Death, Life, and Eternal Hope
I'm going to be posting on and off on this subject for the next few days/weeks - and I want to make it as interactive an experience as possible.I want you to feel like you can interact because this is a hard subject to address, and conversation is almost always better than lecturing when it comes to hard subjects. We invest a lot in what we think happens to people after they pass on - its only natural. So when some moron like me comes along and starts suggesting that scripture may depict something that is a little different from the picture of "the afterlife" that is painted by our culture (and many of our churches), folks are bound to feel uneasy.
It is hard to let go of what we think is supposed to happen, even if the alternative is even more beautiful and wonderful (and real) than what we now imagine.
Yet I think its an important discussion. Important because how we think about what happens "next" has a profound effect on how we think about life in this world. Is God trying to snatch a few select folks from a doomed planet so they can become angels in some semi-disembodied state in another dimension/place? Or is he up to something that is more connected to the creation in which we live and breathe? In what "scenario" do we place our hope?
I'm going to chew on these questions (on and off) for a few posts.
Related Tags: afterlife, heaven, hell, death, creation
posted by Matt at Sunday, July 23, 2006
3 Comments:
I guess I do wonder what kind of scriptural basis there is for some of our assumptions. The idea that those who have gone before us are actually watching what we do now seems flawed. To suggest that somehow the veil between Heaven and earth would somehow be lifted and people would take a break from eternal praise is at least suspect. I even wonder about the notion of a grand reunion. Will we recognize each other? Will we even care when face to face with the Creator? Our perspective is so earthly that it is easy to see how that would be our translation of a place as wonderful as Heaven. But does the limitation of our perspective keep us from seeing that it could be even more wonderful? You're brave to take on this subject.
Can't wait to read your thoughts. I'm going to store 'em up and, when I get there, I'm going to say, "But, Lord, this isn't the way it's supposed to happen."
Great food for thought.
Thanks, guys. This is a subject area where I'm prepared to be wrong.
I'm not a Left Behind guy, for example. But if God swoops down and raptures us all just before the Antichrist appears, you won't catch me complaining about it.
God, after all, gets to be God. (And praise God that I don't.)
I DO, however, think its worth the effort to re-examine this subject, because - as I hope you'll see - getting straight what God has promised about our "future" impacts what we are doing in the here and now.
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