Synapse

by Steven James

No, the dead do not live on in our hearts. We remember them, of course, but that’s of little comfort, or none at all. In fact, I’d often seen that when people were grieving, the lingering memories of their loved ones actually made it more difficult to move on. The dead don’t live on in our hearts. They’re gone.

Where does it come from when you’re a robot and you make something up? Where does making something up ever come from, even for a Natural?

I thought of what Jesus once said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Heart, soul, and mind. Devotion to God that’s emotional, spiritual, and rational. All three.

children don’t need to be taught how to lie, cheat, steal, or be selfish or greedy. We all naturally know how to act in those ways, and we spend the majority of our lives unlearning those behaviors, trying to overcome our natural bent.

There isn’t any balance to life. Joy doesn’t balance out sorrow. Pleasure doesn’t balance out pain. Justice doesn’t balance out injustice, and love doesn’t balance out loneliness. It’s a terrible world; it’s a beautiful world. It’s both, somehow, inexplicably, at the same time. And that’s part of the enigma of life on God’s green earth.

‘a secret hidden is a lie waiting to be told.’”

“If you believe justice exists, you have to believe in the afterlife. And if you believe in the afterlife, you have to believe in God. This isn’t to say that God or the afterlife must exist, just that, in order to be consistent in your thinking, you would need to believe that they do if you believe that justice does.”