http://bit.ly/1cNg3dP
Death is many things to many people.
Terry Pratchett envisages death as a somewhat austere skeleton who rides a flesh and blood horse called Binky, who likes cats, once had an apprentice, has an adopted daughter called Susan, wants to understand human emotion so much that he has been known to get drunk, and once took a vacation to experience life – resulting in a significant backlog of dead people trying to get to the other side.
Terry Pratchett envisages death as a somewhat austere skeleton who rides a flesh and blood horse called Binky, who likes cats, once had an apprentice, has an adopted daughter called Susan, wants to understand human emotion so much that he has been known to get drunk, and once took a vacation to experience life – resulting in a significant backlog of dead people trying to get to the other side.
https://www.librarything.com/work/1044489
I know some people who have nightmares about dying, some friends who are atheists fear it because they believe that then there’s nothing more (I even know someone even burst into tears on that realization), while others just won’t contemplate the idea.
A much more prosaic and boring way to think of death is that it's the simple dissolution of the body.
Whichever way you look at it, the one constant of life is that you will die.
So welcome to life, the prelude to death.
Because there are so many dimensions to this topic, and so little space to discuss it, we need to break this think-piece into some bite sized chunks. First some context about where I’m coming from, then a few of questions people often ask, followed with a little about how the Bible views life and death. After that we’ll add some macabre facts on physical death, and finish with the most exciting bit; what happens then? If you’re impatient, just jump to the end. But like life, there's a cost in taking short cuts.
Context
Life is odd, really odd. In fact if you really think about it, the oddness is probably one of the most powerful arguments for the existence of God (but that's another discussion). In some ways life can be considered as the waiting room before we meet death, and this prelude is really there to give us the time to prepare. From the moment of birth our bodies begin the journey. For the first few decades it tricks us as we grow physically strong, enjoy amazing experiences, and revel in the vibrancy of being youthfully alive. But it’s all a façade … the clock started ticking right at the beginning. “It’s appointed to man once to live and then to die.”
It’s interesting to realize that while our bodies, wondrous though they are, are on a steady decline while our spirit is on the ascendancy, From being clueless at birth about life, as we gain in experience and understanding our wisdom and maturity expands …. as if body and spirit are slowly trading places, as if the body is merely a beautiful vehicle God created to see my spirit through to when I should be ready to exchange it for something vastly superior, for that birth when my spirit finds the reality I am made for … after I die.
A much more prosaic and boring way to think of death is that it's the simple dissolution of the body.
Whichever way you look at it, the one constant of life is that you will die.
So welcome to life, the prelude to death.
Because there are so many dimensions to this topic, and so little space to discuss it, we need to break this think-piece into some bite sized chunks. First some context about where I’m coming from, then a few of questions people often ask, followed with a little about how the Bible views life and death. After that we’ll add some macabre facts on physical death, and finish with the most exciting bit; what happens then? If you’re impatient, just jump to the end. But like life, there's a cost in taking short cuts.
Context
Life is odd, really odd. In fact if you really think about it, the oddness is probably one of the most powerful arguments for the existence of God (but that's another discussion). In some ways life can be considered as the waiting room before we meet death, and this prelude is really there to give us the time to prepare. From the moment of birth our bodies begin the journey. For the first few decades it tricks us as we grow physically strong, enjoy amazing experiences, and revel in the vibrancy of being youthfully alive. But it’s all a façade … the clock started ticking right at the beginning. “It’s appointed to man once to live and then to die.”
It’s interesting to realize that while our bodies, wondrous though they are, are on a steady decline while our spirit is on the ascendancy, From being clueless at birth about life, as we gain in experience and understanding our wisdom and maturity expands …. as if body and spirit are slowly trading places, as if the body is merely a beautiful vehicle God created to see my spirit through to when I should be ready to exchange it for something vastly superior, for that birth when my spirit finds the reality I am made for … after I die.
http://xkcd.com/659/
Sadly, much of society is fixated on the body’s steady biological slide into the ground. We do all we can to slow the inevitable collapse, investing in treatments to supposedly delay the aging, with masks of makeup to hide the inevitable. But if our destination is an eternity, then it’s so very wrong to focus on the biological collapse, rather we should be investing in preparing our spirit.
For many generations cultures have revered age, and rightly so. Wisdom is the measure of the soul that readies itself for independence from the body that decays. Yet today, western society ridicules the aged and venerates, even idolizes, youth. Do that too much and death will catch your spirit by surprise!
