My doubts about the afterlife affect me like standing at the top of a very high cliff, terrified. It doesn't matter that I'm positioned at a reasonable distance from danger. It feels like I am being magnetically attracted toward the edge.
I've been at the bottom of this chasm. It happened when I was very young, perhaps seven or eight. I had been scouring the family bookshelves, looking for interesting things to read. Of course that was somewhat strange, since there weren't many things I could read yet. But I ran across a picture book full of pictures of a bride and groom that turned out to be my parents.
My mom didn't mind explaining who all the people were and I enjoyed looking at the people in fancy clothes. Suddenly, it occurred to me that someone was missing.
"Where am I?" I asked, a little put-out since I was used to figuring prominently in family pictures.
Mom paused for a moment and then explained, "You hadn't been born yet."
It took the words a moment to sink in, but when they did I felt alone and isolated, felt like I was being whipped by a violent wind. Looking back, it was almost as if I were at the bottom of a deep chasm, isolated by an unscalable cliff. I pushed the feeling aside, hoping I'd misunderstood.
"But where am I?"
"Your dad and I weren't even married yet. We got married and then, fourteen months later you were born." She recited the history, apparently unaware that she still hadn't answered my question. Where was I? How could there have been a time when I wasn't? All my life had been lived in the middle of existence. This notion that there could have been anything -much less a whole world where people got married - before I existed was very unnerving.
That, however, has been confirmed by other folks, aunts and grandmothers and family friends, who had had the audacity to exist before I did. Even history books bore witness to the fact that there was a time when I was not. There was a time when my parents and grandparents were not.
So what? Well, this is a sword that cuts both ways. It could be evidence that one of these days there will be a time when once again I am not. But, it also testifies to the absolute unpredictability of the reality we call home.
If God could have brought me into existence from nothing, he is quite capable of making me a home in a different reality. It is a space that, for lack of a better word, we call heaven.
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I had an idea the other day of another way of considering the question of an afterlife.
ReplyDeleteWhen I studied abroad a few years ago I left my fiance in the US. The experience of being in Europe was thrilling but there was always a piece of it missing. Life is an exciting experience but we are cut off from God because he allows us free will.
But we can take this idea further. While in Europe I found myself missing my fiance very much. But I was able to keep in touch (kind of like prayer with God). And as I neared the end of my trip I had a number of mixed emotions. I was excited to be going home. I was also proud of what I had seen and learned but regretful of what I wished I had done. But most importantly, I was nervous that the girl I left in January would not be the one I was reunited with in June.
As we approach the abyss, as you call it, we are faced with these three emotions. We are excited at the prospect of becoming reunited with God. We are proud of the life we have lived yet wish that we had done more. And finally we are terrified that the God which provided us with this life might not be there when we get home.
I learned as I was abroad to trust my fiance more than ever and to hope for the future. I think we also need to trust that God will be there for us and to hope for our future in Heaven.