Mortality, Books to Read, and a Quick Response on Romans 8

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings, welcome to the Dividing Line, it is some day, who knows what day it is, we've all lost track of what time it is, we're all stuck inside our houses and the world is ending.

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And we're all watching movies about viruses and I remember one movie

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I saw on a Saturday afternoon and remember when

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Channel 5 had the Saturday afternoon movie you could watch and things like that, years and years and years ago. And it was 3000 years to Earth, I think is what it was called, and they found this

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Martian thing and at the end everybody's being turned into zombies by the Martians and they're chasing people around.

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That's sort of like where we are now, except we forgot the Martians. So yeah, it's pretty much the same thing.

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But good to have you with us today, we have a bunch of things to talk about. Let me start off with saying what

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I said yesterday on Twitter in the morning, I specifically said something along the lines of, not meeting for worship yesterday was not a violation of Hebrews 10 .25

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and meeting for worship yesterday was not a violation of the sixth commandment. The totalitarians are on our doorstep and we're inside gouging each other's eyes out.

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And of course I had some people saying, well, Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle or something. I have no idea what that was about.

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But the attempted communication, the attempted idea that I was trying to communicate is,

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I would say probably the most disappointing thing about this past weekend was the fact that you saw this massive schism and the edges of the schism started shooting at each other, which

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I guess is not unusual in social media. But that's what was taking place.

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And so you had literally people on one side saying that if you're meeting for church, you're murdering people and you should never be trusted again and you're an idiot and so on and so forth.

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And then the other side, you had people saying, you're just straight up violating scripture and Hebrews 10 .25

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says you have to have church on Sunday morning, evidently, or something. And so when

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I saw all of this going on, there were a couple of times I did step in and say something when

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I saw someone quoting from the one side, the you need to meet side. That's not what

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Hebrews 10 .25 is about. Hebrews 10 .25 is specifically talking about people who absent themselves from the stated meetings of the church because they don't want to be under authority.

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They don't want to, they're not concerned about the ordinances. Maybe they just think they're better off by themselves doing whatever.

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It's really nothing about a question of what to do when facing a situation as we are facing right now.

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And in fact, to my knowledge, there isn't anything in the New Testament about that. And so you can look at church history and I've seen

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Luther being quoted and Spurgeon being quoted because of the fact that if you did not meet for church out of a, what's the term, abundance of caution.

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There would have been no church services until probably the 1950s. Up until that point in time, you had so many things running around.

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You had polio back at the beginning of the last century. You had meningitis and tuberculosis and cholera, a huge cholera plague in London during Spurgeon's ministry.

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And of course you had things like the black death. The plague was a, from 1347 onward, somewhere in Europe, the plague was a constant reality until modern times.

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And so obviously the, you know, you can, you can look to church history and you can ask for wisdom from the past.

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But to try to make the argument that, you know, we should be shooting people and insulting people and everything else, shooting people spiritually, which is what

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Christians are good at, spiritual shooting. What's really disappointing to me, it really, really was, trust me,

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I know the elders of your church are struggling with these issues and are seriously, seriously and prayerfully considering these issues, okay?

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And they're going to come up, they're going to come to different conclusions. And so if you're not an elder in that particular church, then just say,

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I'll pray for you and move on. Why do you have to make some negative comment? Why do you have to?

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From either side. I don't get it. I don't understand it. Don't we have enough going on right now?

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I think we've got enough going on right now. We've got a lot going on right now, let's just put it that way. I want to ask you to think about something here.

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I haven't had the time really to see what kind of responses this has gotten on Twitter.

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I don't think that it's actually gotten much, but I posted this on Twitter and I just asked people to consider it, to give consideration to what is in this graphic.

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I went online, went to the CDC, man, that website was slow, that was interesting. And I pulled off this graphic.

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Now this is for 2017. So I guess they're just behind getting all the numbers for 2018 and 2019 tabulated.

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That's pretty slow, but close enough. Deaths and mortality.

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The data are for the US, the United States of America. In 2017, 2 .8

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million people died in the United States. Now let's just stop right there.

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2 .8 million people. Did you know that? Had you given any thought to it?

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Has it ever crossed your mind to wonder how many people die per day in the nation, let alone of what, but the point is 2 .8

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million, over 2 .8 million people died in the

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United States. That's a lot of funerals. A lot of funerals, 2 .8 million. Just divide that by 365 for your daily numbering.

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And the number of deaths for leading causes of death is what

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I was especially looking for. And that's about halfway down there. You have almost 650 ,000 heart disease, cancer, just under 600 ,000.

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So between the two of them, you have 1 .25 million. So that's a huge number.

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That's almost half of all the deaths in the United States, heart disease and cancer.

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Obviously there's lots of different kinds of heart disease. Heart attack would obviously be probably the biggest killer there, heart failure of various kinds.

