"The topic for today is: What is reality?"
NYT, today
Just two months shy of his fourth birthday, Colton Burpo, the son of an evangelical pastor in Imperial, Neb., was rushed into emergency surgery with a burst appendix.
He woke up with an astonishing story: He had died and gone to heaven, where he met his great-grandfather; the biblical figure Samson; John the Baptist; and Jesus, who had eyes that “were just sort of a sea-blue and they seemed to sparkle,” Colton, now 11 years old, recalled.
Colton’s father, Todd, has turned the boy’s experience into a 163-page book, “Heaven Is for Real,” which has become a sleeper paperback hit of the winter, dominating best-seller lists and selling hundreds of thousands of copies.
Todd Burpo wrote the book with Lynn Vincent, who collaborated with Sarah Palin on “Going Rogue.” Mr. Burpo, the pastor of Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, a farming community in southwest Nebraska, said in an interview that he had shouldered some criticism over it.
“People say we just did this to make money, and it’s not the truth,” Mr. Burpo said, referring to anonymous online comments about the book. “We were expecting nothing. We were just hoping the publisher would break even.” (He said he planned to give away much of the royalty income and spend some of it on home improvements.)
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I read a lot of the recommendations for this book on Amazon. Much discussion concerned the "reality" of the story. [ed. note: I haven't read the book]
There is belief, which may be elaborated into faith. Reality does not figure into the process.
There are facts (imperfectly perceived), which may be elaborated into truth (incompletely realized). Disbelief is the basis of this process.
Many people confuse these pathways, unintentionally or intentionally. It may be argued that this confusion has lead to countless deaths since homo sapiens emerged as a species. The 20th century wasn't a walk in the park. Things aren't looking so good a decade into the 21st.
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