Where next?
I am very conscious that I will have had two main divisions of readers (if you got this far): Christians and non-Christians. I hope both groups may have begun to ask some questions they have not asked before. Even where I have apparently been delivering answers, as when I have cited passages from the New Testament, I have always been wanting those passages to be mainly a stimulus. Each needs carefully thinking about and pondering over. I certainly still do.
One area from my recent study of modern discoveries about how the brain actually works has been opened up to me. I now ask questions about how the Holy Spirit operates within me. The coincidence of the fruit (a lovely metaphor) of the Spirit being all right brain strengths really set me thinking. Does the Holy Spirit, who came into my life 54 years ago, operate literally on my brain, to strengthen my right brain and make it more dominant? While still very conscious of my faults, I have become aware of being more empathetic and tolerant, less dogmatic and literal, as time has gone by. My intuition (which I hope is guided by the Holy Spirit) is something I now rely on more strongly. Modern neuroscience gives me a new dimension for understanding the spiritual domain, and opens up many positive avenues of thought. Hence the temerity to write about being human from a spiritual perspective.
Some readers will still be challenging that it is possible to refer back to stuff written two thousand years ago for a modern answer to the basic question: what does it mean to be human? Why on earth have I had to wade through all that stuff about heaven and hell?
To this group I suggest you pause a little. Certainly the modern age tends to see science as the alternative to spirituality. Since we cannot examine scientifically what happens to us after our bodies cease to function, we tend to rule out even thinking about it. Science cannot answer moral questions: what is good, what is bad? Science cannot answer teleological questions: is there a purpose in life?
Deep down, however, we know that these questions do matter. So we will have to look for answers somewhere else. I suggest that the man who lived two thousand years ago, and is now worshipped by millions in every continent of the globe as God incarnate, Saviour and Lord, is a source you should study. He claimed to be the answer to your questions, after all.