Basic Questions

1. Have you come to a place in your spiritual life where you know for certain that if you were to die today you would go to heaven?

2. Suppose that you were to die tonight and stand before God and He were to say to you, "Why should I let you into my heaven?" What would you say?

The Book of Questions, by Gregory Stock, Ph.D.

• If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven't you told them yet?

• For a person you loved deeply, would you be willing to move to a distant country knowing there would be little chance of seeing your friends or family again?

• If the person you were to engaged to marry had an accident and became a paraplegic, would you go through with the marriage or back out of it?

• Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire; after saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be?

• Would you rather be extremely successful professionally and have a tolerable yet unexciting private life, or have an extremely happy private life and only a tolerable and uninspiring professional life? Since so many place great emphasis on a happy private life, why do people often wind up putting more energy into their professional lives? If you feel your private life is more important to you, do your priorities support this?

• You discover your wonderful one-year-old child is, because of a mixup at the hospital, not yours. Would you want to exchange the child to try to correct the mistake?

• Without your kidney as a transplant, someone close to you will die within one month. The odds that you will survive the operation are only 50 percent, but should you survive you would be certain of a normal life expectancy. Would you consent to the operation? Would you risk your life for someone close to you out of feelings of obligation or out of feelings of love? Would it matter if you could refuse without anyone ever knowing? What if the person asked you not to risk your life?

• Would you rather die peacefully among friends at age 50, or painfully and alone at age 80? Assume that most of the last 30 years would be good ones.

• While parking late at night, you slightly scrape the side of a Porsche. You are certain no one else is aware of what happened. The damage is minor and would not be covered by insurance. Would you leave a note?

• How do you picture your funeral? Is it important for you to have people mourn your death?

• On a busy street you are approached apologetically by a well-dressed stranger who asks for a dollar to catch a bus and make a phone call. He says he has lost his wallet. What would you do? If approached in the same way by a haggard-looking stranger claiming to be hungry and unable to find a job, what would you do?

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