For myself, I’m looking forward to having died! Really. I can't say I'm keen for the process of dying, but it’s been almost a lifelong desire for that day when I can become what I was created to be. We are created to be creative, and I’ve always felt that I can never quite rise to meet the potential -- I feel like I’m only firing on half the cylinders. This desire means that on all those times I’ve come really close to death … about 7 times that I know of … in each and every circumstance there was naturally the immense adrenalin rush, but also no fear of actually being dead.
This also meant that I took a while to for me get to grips with other people dying, from friends who died in hangglider accidents, and dealing with the expected death of my daughter (she didn't!), to my grandmother (who prayed to die quickly) being killed in a car accident. With my grandmother I always regretted not being allowed, as a small child, to go to her funeral to squirt my water pistol on her grave. I think she would have appreciated that. For me when people die, I grieve because I miss them – but on another level I'm undisturbed because but they just, well, they just died! It's what they were supposed to do.
My anticipation of my parent’s death was likewise rooted in what it was going to be like when they were no longer here, not any particular concern about their actual dying. When my mom was murdered by a deranged intruder, amidst the tumultuous grief at the way we lost her, her funeral was joyous and victorious, and without anger. Similarly for my father, he died graciously in an exemplary way … a wonderful model of how to die. His funeral raised in me a twinge of envy, because he beat me there. As he grew old I would often hear one or other relevant song and think “I want to play that at his funeral”, because the song evoked something of the joy that lay ahead, and my thanks that he was true to the end.
And when I die? Well, I want my funeral to be fun. I mean it. Please have fun on my behalf. I won’t be there; I’ll be having my fun somewhere else where there’s “no more sorrow” – so why shouldn’t everyone else have fun at my funeral! You can miss me; you can grieve if you feel the loss, but please don’t wish that I was back with you. Who would want to deny me what waits on the other side of that small step into eternity? A song I have long wanted to play at my funeral (but it probably won’t be played because everyone will think we should do the traditional thing) is the Moody Blues’ song “Nice to be here”, with the delightful chorus of “I can see them but they can’t see me!” See the humour, don't be offended. Have fun at my funeral, grieve in a party, hold an Irish-type wake!
Because you see, for the Christian, having died is something to look forward to; the pain of loss is only for those left behind. “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain”. And what about the non-Christian? Well, we’ll get to that.
Multiple issues about Death
The questions and comments I’ve had from people about death are diverse and wide ranging. Here are some examples:
For many generations cultures have revered age, and rightly so. Wisdom is the measure of the soul that readies itself for independence from the body that decays. Yet today, western society ridicules the aged and venerates, even idolizes, youth. Do that too much and death will catch your spirit by surprise!
For myself, I’m looking forward to having died! Really. I can't say I'm keen for the process of dying, but it’s been almost a lifelong desire for that day when I can become what I was created to be. We are created to be creative, and I’ve always felt that I can never quite rise to meet the potential -- I feel like I’m only firing on half the cylinders. This desire means that on all those times I’ve come really close to death … about 7 times that I know of … in each and every circumstance there was naturally the immense adrenalin rush, but also no fear of actually being dead.
This also meant that I took a while to for me get to grips with other people dying, from friends who died in hangglider accidents, and dealing with the expected death of my daughter (she didn't!), to my grandmother (who prayed to die quickly) being killed in a car accident. With my grandmother I always regretted not being allowed, as a small child, to go to her funeral to squirt my water pistol on her grave. I think she would have appreciated that. For me when people die, I grieve because I miss them – but on another level I'm undisturbed because but they just, well, they just died! It's what they were supposed to do.
My anticipation of my parent’s death was likewise rooted in what it was going to be like when they were no longer here, not any particular concern about their actual dying. When my mom was murdered by a deranged intruder, amidst the tumultuous grief at the way we lost her, her funeral was joyous and victorious, and without anger. Similarly for my father, he died graciously in an exemplary way … a wonderful model of how to die. His funeral raised in me a twinge of envy, because he beat me there. As he grew old I would often hear one or other relevant song and think “I want to play that at his funeral”, because the song evoked something of the joy that lay ahead, and my thanks that he was true to the end.