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Cancer, there's all sorts of different kinds of cancer. But think about for a moment, the heart disease one probably died of a heart attack.

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But obviously if you have cardiac issues, that can impact all sorts of other aspects of your health too.

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Cancer very often just so degrades the body that you become, how many people, and how do you count this?

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How do you make these decisions? How many people died of pneumonia that was brought on by radiation and chemotherapy because it destroyed your immune system and something else got you?

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Is that counted under the cancer section or under the influenza and pneumonia section? I don't know.

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The point is that people die of things and they are often very complicated things.

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So the next one is chronic lower respiratory disease.

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The next one is accidents, unintentional injuries, 170 ,000 people.

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Now, I know that the traffic accident death toll was only in the 30s, 30 ,000, 30, upper 30s maybe.

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Last year it was right at 300 and it was almost exactly 100 per day for 2019.

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So that means there's a whole lot of other stuff going on. I suppose this would include train crashes and airplane crashes and people falling off buildings and out of windows and your parachute didn't open when you did a parachute jump or whatever.

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There's a lot of things that can take people out, 170 ,000 deaths.

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And very close to that, chronic lower respiratory disease is 160 ,000, stroke 146 ,000,

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Alzheimer's, in the top 10, 121 ,000, diabetes, 83 .5,

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almost 84 ,000, and then you have influenza and pneumonia. So why put them together?

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Aren't they separate things? Normally, the way a flu gets you is by opening the way for the pneumonia to get into your lungs with all the coughing and inflammation and so on and so forth.

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And certainly in the olden days, pneumonia was called the old man's best friend because you could be suffering horribly and it's pneumonia that would take you, even though that's not what caused your death.

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Almost no one who dies of pneumonia was out running a marathon the day before and then bang, they get hit with pneumonia and they're gone.

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That's unusual. In so many of these, there will be underlying health issues.

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So for example, nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis, those are kidney diseases.

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Well, if you fried your kidneys as an excessive indulger in alcohol, what actually got you?

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Kidney disease or the alcohol? I mean, those are important questions.

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Intentional self -harm, suicide, 47 ,000 people. Think about all the complicating factors there.

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How many did that because of underlying disease issues? How many did that because of drug abuse issues?

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You can see how it, maybe it does take a long time to tally these things up and figure out which one goes in what category in any meaningful sense.

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But what we see is that in many of these, there are underlying conditions that give rise to the final thing that gives the coup de grace.

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So which one do you blame that on? Well, that's one of the questions.

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We die of complicated things. I mean, when a 20 -year -old dies in a high -speed car accident and drugs and alcohol are involved, well, okay, it was the high -speed car accident that did it.

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There's probably not other things involved unless they just broke up with their girlfriend or something and they commit suicide.

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So even what look like clear, obvious things may have complicating attachments to it.

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Why do I mention this? Well, first of all, we don't think much about it. I don't know how many years it's been that I have been saying that we, even in the church, stink at discussing death, even in the church, even in the church.

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Some of you know that my second best -selling book, actually, or at least most widely distributed,

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I'm not sure how many times it's been just simply given away. I know it was being given away at Ground Zero by September 13th of 2001, a little book that I wrote on grieving that came from my years of working as a hospital chaplain, toughest work

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I've ever done. And because I wrote that book, I have said over and over and over again that Americans as a whole, and Christian Americans as well, stink at discussing death.

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We have embraced the same attitude as our culture. We hide from death.

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We don't talk about death. We don't know nearly as much as we should about the grieving process and why grieving is natural and what the stages of grieving are and things like that.

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So I come at that with a known perspective and a known track record, shall we say.

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So we don't talk about it, and we don't realize how many people die in the

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United States. And so when someone comes on the media and says, we could have 10 ,000 people die, that would be one -sixty -fifth of the number of people who will die of heart disease this year.

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One -sixty -fifth. So as far as accidents, that's one -sixteenth, one -seventeenth of the people who die of accidents.

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They go, you're making light of 10 ,000 people dying. No, I'm putting it into a context.

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Because if we don't know the numbers, then we can be given a false context.

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And then if we don't know the facts, then people can manipulate the facts to try to control us.

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That's the first thing. So knowledge is a good thing. Having knowledge is a good thing. But here's the real discussion that you need to have.

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And hey, some of you have plenty of time to be having discussions right now. And that's a good thing.

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But the discussion you have to have is every society makes a decision as to where you're going to draw the line when it comes to danger.

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When it comes to the danger of death. Every society.

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And I think what's happening right now is that line is being strongly questioned.

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And since we've never thought about it, we're not in a position to even begin to analyze what that means.

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Let me give you an example. In the 19th century, no one ever had to worry about the responsibility that would be theirs to get into an automobile and possibly cause the death of one or more people by the fact that you're in an automobile.

