Doctor, am I dying?

Thoughts on Death

How true it is that life is in God’s hands. Is it not the height of arrogance that man insists on living his life as if he is in charge? Think of the parable of the rich fool! But what about the general population? Why are they unable to comprehend that we doctors have no clue why cells have programmed death (a process called apoptosis). No matter what we do, apoptosis will happen, despite our best efforts to understand it.

Apoptosis is a phenomenon by which a “switch” seems to be turned on in a cell (the basic building block of all our organs like the liver, muscle, heart etc. are individual cells). The cell then progresses down the path of self destruction, and at the appointed time, it dies. This goes on all the time in the human body. Different sells have different life spans. For example, the red blood cell in our blood vessels last only 28 days. This explains why it is a good idea to give blood. On the other hand, bone cells take a few years before they die and are replaced by others. It has been estimated that very seven years, a human being would have replaced all his cells at least once. Think about it! Every seven years, you are physically a new person!


Yet, as a human being , there is the macro part of this process, where the whole body slowly declines with age. Why our eyes need reading glasses at age 40-45? How does the body know that? Why is our aging so relentless despite all our effort? What programs our genes to whiten our hair at a certain time? Why does the reproductive system switch off when it does? Why does our sleep pattern change? As we get older we sleep less, and our Stage 3 and 4 sleep slowly reduces in length and disappears.

Theories abound, but this time clock toward physical oblivion does not change.
Recently, an Oxford professor theorized that man could live a thousand years, if he gets rid of the toxins in his body and lives cleanly. That’s all easy to say, especially if you have the weight of a professorial title behind you. But it does not make it true. The truth I is that life spans average about 70 years for over the last hundreds of years, even before all our processed foods and toxins came along.

As a Christian, I have no problem believing that this time clock came about when sin came into the world, and after the first wave of men who were hundreds of years old, we now live three score and ten.

Psalm 90: 9-10

For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

The inevitability of death can make a man think in two ways – either he ignores it and pretends it will not happen, or he thinks about it and wonders what he is living for now and what will happen after he dies.

To the former group, we can do nothing unless they decide to ask these questions. I have been a doctor long enough to know that patients who a in denial cannot be “awakened” by our outside efforts. Something has to change within them, and then they will be open to seeking the truth. If a patient who has osteoporosis does not want to think about what she has, or seek medical opinion, no amount of publicity highlighting the dangers of the “silent killer” osteoporosis will make them take any attention. Other patients obsess that they have the disease when they do not, and this too is an unhealthy attitude.

To the latter group, who wants to know their purpose on the earth and what lies thereafter, the Bible offers a most cogent response. If we are created by God and made in His image, then it follows that our purpose on earth is to know God, reconnect to Him through Jesus Christ, and live a life pleasing to Him. We live in obedience to His Word, because we love Him and want to do anything for Him. The motive is not to curry favor or gain merit, for if that was the case, none of us, even Florence Nightingale or Mother Teresa, can reach heaven. We all have the baggage of our secret deeds and thoughts (called sin) that separate us from God. Only by accepting that Jesus has paid the price for our sin can we reconnect with God.

As I write this, my wife's uncle has unexpectedly died at the age of 72. He was instrumental in arranging and organizing our wedding 23 years ago. He died on our wedding anniversary 23 years after he did all the work for us. So, on our anniversary, we ponder about his life and how much he had given his life to the Lord. The state of one’s heart is an issue between that person and God. But we are gratified by the knowledge that he confessed the Lord Jesus as his Saviour.


There is no sense to life if we only live now and then “disappear”. If that is the case then life on earth had no purpose whatsoever.

There is no sense to life if we live a life of merit, virtue and good works so that when we die, our “soul” ends in the one “universal” consciousness and we loose all knowledge of who we were and what we did. If we suppose that we can be reincarnated as a better creature because of our merit, it does not help us either, because the new “entity” will reap the benefit of our hard work. In fact, in this reality, we might as well not be of good character, and pursue all the pleasures of life – because the new reincarnated “entity” (likely an animal or insect) that follows us will have to suffer the consequences, not us.

There is no sense to life if we try to live with merit and good works so that we can escape from the cycle of reincarnation and reach some sort of ambiguous “heavenly freedom” or “nirvana”. That is because we can neither feel nor experience the benefits of our labour in the previous life. This concept of nirvana just means to be free into “nothingness”.

There is no sense to life if we believe that there is a creator god who wants us to work hard doing good works and meritorious deeds, but leaves in the limbo of wondering if we have done enough to appease him and allow us into heaven. For as we already know, but many may not admit, none of us is perfect. If we run a videotape of our life on a large screen TV, none if us could hold our heads up proudly, for we have all done wrong things in the privacy of our own domains, and in our minds. There is no sense if we strive to be good, but are never good enough.

It makes sense only if we accept that biblical revelation form God that states that we are created by a Creator God, and that He has a plan that will enable us to be sure we have a place in eternity with God. We can retain our unique personality, with a new body, after death. We will remember who we are and what we did in our life on earth, and our investment in developing good character will follow us to an eternity where we remain who we are, retain our personhood, and able to interact with others (like our family and friends). And in this joyous mix of reunion with family and friends, we have the joy of spending time with our Lord and God.



To this end, we need to strive to know who God is, that is the One who created us in the first place, and from whom we are separated because of our sinfulness (basically our pride in wanting to live our own way). We then need to reconnect with Him. How do we do that?

Well, God reached down to us through His Son, Jesus. By Jesus’ death on the cross, He took our sin onto Him. We do not achieve eternal life by good works, but it is gift of God. All we have to do is accept the gift. I do not know about you, but when I looked at consider all the alternatives, this makes the most sense.

Amen. To God be the Glory

+Dr. Joshua Raj