And when I die? Well, I want my funeral to be fun. I mean it. Please have fun on my behalf. I won’t be there; I’ll be having my fun somewhere else where there’s “no more sorrow” – so why shouldn’t everyone else have fun at my funeral! You can miss me; you can grieve if you feel the loss, but please don’t wish that I was back with you. Who would want to deny me what waits on the other side of that small step into eternity? A song I have long wanted to play at my funeral (but it probably won’t be played because everyone will think we should do the traditional thing) is the Moody Blues’ song “Nice to be here”, with the delightful chorus of “I can see them but they can’t see me!” See the humour, don't be offended. Have fun at my funeral, grieve in a party, hold an Irish-type wake!
Because you see, for the Christian, having died is something to look forward to; the pain of loss is only for those left behind. “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain”. And what about the non-Christian? Well, we’ll get to that.
Multiple issues about Death
The questions and comments I’ve had from people about death are diverse and wide ranging. Here are some examples:
- That moment of actually dying, what will that experience be like?
- This life leading to death, isn’t that the most important thing, to carpe diem?
- What does the Bible have to say?
- Those near death experiences, don’t they indicate that everyone will have a good afterlife?
- I have so many fears and so few desires about death.
- There are many ways to fight death, we should use them all.
- I wonder what heaven and hell are like, and is there really a hell?
- What about all this questionable theology around death, like salvation through communion before death, purgatory, praying for the dead, or ghosts.
- It’s not fair that some experience unnatural, premature, violent, or other types of death
- How to handle grief and/or consoling of others?
- Will we see our pets in heaven? (Why do I get asked that so often?)
- What really is the sorrow all about?
- I want to make sure I leave a legacy in this world!
- I wonder what it’s like to be the one dying, and what it’s like to see death happen?All of these and many more are real and valid issues we need to wrestle with. Sadly, many of these questions also arise because modern life shields us behind a wall of euphemisms; it’s uncommon to be close to death.
http://bit.ly/1cNeSLc
If we’re going to dig into some of these, then we need to state some fundamental realities, at least realities from a Christian perspective. I'm not going to attempt to defend these, I take these as accepted. If you still wrestle with these, that's fine, but read on to understand how others consider death.
1. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. This is a critical point … if we’re spiritual creatures the biological death is secondary, and must not become all encompassing.
2. God created us perfect until death came into the world through sin. Can you imagine perfection? Try. It's not easy because brokenness is our normality. Now consider, mix in the tiniest piece of imperfection, and now the perfect can no longer be perfect. God is perfect. We rebelled and broke the relationship. In that state we are cut off from perfection, for no matter how much God loves us he cannot tolerate relational intimacy with imperfection. How he has dealt with that is, of course, another story.
3. Time: God created … so there’s a beginning, but we’re made for eternity!
4. Heaven is the hearts greatest longing, because we begin our lives in a foreign land with no automatic ticket to go home. We were made for something else, and we feel its absence acutely, even though we struggle to put words to that hole we feel inside.
What is life? Because by it we can know a little about death.
“When God created everything, he saw that it was all good” (Gen. 1:31). “So God created man in his own image, in the imhttp://bit.ly/1cNeSLcage of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27). “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Gen 2:7) And God instructed Adam to eat from any tree but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17).
But when Eve and Adam ate the fruit, they didn’t die right there on the spot! So was God lying? No, the death God was referring to was the death of relationship, the act of rebellion against God was an act of desiring to be like God: the creature made the assumption of knowing better than perfection. At its most fundamental level this is like saying to God, “I don't have any dependence on you”. The creature tries to be independent of the creator … and with that arrogance relationship is fractured.
This is not unfair, it's justice! How could a God be perfectly loving if he was not also perfectly just? To see this one has to consider it from the perspective of perfection. If something is perfect, the single addition of imperfection destroys perfection. God is perfect, so cannot be in relationship with imperfection … imperfection is the just consequence of brokenness. Jesus is the way to restore that … but that’s another story.
But life! Now life is God's breath breathed into us. However, the sad history we bear is that “just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all sinned.” (Rom 5:12)
It's important to remember that in the Bible speaks of death as separation, not annihilation. Sometimes this is used to mean separating the soul from the body, or separating people, but very importantly it can also mean separating the soul from God … when we are "dead in our sins" (Col 2:13, Eph 2:5).
What then is the purpose of life: the Westminster Catechism puts it succinctly like this “Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” There’s such deep richness in this phrase: what do we understand by glory, and what is it to enjoy God? Much can, has been and still needs to be written about this.
