Health and God

Today Central and South America are heavily Christian. Special and at times very folksy children of God.

Yet just look at how disease was their companion 1,500 years after Jesus's walk on earth.

What was in God's mind? I think simply death is inevitable, even by terrible methods.

And where is our thinking today? It is that death is somehow guaranteed to be held at bay at least until the 80's. Amazing and silly.

It can not be more clear the meaning of the simple saying that it doesn't matter when you die, but how you live. This applies to the simple frozen embryo or the 30 year old martyr. It just doesn't matter.

I think we really have to watch our thinking about the injustice of a young death. Everything leads to the glory of God no matter how severely our modern thinking needs to be changed to see God's obvious will.

It's our ego, natural survival instinct, and pride that makes us think otherwise.

link

Mexicans have long been taught to blame diseases brought by the Spaniards for wiping out most of their Indian ancestors. But recent research suggests things may not be that simple.

While the initial big die-offs are still blamed on the Conquistadors who started arriving in 1519, even more virulent epidemics in 1545 and 1576 may have been caused by a native blood-hemorrhaging fever spread by rats, Mexican researchers say.

The idea has sparked heated debate in Mexican academic circles.

"Blood flowed from the ears and in many cases blood truly gushed from the nose," he wrote. "Of those with recurring disease, almost none was saved."

While there is no reliable figure on Mexico's population in the 1500s — estimates range from 6 million to 25 million — it is clear that by 1600 only around 2 million remained.

The epidemic "was so big that it ruined and destroyed almost the entire land," wrote Fray Juan de Torquemada, a Franciscan historian who witnessed the epidemic of 1576, adding Mexico "was left almost empty."

"Many were dead and others almost dead, and nobody had the health or strength to help the diseased or bury the dead."