Near death experiences: beyond belief?

I'm reading a book by a Christian author on what happens when we die. It is full of stories from folks who had those "near-death" or "post-death" (in other words, they were clinically dead) experiences. The man who wrote the volume sounds pretty conventional-there is nothing vaguely New Age about his exegesis. He is actually fairly reticent about his ideas, but offers them as his own. It is a bit harder for the faithful to dismiss him as a nut case-but as he says, not everything in his stories fits neatly into an orthodox Christian package.

At the same time, life after death experiences are a very controversial topic-both among scientists and among traditional Christians.

Scientists who don't belief in life after death keep trying to find chemical or biological explanations for the experiences-and it is possible that some day they will, in a way that convinces believers that they are just a vision of the dying brain. On the other hand, there is a lot of variety to the ones recounted by this writer.


I'm personally not sure what to make of this authors theology or beliefs. His thoughts and hermenuetic makes me a bit uncomfortable, in part because I can't dismiss him as a New Ager with whom I have no doctrine in common. Not that dying is a topic most of us enjoy pondering. But it's not bad to ask (again) what I believe-and why.