But at a basic level we can think of it this way. God says "My glory I will not give to another." (Isa. 48:11) We can’t take God's glory away from him. Likewise God is all, so we can’t add to his glory. All we can do is live in full recognition of who he is. In the same way we live daily in the full recognition of gravity (nobody acts as if gravity was not there), and in such a way we should even more so live in recognition of God's glory through our appreciation, adoration, affection, awe, and abdication.
If that is one side of life, what about the other side, the side that says we should enjoy him?
“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Pe 1:8).
This is the joy that rides over grief. It’s not simple happiness … joy is a superset of happiness; happiness is much, much smaller than joy. When my parents died, in each case there was a joy that was immune to grief. Such a joy is the state of being we were created for, but which we so seldom allow ourselves to know in this life.
So this present life is from God, to be enjoyed through God, lived for God, and a time where we grow to maturity so we may one day be transformed into his likeness. The ultimate end of this life is being reunited with God … but between now and then stands death. Life prepares us for that.
1. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. This is a critical point … if we’re spiritual creatures the biological death is secondary, and must not become all encompassing.
2. God created us perfect until death came into the world through sin. Can you imagine perfection? Try. It's not easy because brokenness is our normality. Now consider, mix in the tiniest piece of imperfection, and now the perfect can no longer be perfect. God is perfect. We rebelled and broke the relationship. In that state we are cut off from perfection, for no matter how much God loves us he cannot tolerate relational intimacy with imperfection. How he has dealt with that is, of course, another story.
3. Time: God created … so there’s a beginning, but we’re made for eternity!
4. Heaven is the hearts greatest longing, because we begin our lives in a foreign land with no automatic ticket to go home. We were made for something else, and we feel its absence acutely, even though we struggle to put words to that hole we feel inside.
What is life? Because by it we can know a little about death.
“When God created everything, he saw that it was all good” (Gen. 1:31). “So God created man in his own image, in the imhttp://bit.ly/1cNeSLcage of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27). “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Gen 2:7) And God instructed Adam to eat from any tree but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17).
But when Eve and Adam ate the fruit, they didn’t die right there on the spot! So was God lying? No, the death God was referring to was the death of relationship, the act of rebellion against God was an act of desiring to be like God: the creature made the assumption of knowing better than perfection. At its most fundamental level this is like saying to God, “I don't have any dependence on you”. The creature tries to be independent of the creator … and with that arrogance relationship is fractured.
This is not unfair, it's justice! How could a God be perfectly loving if he was not also perfectly just? To see this one has to consider it from the perspective of perfection. If something is perfect, the single addition of imperfection destroys perfection. God is perfect, so cannot be in relationship with imperfection … imperfection is the just consequence of brokenness. Jesus is the way to restore that … but that’s another story.
But life! Now life is God's breath breathed into us. However, the sad history we bear is that “just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all sinned.” (Rom 5:12)
It's important to remember that in the Bible speaks of death as separation, not annihilation. Sometimes this is used to mean separating the soul from the body, or separating people, but very importantly it can also mean separating the soul from God … when we are "dead in our sins" (Col 2:13, Eph 2:5).
What then is the purpose of life: the Westminster Catechism puts it succinctly like this “Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” There’s such deep richness in this phrase: what do we understand by glory, and what is it to enjoy God? Much can, has been and still needs to be written about this.
But at a basic level we can think of it this way. God says "My glory I will not give to another." (Isa. 48:11) We can’t take God's glory away from him. Likewise God is all, so we can’t add to his glory. All we can do is live in full recognition of who he is. In the same way we live daily in the full recognition of gravity (nobody acts as if gravity was not there), and in such a way we should even more so live in recognition of God's glory through our appreciation, adoration, affection, awe, and abdication.
If that is one side of life, what about the other side, the side that says we should enjoy him?
“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Pe 1:8).
This is the joy that rides over grief. It’s not simple happiness … joy is a superset of happiness; happiness is much, much smaller than joy. When my parents died, in each case there was a joy that was immune to grief. Such a joy is the state of being we were created for, but which we so seldom allow ourselves to know in this life.
So this present life is from God, to be enjoyed through God, lived for God, and a time where we grow to maturity so we may one day be transformed into his likeness. The ultimate end of this life is being reunited with God … but between now and then stands death. Life prepares us for that.
http://bit.ly/1cNglkR
Our life is a series of little deaths and resurrections.
Life is full of lessons about how to rightly see death, all of which foreshadow the big one. As Christians this life is preparing us for becoming what we were created to be.