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Every automobile you drive is a deadly weapon. Um, I know people who have been in a vehicle with driving a vehicle that killed someone may not have been their fault.

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May have been. Those people are changed tremendously by that experience.

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But the fact is, if you if you have ever gotten into a car and driven, you made the decision.

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You may have been ignorant of the fact you were making the decision. For most of us, 15 years, seven months, we're ignorant of a lot of stuff.

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We're not even thinking about things down the road. But you made a decision.

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And that decision was that my reasons for getting in this vehicle and going someplace outweigh the chances that I'm going to take someone's life or my own life is going to be taken.

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Otherwise, you wouldn't drive. Otherwise, you would. Well, even if you take public transportation, people get run over by buses all the time.

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It happens. Buses are involved in accidents. People die in accidents with buses.

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And so if you're on a bus and you hit a car and a baby dies in the car, are you not in some sense responsible because you were on the bus?

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Well, not directly. Yeah, but the bus wouldn't be running if you weren't using public transportation, right?

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So we all make decisions. And we make decisions that our freedom to move about and to obtain food, employment, and let's be honest, a lot of time, pleasure.

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We're going someplace to see a movie, right? We're going someplace to see a movie.

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You get in a car, you're taking a risk. You are endangering your life and the life of others around you.

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And we have decided in our society that that is an acceptable risk. That the numbers are such that, yeah, it's going to happen.

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And nearly 40 ,000 people will lose their lives in car accidents this year.

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It used to be higher. Our cars are a lot better than they used to be. As far as safety things and the glass and the metal and the restraint systems and the bags and all the rest of that stuff, we're doing pretty good.

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We've made traveling much safer. That's a good thing. But still, at least 36 ,000 people are going to die because they got into a vehicle and somebody else got into a vehicle.

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So what are our standards for making these decisions? Are we literally to say, if there is any chance whatsoever that my actions could lead to the death of someone else,

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I can't do it. That's the end of society. It's the end of society.

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Remember those videos? Always scared me to death. But the pictures and videos from 1900 through the 1930s in New York City, where you're building skyscrapers and these guys are out there eating their lunch on this thing that's this wide, and there's nothing beneath it.

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I assure you, utterly impossible for me to do.

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That's even harder than watching

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Free Solo. I mean, when Alex Honnold got to the boulder problem in Free Solo, I'm not sure how many times

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I tried to watch through that before I could actually watch the whole thing, because my hands are sweating.

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Well, Alex Honnold made it. A lot of those guys didn't. A lot of those guys didn't.

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There were a lot of people who died building the buildings that some of you utilize to this day and don't really give it much of a second thought.

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Their names are probably chiseled on a block someplace if you ever look down the basement. But a lot of people died, and society made the decision that's an acceptable price to pay to have a big old honkin' city with big old tall buildings in it.

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So society makes these choices, and right now we're being faced with another choice.

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And without numbers, we can't even begin to make these choices.

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And as far as I can see, the vast majority of people that I'm watching and I'm reading have never even looked at a chart like this.

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They don't even know what the numbers are per year. They don't even know that we're talking about 2 .8 million people are going to die in the

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United States over the course of 2020. Maybe a little more, especially as the population ages.

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Did you know the population, the average person in Italy, is more than 10 years older than the average person in the

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United States? Did you know that? Very aged society, not replacing itself.

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Their birth rate is well below replacement. The Italian people will disappear at the current rate.

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Again, these are just numbers, facts. And so,

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Andrew Sandlin has been trying to, in a calm, reflective fashion, to point people to a certain work of a scholar, award -winning scholar, who has discussed the difference between basically short -term thinking and long -term thinking.

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Narrative thought and much more reflective thought. And I'm concerned that in light of the public educational system, we have a lot of people today that are totally on the narrative side, totally on the immediate outcome side.

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And the idea of sitting back and seeing long -term just isn't there.

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But the only way you can do any kind of meaningful meditation upon these issues is to have some of the big numbers.

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Look them up. Look them up and consider that, for example, in 2020, how will these numbers change?

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Well, because of coronavirus, now, will that just be thrown into the influenza and pneumonia part?

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Will there actually be fewer influenza and pneumonia deaths in that category?

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Because coronavirus is given its own. But the primary way the coronavirus kills is by opening a pathway for pneumonia.

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So how do you even count it? But the point is, on an average year,

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I don't remember anything particularly spectacular in 2017. Certainly nothing like what we're experiencing now.

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Worldwide panic and everybody run for the hills.

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But in that year, nearly 60 ,000 people died of flu and pneumonia.

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That was only basically approximately one -third of how many died of accidents.

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So is there anything we could do? To mitigate the two big ones, heart disease and cancer,

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I mean, that's almost half the number right there. Well, if we were really, really, really serious about, well, we can't have 10 ,000 people dying.

