Saturday, August 11, 2007

Quote from Lance Armstrong Book

I finished reading Lance Armstrong's semi-autobiography: "It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life" a few months ago and I went back to dig up a quote that I found interesting. I am wondering what your thoughts are on the passage below. I think he sums up nicely the way I feel about things. In the chapter "Conversations with Cancer" he writes (on the day before his brain surgery while pondering death):

"I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I had been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he wouldn't say, 'But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven.' If so, I was going to reply, 'You know what? You're right. Fine.'"

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