Consider. Every change, whether forced or chosen, involves a loss and a gain. Every choice is for something, and away from something else. We measure and remember our life story by the milestones of transition; each is a small moment of death leading into a resurrection as something new; marriage, leaving home, losing virginity, having children, retirement, moving countries, parents dying, etc, etc. Each change (at least those that occur by choice) is (ideally) a consequence of outgrowing our previous stage, and establishes new era ... like becoming married after the simple “I do” where the innocent singleness is lost forever. Or the first eros-kiss, nothing can undo that. Having your first child – you can't put it back inside. And each is transforming in a way that can never be fully anticipated. You can know all the facts in advance, but the heart only understands through the doing, by the death of the old and the resurrection of a new self that remembers much of the old but has been changed into something bigger than it was ever before.
So, one way of looking at life is that it is all training to be ready for that small step into eternity, for that change when we become as big as we were created to be. Yet sadly, so often we treat life as the end in itself, like a child living as if the school years fully define the meaning of his or her existence (and sadly some adults never escape that).
Each transition is characterized by something that cannot be reversed. It’s the closure to something that was known, not the negation of the past. All the little deaths of life are simply a finish line so a new race can be run. It's the beginning of something that before you could only at best poorly imagine.
Life is learning to handle each small death and knowing the resurrection as something new. Of course, in a broken world external events can interrupt the natural flow of life’s sequence, but these are like rough off-road routes that end in the same destination.
(Think, even when Jesus says you must be born again: that is surely only the beginning of our spiritual resurrection that will be completed in physical death.)
The macabre.
What happens as we die? This has a fascination for many. Why? Because we are attracted by destruction so we feel our own inadequacies that little bit less. We’re attracted to the tragedy of others because it deludes us onto feeling more alive.
During the dying process the body shuts down. Energy is conserved for the vital organs, less nourishment is needed. The dying person desires less food and drink. The physical functions begin to fail, and there’s a progressive loss of control of bladder, bowel, movement, speech, and even thought. The oxygen deprivation as the circulation slows is seen in bluish or grey skin, with coolness to the touch. Breathing becomes harder, more irregular, and noisier. This is normal, this is natural. Finally clinical death occurs when the core functions cease: heart, breathing, and circulation. A few minutes later biological death is complete as the brain cells die from lack of oxygen.
How we approach this spiritually and emotionally, either as the dying person or the one watching, is bound within the state of our relationships. Some people are traumatized because of relational baggage that has remained unaddressed. Others grieve in a peace because the relationship was right and good. If we are on the periphery of death among others we need compassion to understand what the individuals may be dealing with … like Jesus, who approached us in compassion.
Life is full of lessons about how to rightly see death, all of which foreshadow the big one. As Christians this life is preparing us for becoming what we were created to be.
Consider. Every change, whether forced or chosen, involves a loss and a gain. Every choice is for something, and away from something else. We measure and remember our life story by the milestones of transition; each is a small moment of death leading into a resurrection as something new; marriage, leaving home, losing virginity, having children, retirement, moving countries, parents dying, etc, etc. Each change (at least those that occur by choice) is (ideally) a consequence of outgrowing our previous stage, and establishes new era ... like becoming married after the simple “I do” where the innocent singleness is lost forever. Or the first eros-kiss, nothing can undo that. Having your first child – you can't put it back inside. And each is transforming in a way that can never be fully anticipated. You can know all the facts in advance, but the heart only understands through the doing, by the death of the old and the resurrection of a new self that remembers much of the old but has been changed into something bigger than it was ever before.
So, one way of looking at life is that it is all training to be ready for that small step into eternity, for that change when we become as big as we were created to be. Yet sadly, so often we treat life as the end in itself, like a child living as if the school years fully define the meaning of his or her existence (and sadly some adults never escape that).
Each transition is characterized by something that cannot be reversed. It’s the closure to something that was known, not the negation of the past. All the little deaths of life are simply a finish line so a new race can be run. It's the beginning of something that before you could only at best poorly imagine.
Life is learning to handle each small death and knowing the resurrection as something new. Of course, in a broken world external events can interrupt the natural flow of life’s sequence, but these are like rough off-road routes that end in the same destination.
(Think, even when Jesus says you must be born again: that is surely only the beginning of our spiritual resurrection that will be completed in physical death.)
The macabre.