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That's one 120th. Is that 120th? Small fraction of the people who die from heart disease and cancer.

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So why aren't we shutting down all the fast food restaurants? We know what causes a lot of this.

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So why aren't we doing it? Because we haven't made the decision to do that. Society as a whole, without knowing it, we didn't think through it, but society as a whole has made decisions.

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And that decision means that there's going to be 1 .2 million who die of heart disease and cancer.

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And the thinking basically is, well, that's what happens as we get old. Something's going to get you one way or the other.

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Nobody lives forever. And so we make these decisions and then we live with them.

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And at least in my generation, you didn't sit there and blame the government for it. Because you didn't think the government had the responsibility of mitigating life.

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Unless it was the enemy's life, then that was under the war department. Totally different thing. It just seems to me that there's not been much thought given to these numbers.

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To what the total numbers will be and what's going to cause them. Will be and what's going to cause them.

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Now here in 2007, it said life expectancy is 78 .6. That's mixing men and women together.

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It is fascinating to break these apart. Women don't die in accidents nearly as much as men do because men are stupid.

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Okay, that's just one way to put it. And that's why if you look at birth records,

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God knew that men are stupid. And so there are slightly more boys born than girls, as long as we don't murder people in the womb.

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And of course, by the way, I wanted to mention this. This death and mortality list does not list a huge factor.

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Abortions should, but CDC doesn't want to do that. Doesn't want to do that.

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But there were many, many, many more killed in that method.

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So it doesn't differentiate between men and women. Women live longer than men do on average.

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That's been well known for a very, very long time. And so what

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I have heard is that since this, I think since 2019, at least 2018, the suicide rate has gone up so much that the life expectancy number has gone down for the first time, to my knowledge, in American history.

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Aside from times of war, and I'm not sure that they necessarily counted them into the general population.

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And of course, back when you had things like the Civil War going on, the CDC didn't exist. So you don't have numbers for things like that.

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But there's some numbers that I just, I went online, pulled them up, and said, you know, what's there?

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And how do we think about things like this? And I think it's important for Christians to consider these things and to have a context.

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Now, some of you are sitting there making assumptions about what

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I must be saying. I must be saying this, that, or the other thing.

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And what I'm discovering is that right now in our society, if you do not think emotively, if you think long term, if you want data and statistics, then you are put into one camp and one category and condemned immediately as a result.

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So I just gave you the numbers. I'm inviting you to think about it and ask yourself the question, the standard that is being applied right now.

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And yeah, I hate to use the term, but it's a cost -benefit analysis. It is.

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I'm not going to do that. Did you drive a car today? You did it. You can ignore it.

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You can deny it. You can say, I don't want to be told that I made a cost -benefit analysis. You made a cost -benefit analysis because your car is a deadly weapon.

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And in your cost -benefit analysis, it was more important that you get to go to a movie, go to the grocery store, go to the doctor, than the chance you might kill someone or be killed.

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You made that. You did it. Whether it was purposeful, knowledgeable, or based upon good information.

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I don't know. Just one other thing along these lines.

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I've had a little bit of a dry cough, a little bit of a sore throat.

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So I must be, must have COVID -19. No, because when

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I went out to my car a couple of days ago, my car had this yellow film on the windshield.

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You know what that's called? Pollen. It's been, it's got, it got up into the eighties here in Phoenix.

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Then we had a bunch of rain and then it warmed back up again.

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And then we had a bunch of wind. And so this time of year, for a bunch of us, it's allergy season.

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But how many people are literally sitting there fighting not to cough?

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Because if I do, everyone's going to look at me because I'm the plate carrier.

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You know, that's the way it is. You know, it's the way it is. Don't get mad at me for pointing out. I could not believe that people got mad at me for one of the funniest tweets

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I've ever written. Yesterday. I had people coming after me. And the reason it was funny is because it's true.

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I said last week, wash your hands, use hand sanitizer, and you'll be fine.

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This week, once the 10th person walks in the room, we nuke the site from orbit. Wow, that accelerated quickly.

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Now that was funny. It really was funny. And it was even more funny if you saw

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Ridley saying, we need to take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Okay.

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There was a, I mean, I, I even did, I even had a social connection there to a movie.

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I should be given great credit for this because I normally don't do that. But I, I, I did.

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Um, but, oh my goodness, the people just evidently even, even exposure to the

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COVID -19 virus that does not infect you still destroys your sense of humor. It's, it's gone out the door.

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It's history. Okay. All right. Let's completely change topic.

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And I had some people on Twitter when we were talking about, okay, we're all going to get locked in our houses soon.

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And that may happen. Uh, if we all get locked in our houses soon, um, what do we get to do?

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Well, a lot of people pointed out that homeschool families are going, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.