On Life after Death

It's really hard to soak things up as a child. I don't mean hard as in difficult to comprehend, because that is untrue. I mean hard as intensely overwhelming. Like when you learn how to read, it's suddenly there and new and exciting to the Nth degree. I remember reading and rereading 'The Fisherman's Wife' (my first book) and then going to school the next day and grabbing as many books as my backpack could carry. I skipped through the color coded primers like Dorothy skipped through Oz. This was what I was born to do.

There's one thing in particular we all have to face, and I imagine that the prospects thereof were just as overwhelming for everyone else as they were for me as a kid. Death is not something anyone looks forward to. Nor is it something we can really comprehend unless we were able to come back to life and write stories to reassure everyone that it wasn't really a big deal or that it was a very big deal. I remember being terrified out of my mind in Primary when we talked about Jesus coming back and killing all the bad people when the end of the world came. There would be fire and something called brimstone and earthquakes and cities would fall into the sea. That's right, ENTIRE CITIES. FALLING. INTO THE SEA.

I'm sure that you can see where I'm going with this. However with me it's never really about events, it's about what things can be taken away from such events. While everyone else may be preoccupied with nuclear holocaust right now, I'm more interested in the meaning of death and what sort of presence it has in my life.

So I was scared as a kid. When you're new and the world is still awesome and interesting, death seems to come too soon. It's an end to the exploration of this great wide world. It's an unreasonable conclusion to enlightenment. Perhaps this natural, childlike fear of death is why we created religion. It's a comfort thinking that there will be something beyond, though if we take stock in the idea that infantile perception is carnal fundamentalism, then we know that there is nothing after death. There is no heaven or hell, and there is no God.

If it's true, though, that we create religion to ease the emotional pain of death, why would our forefathers of the classical world believe in such an unparadisaical postmortem existence? How does it make sense that the earliest Greeks thought of Hades as a horrible place that no one could escape from? Eventually the perceptions on the afterlife changed a bit, and we find that within Hades are Tartarus (hell) and Elysium (heaven). This still isn't all that fantastic to know, as at first these places were reserved for the very wicked and heroes. You, sipping your tea, giving to charity, and being a generally agreeable person, were going to wind up in Asphodel where you lose your identity and memory and just sort of... float. That can't have been exciting to think about for the Greeks (the Romans, bless their hearts, opened up Elysium to the rest of us poor yet virtuous mortals).

Egyptians believed that you had to take the necessary precautions and perform certain rituals to even be considered for the afterlife. Mummification was required, and every corpse was accompanied by a Book of the Dead to instruct the soul how to pass successfully through to the next life. Those who couldn't afford such funerary preparations were doomed to experience nothing. Again, how does it make sense to 'create' religion if there is nothing beyond for the majority of us?

Being an 'enlightened' adult now in my mid-twenties, my attitude towards death has changed drastically. I'm no longer overwhelmed with the fear of death. On the contrary, I believe wholeheartedly that death is going to be one exciting adventure that I'm looking forward to. It's not that I want to die, because there are as of yet many things to be done here and now. I just feel at peace and so completely satisfied with myself that were I to die now, it wouldn't phase me. Sure I would miss out on some important milestones, but what does it matter if I'm dead? What does it matter especially if I'm living a better existence? Call it brainwashing rather than enlightenment if you wish, but I'm looking forward to an afterlife. Not an afterlife like what the Greeks and Egyptians believed in, but one in which I can be perfected and live again. I'll be able to do extraordinary things that I can't even imagine doing. Who doesn't want power over nature and the ability to ignore petty mortal tribulations?

In one of my classes the underlying theme this semester is to learn the ways of the 'mythological mindset'. It's been a fascinating journey, and I'm coming to grips with the philosophy. None of it matters, and it's precisely because none of it matters that makes it all so wonderful. Death doesn't matter because it's just as much a part of life as living is. The Greeks were afraid of death because they thought that was it. People today are afraid of death because they think they believe in an afterlife but they're not sure. To be in the mythological mindset, one must know Death and see that it doesn't matter. Afterlife or not, it's just another fact to face and understand. Heroes know this. They face their mortality and walk away from the confrontation stronger and wiser. I'm pretty sure I'm ready to face it and I don't mind if nothing happens; but because I CAN'T believe that we're the ones who made up religion (based on the reasons previously given), I MUST believe that religion comes from some divine entity, and that entity does have a plan, and we do have an afterlife to look forward to. This is when the mythological mindset becomes the 'eternal perspective'.