What happens as we die? This has a fascination for many. Why? Because we are attracted by destruction so we feel our own inadequacies that little bit less. We’re attracted to the tragedy of others because it deludes us onto feeling more alive.
During the dying process the body shuts down. Energy is conserved for the vital organs, less nourishment is needed. The dying person desires less food and drink. The physical functions begin to fail, and there’s a progressive loss of control of bladder, bowel, movement, speech, and even thought. The oxygen deprivation as the circulation slows is seen in bluish or grey skin, with coolness to the touch. Breathing becomes harder, more irregular, and noisier. This is normal, this is natural. Finally clinical death occurs when the core functions cease: heart, breathing, and circulation. A few minutes later biological death is complete as the brain cells die from lack of oxygen.
How we approach this spiritually and emotionally, either as the dying person or the one watching, is bound within the state of our relationships. Some people are traumatized because of relational baggage that has remained unaddressed. Others grieve in a peace because the relationship was right and good. If we are on the periphery of death among others we need compassion to understand what the individuals may be dealing with … like Jesus, who approached us in compassion.
http://bit.ly/1cNeAUI
Before we get to whats next, what do we make of all these near death experiences?
Firstly, remember such stories are only “near death”. There are three dominant aspects recounted by those who have had these experiences.
a) The tunnel of light? Well, your retina receives its blood from the centre which then spreads out to the edge. So as you die and experience oxygen starvation, you get tunnel vision. The periphery of the retina shuts down and your vision narrows to simply detect light at the center of your vision.
b) The experience of love and calm? Oxygen starvation mainly causes malfunction of the frontal lobes of the brain. When that happens you experience indifference, calm, peace, and a feeling of ineffability, even happiness.
c) The out of body experiences? Well damage to the Angular Gyrus portion of the brain has been shown to cause out of body experience in epileptics. So possibly this is an explanation as well. You can even find some people who will train you to have out of body experiences.
The point here is that we’re focused on biological failure, and the experiences we hear of can have an easy physical explanation. I am willing to accept some stories may be a real spiritual reality, but I suspect not. Personally I seriously doubt that dying and approaching the perfect God of all awesomeness is going to make me peacefully calm. Either it will be mind-boggling excitement, or bed wetting terror because of who I am approaching … not calmness!
Firstly, remember such stories are only “near death”. There are three dominant aspects recounted by those who have had these experiences.
a) The tunnel of light? Well, your retina receives its blood from the centre which then spreads out to the edge. So as you die and experience oxygen starvation, you get tunnel vision. The periphery of the retina shuts down and your vision narrows to simply detect light at the center of your vision.
b) The experience of love and calm? Oxygen starvation mainly causes malfunction of the frontal lobes of the brain. When that happens you experience indifference, calm, peace, and a feeling of ineffability, even happiness.
c) The out of body experiences? Well damage to the Angular Gyrus portion of the brain has been shown to cause out of body experience in epileptics. So possibly this is an explanation as well. You can even find some people who will train you to have out of body experiences.
The point here is that we’re focused on biological failure, and the experiences we hear of can have an easy physical explanation. I am willing to accept some stories may be a real spiritual reality, but I suspect not. Personally I seriously doubt that dying and approaching the perfect God of all awesomeness is going to make me peacefully calm. Either it will be mind-boggling excitement, or bed wetting terror because of who I am approaching … not calmness!
Source unknown (Google image search)
So this brings us to what happens next?
Well, freed of the body the first thing the real me will need to face up to is the consequence of my relationship with God. Is it heaven on the one hand, or not heaven on the other.
Is “not heaven”, hell? What is hell? Burning lakes of fire? For me, if after death I stand in my brokenness face to face with a perfect God with whom I have no relationship, then Hell is surely the agony of knowing that I am so helplessly separated from God. What form such an existence will take, ever separated from the God of perfection, I don’t know. But I do know that the sense of loss will be so great that it will exceed any of my wildest imaginations of how bad hell can be (and I have a very active imagination)! Not only will I know the loss, I’ll also know the terror of facing perfection when seen from a state of broken relationship.
I suspect that in that state I would be only too glad to get as far away from God as I can. Perhaps in some twisted way hell is actually a mercy for those who do not know God.
What is heaven then? Is it harps and clouds? Guitars and drums? Endless games of cricket? Being able to eat as much as we want because we’ll have a new incorruptible body? Here are some thoughts that can be gleaned from the Bible.
