Thoughts on the Afterlife

I attended and sang in the choir at the funeral of an acquaintance yesterday. She was a woman of remarkable faith and courage who struggled with illness for many years. She was a source of inspiration and joy, and the church was completely full. The service was a celebration of her life and contributions to the community, and I was honored to be a part of it. I wish that I had known her better.

On such occasions, I tend to wonder why it is that such a righteous and loving woman had to experience so much suffering and premature death while many evil men prosper and walk about in perfect health. God’s plan for the universe is beyond my understanding, and I have to trust that it will all make sense on that great getting’ up mornin’.

On such occasions, I tend to think too much about the mechanics of the resurrection. It is my understanding that the dead “sleep in Christ” until the resurrection at which time everyone who has ever died is brought back at the same time. Accordingly, the dead are not currently in heaven looking down upon us. Nevertheless, God’s complete knowledge of the pattern of matter and energy that comprises us is not lost and must exist in the “mind” of God. Do those patterns have awareness as they await the end of days, or is the knowledge stored in the universe itself in the form of each moment of our lives forever preserved and existing from God’s timeless perspective?

And in what iteration of myself will I be resurrected? I am not the same man that I was ten years ago or will be ten years hence. I imagine that our resurrected selves will be an amalgamation of all our earthly selves but that this will in time be superseded by what we become during eternity. Possibly after a thousand years or so we will start to forget earlier parts of our lives unless our memories are enhanced somehow.

Most folks I have spoken to have as poorly developed a sense of what the afterlife will be like as I do. Descriptions of heaven are usually pretty thin compared to the robust descriptions of hell. I sometimes think of the hereafter as something like Riverworld except with more awareness of what’s going on.

I struggle with the idea of hell. There is some satisfaction in the idea that some evil folks who prosper now will get theirs in the end. But what is the point of punishing the wicked forever? What if the wicked are reformed after a few eons of hell fire? Perhaps hell is a metaphor for what it will be like for the wicked to have to be themselves for eternity. The thought and memory of every wrong done or hurt inflicted will burn like fire.

I have probably committed a dozen acts of heresy in this post.