Forever, ever?

I just can’t get behind the idea of life after death.

Our life on earth is unimaginably short compared to eternity. One could even say it’s infinitely short, since eternity is infinitely long. The concept that such a short existence determines our eternal fate is, at best, extremely unreasonable.

My birth mother died when I was three years old. Immediately following this event, the idea of heaven and everlasting life was lovingly instilled in me by many caring adults. They told me that my mother would always be watching and that she was happy and doing well – I just couldn’t see her anymore.

Photo by me

However, upon the introduction of Christianity into my life I had to confront the fact that there was another place she could be. As far as everyone knows, she was not a Christian. Her family are not Christians. My father (her husband) was not a Christian when she was alive. It’s most likely that she died without confessing her faith in Jesus (this is the way to eternal life that I was taught). When I voiced this fear to my parents, they assured me that my mother would have made the right choice if it was presented to her. I held onto a hope that she had made the right decision privately on her death bed. After all, I didn’t think she was a bad person and I believed that God was just.

When I was a little older, I lost my grandfather (the father of my birth mother). This time, it was obvious to me that he was not a Christian. This time, it was a little harder to convince myself that I would see him again in heaven. Knowing that people I loved could, and probably did, end up damned (whatever that actually means) was extremely confronting. It gave me a sense of emergency to spread the word about Jesus, but it also made me terribly afraid and aware of my own fate.

I thought that my own fate hung completely on my belief in Jesus. This was unfortunate, because belief and hope were sometimes difficult to hold onto. I always had the fear that I would die at a terrible moment – a moment of unrepentant sin or of doubt – and be eternally condemned. It’s certainly a heavy expectation to bear, but I somehow managed to remain hopeful and faithful enough that all would turn out well.

My beliefs in the afterlife were among the last things I was able to sort out before leaving Christianity. Eternal damnation, whether in a lake of fire or elsewhere, is simply terrifying. This fear held me back from letting go of my beliefs for a long time. In my mind, there was a line. It was a fine line between belief in Jesus and rejection of Him. I felt that if I crossed it, I would change my fate from saved to damned.

The thought that originally set me free was this: “What if there was just nothing? What if things just went back to the way they were before I was born? I don’t remember that.” Accepting this possibility has allowed me to live a life unburdened from the fear of judgement and damnation. It was liberating to think that, perhaps, the fate of myself and those I love was not constantly hanging in the balance.

Now that I’m on the other side of that line in my mind, I’ve had time and space to mull over the concept of eternal life. Apparently, the Greek word for ‘eternal’ speaks about quantity and quality. In the Bible, it is also referred to as something that a living person can possess. In John 3:36, it says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” The concept that eternity is something we can have in the present tense rings truer to me than my previous conception of it, but I’m still reluctant to accept the portion of it that occurs after death.

Apart from hindering my ability to enjoy life, the existence of an eternal afterlife just doesn’t make any sense. As humans, we aren’t familiar with anything eternal. If I really think about spending forever in heaven, it honestly just sounds boring. To me, it also appears incredibly unjust. We all live completely different lives and we are all born into incredibly diverse situations. How do we untangle what we each really deserve from the lot each of us has been given? How can such a judgement at the end of an unjust life be so permanent? It all just seems so unfair.

I think part of what makes this life so beautiful and worth living it its fleeting nature. I don’t want to waste this gem of a life I’ve been given on worrying about eternity.