I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. — C. S. Lewis
I began this series of articles on the afterlife coincidentally during Silliman University’s Christian Life Emphasis Month. So at the end of the month, it’s also time for some closing thoughts on the afterlife.
It is inescapable. Few things are certain in life, but death is one of them. Every day, an average of about 150,000 people take their last breath. That’s just over 100 people per minute. Many pass on in old age, while many also die unexpectedly young. And none of them ever come back. This thing called death is cold, brutal, and unfeeling in its absolute finality.
Additionally, no one returns with a report as to what comes after death. Yet there is this sense, if at least desire, within each and every one of us to live on, or even to never have to die in the first place. Why do we feel this way? Why do we have this urge for permanence?
Between evolution and religion, which one holds better answers to these kinds of questions? On one hand, if we are mere random atoms in evolutionary motion, why should such groups of atoms care when another group of atoms expires? On the other hand, if there is a God who created the universe, why did such a God include the reality of death?
While I have neither the wisdom nor the space to tackle such questions comprehensively, it bears noting that the fact that such questions exist, and that such questions matter to us, removes the possibility of a purely naturalistic or materialistic universe. We are innately aware that there is something that lies beyond the point of death. Otherwise, why wonder.
It is eternal. Some things just never end. For instance, try to think about where the universe could possibly end. It is staggering, if you really take the time. Even if you flew on a spaceship for centuries until you suddenly hit some giant wall, you’d still be quite curious as to what else is there behind it.
Endless space is real. So is endless time. These are not random happenstances, but are reflections of the boundless, immeasurable other-ness of the Creator of time and space. And eternity is a really long time. It is actually overwhelming if not downright frightening to think about living forever and ever, without end. It behooves us, then, to spend at least part of our lives here contemplating the next one.
It is perfectly just. In the last article, I wrote about Hell and justice. What I will add today is simply that both Heaven and Hell are places of perfect justice. The only difference, and our only choice to make, is whether that perfect justice is on our account or on someone else’s. The Apostle Paul in Romans 3:22-25, says, “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”
That big word “propitiation” means that Christ on the cross became the atoning sacrifice by which he took the penalty for sin that his own justice demands. This gift is free for anyone who will receive this in faith. Otherwise, we pay for these sins ourselves, in eternal punishment for offending an eternal God.
All religions are about us reaching up in accomplishments to God. Christianity is about God reaching down in abasement to us.
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Author’s email: micahdagaerag@outlook.com
