From: Kathy G.
To: Ed Babinski
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 2:08 PM
Subject: Jesus
I wish there was something profound that I could say to make you change your mind about this man Jesus. I wish you could know him Like I do as a comforter, heavenly father, a friend that I can tell anything to, teacher, answerer of prayers.
You are missing so much without him in your life. My father is 91 years old and loves the Lord. I know that he will be gone before long and it gives me such great peace to know that he is Heaven bound. He always tells me, "the best is yet to come, and that's Heaven."
I truly believe he lived and died for me, and I am so humbled and grateful for that, all I want to do is tell others about his love for them.
I will be praying for you that someday your eyes will be opened and you too will know, as the Bible says, "the peace that passes all understanding."
Kathleen G.
From: Ed Babinski
To: Kathy G.
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 4:03 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Jesus
Dear Kathleen,
I sincerely appreciate the love with which your email to me was filled.
Robert Ingersoll, America's "great agnostic," used to remark that there were sometimes hundreds of people outside his home praying for his salvation. He didn't mind he said, because it was like a boy holding a girl's hand, it didn't do either of them any harm, so long as the boy didn't squeeze the girl's hand too tightly.
I don't even feel any desire to disagree with you, or try to convince someone such as yourself of anything other than the joy you have found in your present beliefs, just as I wouldn't seek to convince anyone of any religion to leave it if they were wearing it fully, and practicing love as a result.
A mystical friend of mine who used to be a fundamentalist Christian once wrote in LEAVING THE FOLD that religion was like a cloak or clothes that you had to put on fully to see how they fit, and in the end after entering fully into love and also growing to recognize that love in others of other religions, and even in people of no religion, that cloak would grow lighter and lighter until you didn't even realize you were wearing it, but merely that you were a member of all faiths and non-faiths that practiced love.
Gandhi used to say that Christian missionaries shouldn't be trying to get people to leave their major religious faiths to become "Christians," but people should be trying to encourage each other to travel deeper into the heart of love that is found in all religious traditions and holy books. (See the book titled, ONENESS, a small volume, that mentions such verses in all the world's major religious traditions.)
So many faiths that wind and wind,
yet what the world needs most
is just the art of being kind.
Lastly, I am not an atheist, but think there may be something to Near Death Experiences.
Best, Ed
From: Kathy G.
To: Ed Babinski
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 3:56 PM
Subject: Near Death Experience
Thank you for your answer to my e-mail. You mentioned near death experiences. A few years ago I worked in an office with ten men. One of these men was a 37 year old by the name of Gene Mose. Gene underwent surgery on his foot in November of that year and as a result he got a very bad staff infection that put him in the hospital for 6 weeks. By January they realized that he had developed a heart problem and they immediately did heart surgery to replace a bad valve. During the surgery his heart stopped three times.
When he came back to work he came to my office one day and said, "Kathy, I want to share something with you. I don't feel I can tell any of the guys my story because they will think I'm nuts, but I know you will believe me." He then told he how when his heart stopped, his spirit rose above his body and he watched the surgeons frantically trying to save him. He said, "Kath, I saw Linda (his wife) sitting in the waiting room, I saw people going up and down the halls, and heard everything that was being said and done to save me. But the best part was the complete feeling of peace and joy and love that surrounded me during that time. I could feel the presence of God all around me and I really didn't care to come back. Noone will ever convince me there isn't life after death." He said, Do you think I'm nuts, Kath?"
I told him of course not. He said, "everything was as real as my sitting here talking to you today, and when they got my heart started my spirit went down until it was back in my body again."
That was in January of that year, and in August he layed down on the couch one night and died. Only 37, but he was ready to meet the Father.
If I had one wish in this life it would be that every person in the world would know beyond a shadow of a doubt what lies beyond this life. I'm sure we'd all live differently.
Sincerely, Kathleen G.
From: Ed Babinski
To: Kathy G.
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 4:29 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Near Death Experience
Thanks, I love hearing about such things. Who is your friend? He should contact Raymond Moody, the author of the bestseller, Life after Life, or Dannion Binkley, author of Saved by the Light (I think that was the title). They are not evangelical Christians, but they collect Near Death stories. Moody has an institute for such things up in North Carolina. Their studies revealled to them that one's religion didn't matter. You could be an evangelical Christian or something completely different, and still feel the love and the recognition that there was life after death. And yes, along with your friend I wish everybody got to experience that kind of happiness in the midst of suffering, pain and death, it would bring a lot of us closer together here on planet earth.
Or on the other hand, perhaps it would also make some of us ignore those who are suffering, since they knew they'd be going to a better place? Hmmm. A wise rabbi was once asked if there was any time in which it was best to think like an atheist, and he said "Yes, there is one time when it is appropriate to think like an atheist, in the giving of charity, since you must not imagine that God is going to right all wrongs and take care of the poor and suffering."
That being said, I still think that if everyone had such an experience as your friend, the planet would be a happier better place, with less fear and tension. Certainly if Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants both had it, along with Muslims and Christians and atheists and agnostics, then people could speak of their shared experience. On the other hand, some fundamentalist Christians and Muslims might still find ways to denounce each other's experience as "fake" or "phoney" or "of the devil." I know there are some fundamentalist Christians like Habermas who co-wrote a book on The Afterlife in which he argued that all of those positive loving and life-changing NDEs that non-evangelical Christians have are all a "delusion" and don't mean those people are going to avoid hell.
Best, Ed
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