The eternal perspective has been a theme in Sunday School this year so far, or maybe I only notice it because I'm constantly thinking about the mythological mindset and how I can exemplify its basic principles. As it turns out, the eternal perspective is the same only better. While the mythological mindset is based off the idea that none of this matters, the eternal perspective dictates that none of it matters, but your actions can bring you eternal rewards. 

It's like taking the LSAT. You can choose the wrong answers and they won't count against you. However if you don't prepare for the test, you won't get as many right answers and you'll ultimately reap less of a reward than others who do prepare. Essentially each question doesn't matter. You can miss quite a few and still get a high score. Your score doesn't even matter because you can retake it. But who wants to do that again? (Trust me, I couldn't eat for three days because of nerves, and that's not something I want to endure again.)

Of course though, if there is a heaven and hell of sorts in every modern religion and religion is true, then shouldn't we be worried about all the little points we didn't get (if we can't take it again)? Well... no. Yes, you're stuck with your score, but there is a reprieve. This reprieve, in fact, is the whole reason why nothing actually matters, because all those points we didn't get are accounted for and given to us so we can still get perfect scores. Even if you're not a Christian, and you don't believe in the Atonement and Resurrection, you still win. And even if Christianity is not true, then nobody wins but nobody is a loser either because there can be no losers without winners.

“The Transfiguration or 'Metamorphosis' of Jesus is... an anticipatory glimpse of something to come.” (Miracles, pg. 249) C.S. Lewis talks about the Resurrection in his book Miracles, a subject still weighing on my mind even after I finished it a month ago. We are commanded in the New Testament to “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48, KJV) This is impossible which is why we have the Atonement. Christ paid for our sins so that we wouldn't have to suffer from fire and brimstone forever. Then he died and, as Lewis puts it, the natural process was reversed (because God is master of Nature) and He was brought back to life in a perfected body as we will one day be. To be perfect like unto a god, after all, is impossible. But for a Son of God with the capability to die and come back to life and in the process break down the wall between mortal fault and immortal perfection, it's not impossible. We can be with God because we have been bought and paid for from Sin by Christ.

I'm not here though to talk so much about the Atonement. Let's get back to Resurrection and reasons why mortality can't be thought of as something terrifyingly horrific and final. Lewis categorizes miracles as such; those of the old creation, and those of the new. I'm concerning myself with the new. These are the things I'm looking forward to in the hereafter. They are the acts of Christ while here in this life, including the Resurrection itself. “I have heard a man maintain that 'the importance of the Resurrection is that it proves survival,'” says Lewis (Miracles, pg. 236), but this isn't enough. Survival implies a continued existence as one was before, not as something changed. If that's all the Resurrection was, then the religion would be pointless.

What Christ becomes is not a survivalist, but a new entity made of what was his body before. “The body which lives in that new mode is like, and yet unlike, the body His friends knew before the execution. It is differently related to space and probably to time, but by no means cut off from all relation to them.” (pg. 241) He can eat, but He can also 'walk through walls'. Even before the Resurrection, He walked on water, fed thousands with practically nothing, and He healed the sick and dying. Lewis hints at the inheritance of these traits for us, “If we are in fact spirits, not Nature's offspring, then there must be some point at which created spirit... can produce effects on matter not by manipulation or technics but simply by the wish to do so.” (pg. 245)

That is what I want. I want to do what Christ does. Not because it's cool or I want to 'one up' anyone else, but because that is what death means for me. It means that I will be presented with an opportunity to do as my God does, as a child or inheritor of God ought to do which is namely to live in eternal bliss without any pain or suffering, to carry on the work of an exalted being, and to be reunited with a body to which I'm becoming rather emotionally attached. I'm my own best friend, after all! Life goes on, and we continue to progress. That's what an intelligence must do out of necessity or it would cease to exist. And even if there is nothing, this world will continue on, and I will have done my part and left a small legacy upon which is founded a future for posterity.

“Heaven can mean 1) The unconditional Divine Life beyond all worlds. 2) Blessed participation in that Life by a created spirit. 3) The whole Nature or system of conditions in which redeemed human spirits, still remaining human, can enjoy such participation fully and for ever. This is the Heaven Christ goes to 'prepare' for us.” (pg.256)