new church life:
j u ly / au g u s t 2 0 1 5
Sydney, Australia, has written a three-part series for New Church Perspective
(www.newchurchperspective.com), on The Future. In one he focuses on futurist
Raymond Kurzweil, who “believes computer intelligence is advancing so
rapidly that in a couple of decades machines will be as intelligent as humans.”
Eventually the machines will be the masters and we will be the cyborgs.
Sounds like “computer intelligence” is an oxymoron. This is worth cheating
death for?
How fortunate we are in the Church to know directly from the Lord about
the life after death, heaven and hell, and the life that leads to each. We know
that “computer intelligence” and worldly reality – no matter how advanced –
will never be a match for spiritual intelligence and spiritual reality. And that
living forever in this world – always suspended between heaven and hell, with
all the fallout that makes life less than ideal – is no match for the promise of
heaven.
People with near-death experiences generally come back to conscious life
with no fear of death. They feel certain they have glimpsed the reality and
transforming peace of the spiritual world.
All the “computer intelligence” of Kurzweil’s world is no match for that.
(BMH)
a knot in your stomach?
Part three of Todd’s series describes people who are afraid of death but “refuse
to look up and see God and the angels trying to raise them higher.” They are
stuck in this world, preoccupied with the worries of this life. He relates this
state to a teaching from the Writings:
"Those who have worried much about the future, and more so those who
have as a consequence become grasping and avaricious, appear in the region
where the stomach is situated. Many have appeared to me there. The sphere of
their life may be likened to a nauseating smell emitted from the stomach also
to an ache caused by indigestion. People like these remain in that region for
a long time, for worries about the future, when these are compounded by the
way such people act, seriously impair and slow down the inflow of spiritual
life. This is because people assign to themselves that which is the business of
Divine Providence, and those who do this put a stop to that inflow and so cut
th V