Paradise

I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43).

Have you ever thought about your death?

Some people believe that when you die, it’s all over. No more pain, no more pleasure, no more stress, no more anything—they believe that when life ends, they end. I cannot imagine the terror these people must feel at the approach of death. It would make life completely pointless. Why dedicate yourself to anything beyond food and sex and sleep, if everything you’ve tried to achieve with your life ends when you die? What is the point of doing anything? What a dismal life that sounds like.

Personally, I cannot wrap my head around this idea. I find it impossible to imagine a time when I would no longer exist as a thinking, feeling individual. And I suspect that I am not alone in feeling this way. Many of us do incredibly dangerous things in our lives because deep inside, we don’t believe that we can truly be wiped out of existence. I think the reason that we feel immortal is because most of us realize on some level that our souls are indestructible, that they will continue to live on after our bodies cease breathing.

Other people believe that your soul does go on after death, but on to what? To be reincarnated in another body to live again? Was life so wonderful that you would want to suffer more rejection, more disappointment, more disease, more old age, more funerals? Personally, although I enjoy my life, there are parts I’d never want to go through again; reincarnation doesn’t sound like much to look forward to. Others think that there is a spiritual place where every deceased person goes, no matter what they said or did or believed in life. But I don’t find this notion comforting either; would I want to spend eternity with child molesters, rapists, and mass murderers who never regretted their heinous crimes? What kind of paradise would contain people who delight in causing suffering? Such a heaven does not seem like a reward to me.

Ah, but what about an afterlife where you have been freed of your inner demons, and everyone there with you has been set free as well? A place where those who delight in evil are not permitted to enter, where all frustrations and deadlines have ended forever, where there is nothing but joyful existence, an eternal now of happiness? I can imagine such a place, and I imagine that it would be wonderful. Thankfully, it is to just such a place that Jesus invites us.