Are YOU dying to know when you'll die? Say what?

Okay, maybe not, but there's at least one person who thinks it's possible to determine death dates and who has done it with reasonable accuracy. A gerontologist, Dr. David Demko has for the last 30 years been doing research on the lifestyle patterns that either enhance or diminish life expectancy.

While in graduate school, he developed the death calculator (which is actually a questionnaire/quiz) and shortly later received the support of the U.S. Administration on Aging. Since that time it has been used all over the world as a predictor of life expectancy, based upon certain lifestyle behavior patterns.

Most of the lifestyle patterns that Demko has identified are obvious, both those to be avoided and those to be adopted. On his Web site he writes, "Long life isn't just a result of smart genes and dumb luck. Most of the time, it's due to moderate eating, sleeping, diet, exercise, work and leisure. In fact, he says, "80 percent of the factors that control how long you live are related to your lifestyle, not your genes."

Dr. Demko's quiz may predict when we are going to die, but that's not really the point of his death calculator, is it? In the end, it doesn't matter when we die. It matters only how we've lived.

Which brings us to Jesus' sobering parable of a certain rich man, Dives, and a beggar named Lazarus. Luke 16:19-31 This is a parable for those who think how we live has no real consequences.

In Jesus' parable, the rich man had a lifetime to live in a way that honored Moses and the prophets, and he failed even to notice the poor dying man at his front gate.

That's the problem with narcissism and a narcissistic culture: you don't see people. We don't see the blind, the lame, the ill, the suffering, the dirty, the imprisoned, the child, the poor. They're outside our field of vision.

What is shocking about this parable, or ought to be shocking, is that Dives appears to be living a successful life not unlike any other reasonably wealthy persons in our time, which would include the majority of Christians in our most prosperous churches in North America.

There is certainly a strong message in this parable to those who may feel religious, but who are not really saved. Such was the case with the Pharisees. We, like the Pharisees, are in danger of using external criteria by which to judge spirituality, both in ourselves and in others. When we do so, we, like the Pharisees, will place too great a value on self-service. We will, like them, become lovers of money. The "prosperity gospel" of recent times equates spirituality and prosperity. This is a most serious error, for in such cases, money becomes our master.

As Jesus said above, man cannot serve two masters. When God is our Master, money becomes a means of serving Him. But when our god is money, God becomes the means of making money, of making us prosperous. The prosperity gospel has made God the means to riches, not riches a means of serving God.

There are many other ways in which we falsely measure spirituality by external standards or appearances.

Some, as I have indicated,

• measure spirituality by one's wealth.
• Others change the labels, and equate spirituality with poverty.
• Others, with a particular spiritual gift, or a particular form of ministry (usually public, popular, and "successful").
• Some measure spirituality by the way one's children turn out,
• or by the number of days and nights one spends at the church, or in church related activities.

This error of externalism is much more serious than we may initially recognize. I fear that the motivation for much that we do, or do not do, is a desire to win men's approval, or to avoid their disapproval.

There is no indication that the rich man mistreated or abused poor Lazarus, only that he lived his life in such a way that Lazarus, along with all the other afflicted, hungry people at the gates of the rich, were rendered invisible. Only after he died and felt the consequences of his lifestyle did he want to make a change in his living. Then it was too late.

So, what is the bottom line? It's not too late for us. Jesus is challenging us to get our acts together now! We are challenged to listen to the gospel and hear it, to let it become who we are in the core of our being and then act on it in whatever ways we can. Here it is in clear color: "God does not expect you to do the impossible, but God does expect you to do both what you can and what you must"

"Awake, 0 sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light" So be careful how you live, not as fools but as those who are wise. Make the most for every opportunity for doing good in these evil days. Don't act thoughtlessly, but try to understand what the Lord wants you to do. (Ephesians 5: 15-16).

Dr. Demko thinks we should make the right lifestyle choices now if we are to live a long and healthy life. The gospel teaches that there is more to the right choices than what will benefit us alone. The wisest choices include shaping our lives in ways that care for the strangers at the gate, the neglected on the margins, the lonely in the shadows, the hungry on the streets. Dives went about his life apparently not paying attention to the very one in front of him.

Here again, in the end, it doesn't matter when we die. It matters only how we've lived.