Well, freed of the body the first thing the real me will need to face up to is the consequence of my relationship with God. Is it heaven on the one hand, or not heaven on the other.
Is “not heaven”, hell? What is hell? Burning lakes of fire? For me, if after death I stand in my brokenness face to face with a perfect God with whom I have no relationship, then Hell is surely the agony of knowing that I am so helplessly separated from God. What form such an existence will take, ever separated from the God of perfection, I don’t know. But I do know that the sense of loss will be so great that it will exceed any of my wildest imaginations of how bad hell can be (and I have a very active imagination)! Not only will I know the loss, I’ll also know the terror of facing perfection when seen from a state of broken relationship.
I suspect that in that state I would be only too glad to get as far away from God as I can. Perhaps in some twisted way hell is actually a mercy for those who do not know God.
What is heaven then? Is it harps and clouds? Guitars and drums? Endless games of cricket? Being able to eat as much as we want because we’ll have a new incorruptible body? Here are some thoughts that can be gleaned from the Bible.
- God, through Christ, will deliver us from this present "body of death". Rom 7:20-25
- Our present body is will put aside. 2 Cor 5:1-3, 2 Pet 1:13-14
- God has prepared us for the purpose of being clothed with our heavenly body. 2 Cor 5:4-5
- Although we do not know exactly what our new bodies will be like, we know that they will be like Jesus. 1 John 3:2-3 (Yay … I’ll be able to appear and disappear from place to place!)
- Our new bodies will be like Christ's glorious body. Phil 3:20-21, Rom 8:28-30, Ps 17:15, Rom 6:5-8, 1 Cor 15:49, 2 Cor 3:17-18
- We will be changed instantaneously. 1 Cor 15:51-53
- Each of us will have a unique body. 1 Cor 15:35-58
- Our new body will be incorruptible. 1 Cor 15:42-44, 1 Cor 15:52-54
- Our new body will be glorified. 1 Cor 15:42-44
- Our new body will be powerful. 1 Cor 15:42-44
- Our new body will be spiritual. 1 Cor 15:42-44
- Our new bodies will be eternal. 2 Cor 5:1-5
- We will speak a pure language. Zeph 3:8-9
- We will have no racial or cultural distinctions Col 3:9-11
- Etc., etc.
http://bit.ly/1cNnfqa
The point is, it’s going to be amazing … literally amazing.
And what will we do in heaven?
Well ...
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared
for those who love him”
(1 Cor 2:9)
So my imagination has not even touched on what’s waiting! Did I say something about it will be amazing?
I’m not worried about being bored. Firstly, boredom is a time word. You can only be bored if you live on an inescapable time line. But we’ll be unshackled from time as Jesus was (we’ll have bodies like Jesus). This is one of my most anticipated aspects of post-death life (after seeing God). As best I can imagine it’ll be as if we can dip into a river of time for a swim, then step out, dry ourselves off, and continue (a time word) in a completely different state of existence (all time words). My problem is we just cannot talk about it … we really, really struggle to conceive what that will be like because our language only knows an existence locked into time.
Try and say something without using the concept of time. Take any sentence and examine it, and you realize we do not know how to speak without using words that are bound to time. Perhaps that’s one reason we’ll speak a new pure language in heaven, so we can finally (a time word) talk (time word) without being (time word) bound by time-loaded language.
Apart from all this we’ll know joy, a wild inescapable joy that is all encompassing. And we’ll be as we were created to be: creative lovers … ! And as for the stupid idea of eternity becoming mindless repetition … that’s a time-language nonsense from people who are not thinking. We do not know how to conceive an eternity unbound from time.
What about the death of a non-Christian?
This is tragic. To take that small step to eternity and not be transformed to all I was created to be … the ultimate tragedy. It’s the loss of absolutely everything. But we cannot say what the fate of an individual will be, that’s neither our right nor our authority. But it is clear that not all religions lead to God, not all will be in heaven, and a God who is all loving must be an all-just God who will judge fairly according whether someone knows who Jesus is or not. He will not give his glory away because he is perfect. This is not ego. This is simply what is. You might just as well ask gravity to give you a break when you fall off the cliff. Gravity is. God is. Love is just.
In this life all we can say is that you and I can know the certainty of a God who welcomes me, or else we can live in the uncertainty about an eternity of isolation. For this very reason we need to think often and hard on death and on heaven, we need to face up to the reality. So let’s help one another to live now in the joy of what is to come.
