Today’s Random Prompt: What do you believe happens after we die?
There are only four possibilities—Salvation, Damnation, Reincarnation, and Annihilation.
Annihilation is the atheistic outcome. It means the world is purely physical, we are simply highly intelligent (well, in some cases, at least) animals, the universe and life are the results of natural processes, and when our hearts stop beating, our brains die, and we cease to exist.
You don’t really meet a lot of atheists at funerals because nihilism is existential suicide.
Reincarnation is the foundational belief of Hinduism and Buddhism, but the thought of having to be a teenager again is worse than nihilism. Besides that, these Eastern religions are based on the idea that life is suffering, and rebirth is the cosmic cost of less-than-perfect karma. Ending the cycle of life, death, and rebirth means the extinction of individual consciousness and reunion with the ultimate reality of the divine oneness.
In other words, your family, friends, and pets won’t be waiting for you.
Salvation and damnation are the go-to positions of Western monotheism and the commonly held beliefs of the majority of Americans. That belief is rooted in modern Christianity, but any close study of the Bible in its original language is problematic, at best.
Jews didn’t really believe that much in an afterlife, but for those who did, the common destination for the dead was Sheol, which is the Hebrew equivalent of Hades, the place of the dead.
Jesus didn’t really talk about heaven in the same way that American Christians think about it. When he talked about “God’s Kingdom,” what he really meant was “God’s Kingdom on Earth,” his vision of Earth where “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first,” where “swords are beaten into plowshares” and a bunch of other obvious socialist propaganda that makes Americans foam at the mouth with rage.
“Hell” is even more complicated. I was told from age five that basically anything I did on Earth that gave me happiness or pleasure was a sin that would send me to Hell. Here’s the thing, though. In the original Greek New Testament, Jesus refers to what gets translated as “Hell” by one of two Greek words: “Hades” (which we have covered) or “Gehenna.”
Gehenna wasn’t an imaginary place; it was the garbage dump outside the city walls of Jerusalem where the bodies of executed criminals were burned. It was a constant garbage fire associated with the ancient practice of child sacrifice. For an American equivalent, just think about a rural town in Florida or Texas.
My point is that it was a real place used as a metaphor for “some place you really don’t want to live in.” The American idea of Hell, Satan, and eternal torture comes from three sources: Greco-Roman mythology, Dante’s Inferno, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Hell is real. It’s also your midterm exam in World Literature.
So what is awaiting us in the afterlife? I don’t know, and neither do you, and neither does anyone else.
What do I want it to be? I literally want it to be like the afterlife created by the Soul Squad at the end of season four of The Good Place. I want it to be a place where you can meet almost anyone, do anything you can imagine, learn as much knowledge and skills as you want, for as long as you want to be there.
I especially want my beloved dog, Ellie, to be waiting for me. If she is, she’ll being chasing cars or whatever else they have there that moves.
Do I believe in God? Philosophically and historically, absolutely. I still believe in Jesus the Messiah even though I don’t believe that any human religion comes remotely close to following his simple advice for a peaceful and happy life. I think he would be absolutely repulsed by the vast majority of today’s churches much in the same way he was with his own Jewish religious establishment.
But that still begs the question: if I believe in a positive afterlife (and I do, even though I cannot hazard a guess as to what it is, only what I want it to be), then how do any of us get there?
My answer is as simple as Jesus’s was when he was asked: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Then what is love? Also simple: reciprocity and beneficence. In simple words, treat other people the same way you want to be treated, and do that which adds to another person's (and/or your own) well-being in a tangible way.
Jesus said, “All the law and the prophets are found in these commandments.”
And that’s how I believe we get into heaven. As to what we’ll find there, I’m treating like I’ve always treated my Christmas gifts: I don’t want to know beforehand; I want to be surprised.
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