Jesus on a white horse in Revelation trampling the grapes of wrath and beating the nations into a sorry pulp, but the Jesus who wandered on the hillsides of Judaea.
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