{"id":354524,"date":"2018-03-30T08:38:58","date_gmt":"2018-03-30T07:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/an-easter-message-beyond-belief\/"},"modified":"2018-03-30T08:38:58","modified_gmt":"2018-03-30T07:38:58","slug":"an-easter-message-beyond-belief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/an-easter-message-beyond-belief\/","title":{"rendered":"An Easter Message Beyond Belief"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_100897\" style=\"max-width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-100897\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/03\/Screen-Shot-2018-03-28-at-3.17.13-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"382\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Waiting For The Word | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>As a hospital chaplain at Boston Medical Center for over 20 years, I observed firsthand the power of belief in enabling patients and their loved ones to face life-threatening illnesses, surgeries and death.\u00a0 Like the 80-year-old man, who was dying of cancer and wanted to see the chaplain.\u00a0 He said that he was \u201ca believer, but not a good Christian\u201d because he didn\u2019t go to church.\u00a0 Long ago, he wanted to be a minister, but as an African American, the segregated schools he attended in the South discouraged that aspiration.\u00a0 Now, faced with a terminal illness, he asked to see the chaplain: \u201cTo get tight with God,\u201d he said.\u00a0 He took my hand, held it <em>tight<\/em>, and didn\u2019t let go.\u00a0 It was not my prayer, but what his belief in his god brought to my prayer, that led him to say at the end of my visit, \u201cI feel much stronger now.\u201d\u00a0 Religious beliefs strengthen and comfort countless ill and dying persons<\/p>\n<p>Faith-based beliefs also inspire just behavior. \u00a0Many acts and programs of caring are done out of the <em>moral goodness<\/em> of believers\u2019 hearts.\u00a0 Like faith-based sponsored soup kitchens and shelters for homeless people.\u00a0\u00a0 Immigration rights organizations. \u00a0Sanctuary churches and cities.\u00a0 Refugee and settlement support groups. \u00a0Inter-faith peace and justice groups. \u00a0Faith-based health care centers and chaplains.\u00a0 Disaster and other emergency relief organizations.<\/p>\n<p>Here religious faith takes the form of good works.\u00a0 The&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/03\/29\/an-easter-message-beyond-belief\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Waiting For The Word | CC BY 2.0 As a hospital chaplain at Boston Medical Center for over 20 years, I observed firsthand the power of belief in enabling patients and their loved ones to face life-threatening illnesses, surgeries and death.\u00a0 Like the 80-year-old man, who was dying of cancer and wanted to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-354524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}