Some might ask about those who have not chosen to know God, and whether they will be given a second chance to choose after they die. This touches on the idea of purgatory (the theology of purgatory is not good theology). As for such a second chance, if we’ve lived an entire life not making that choice, then I believe that in the final step into eternity we will filled with such terror and be so desperate to want to escape God, that we would be way too terrified to even consider making that choice. So remember, for non-Christians:
When all is said and done
How then should we remember those who loved God and are now gone? Simply answered, with thanks!
This song captures it for me. When I first heard this song my thoughts immediately turned to my father, and that was years before he died. I quoted this at his funeral, may it one day be said of me.
And what will we do in heaven?
Well ...
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared
for those who love him”
(1 Cor 2:9)
So my imagination has not even touched on what’s waiting! Did I say something about it will be amazing?
I’m not worried about being bored. Firstly, boredom is a time word. You can only be bored if you live on an inescapable time line. But we’ll be unshackled from time as Jesus was (we’ll have bodies like Jesus). This is one of my most anticipated aspects of post-death life (after seeing God). As best I can imagine it’ll be as if we can dip into a river of time for a swim, then step out, dry ourselves off, and continue (a time word) in a completely different state of existence (all time words). My problem is we just cannot talk about it … we really, really struggle to conceive what that will be like because our language only knows an existence locked into time.
Try and say something without using the concept of time. Take any sentence and examine it, and you realize we do not know how to speak without using words that are bound to time. Perhaps that’s one reason we’ll speak a new pure language in heaven, so we can finally (a time word) talk (time word) without being (time word) bound by time-loaded language.
Apart from all this we’ll know joy, a wild inescapable joy that is all encompassing. And we’ll be as we were created to be: creative lovers … ! And as for the stupid idea of eternity becoming mindless repetition … that’s a time-language nonsense from people who are not thinking. We do not know how to conceive an eternity unbound from time.
What about the death of a non-Christian?
This is tragic. To take that small step to eternity and not be transformed to all I was created to be … the ultimate tragedy. It’s the loss of absolutely everything. But we cannot say what the fate of an individual will be, that’s neither our right nor our authority. But it is clear that not all religions lead to God, not all will be in heaven, and a God who is all loving must be an all-just God who will judge fairly according whether someone knows who Jesus is or not. He will not give his glory away because he is perfect. This is not ego. This is simply what is. You might just as well ask gravity to give you a break when you fall off the cliff. Gravity is. God is. Love is just.
In this life all we can say is that you and I can know the certainty of a God who welcomes me, or else we can live in the uncertainty about an eternity of isolation. For this very reason we need to think often and hard on death and on heaven, we need to face up to the reality. So let’s help one another to live now in the joy of what is to come.
Some might ask about those who have not chosen to know God, and whether they will be given a second chance to choose after they die. This touches on the idea of purgatory (the theology of purgatory is not good theology). As for such a second chance, if we’ve lived an entire life not making that choice, then I believe that in the final step into eternity we will filled with such terror and be so desperate to want to escape God, that we would be way too terrified to even consider making that choice. So remember, for non-Christians:
- It is not for us to judge
- God’s perfect love must be matched by perfect justice
- Because God is perfectly just he will be perfectly fair with those who have never had the chance to reject him as known in Jesus.
- There are probably people we will be surprised to not to see in heaven
- There will be many we will be surprised to see in heaven.
- Just having a religion does not lead to God! It is not the same God of all religions (See the first talk in the iDoubt series here).
- Not everyone will go to Heaven.
- We can’t choose for others.
- The real issue is to look into our own preparation … to take responsibility for our own choices, to be in relationship with God.
- Purgatory is a comforting thought, but is irrational and not a biblical concept.
When all is said and done
How then should we remember those who loved God and are now gone? Simply answered, with thanks!
This song captures it for me. When I first heard this song my thoughts immediately turned to my father, and that was years before he died. I quoted this at his funeral, may it one day be said of me.
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His was a voice fueled by truth
He spoke to us of God's grace In a way that we could understand and take hold of His was a life defined by grace For a time and for a reason And so we bow and give thanks to God For the life of our brother It's just like God to make a hero from a sinner It's just like God to choose the loser, not the winner It's just like God to tell a story through the weak To let the Gospel speak through the life of a man Who'll be the first to say "Cheer up, Church You're worse off than you think Cheer up, Church You're standing at the brink Don't despair, Do not fear Grace is near" |
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