Some thoughts and facts in support of life after death
A great part of our existence does not depend on us, and we cannot know and be certain of what happens or will happen to the part that does not depend on us. Nobody can know for sure what he will be doing the next hour or whether he will survive the night. Then how do some people say, ‘We die and that’s the end of our existence; there is no material evidence that we continue to exist in a different way; hence there is no such a way’?
Man consists of an outer and inner being, and these two components do not function in the same way in order to expect that they will cease to function in the same way. Much of our body functions in a programmed and predictable way, whereas much of our behavior is a result of choices between good and evil that we make every day. Good and evil, being complete opposites, produce opposite results in both the person making the choice and the people affected by his choice or the environment. Those results make people live two different ways of life that are so incompatible that their relations often end up in conflict or even death, caused by the ones wishing the death of the others.
Good and evil are a fact and man lives, choosing between them. They are not only a fact but they cannot be changed; and they are valid for all. People don’t live outside this choice. What is good for me is also good for you, and what is bad for me is also bad for you. If it wasn’t so, life would be a nightmare. Imagine someone who takes pleasure in making cuts on his body! He would never think that this can cause severe pain in other people and he would only be too happy to do it to them.
The choice between good and evil has consequences for each one of us already here and now, and it is more likely to continue to have consequences for the fate of our spiritual component after the death of our body than not to have. These consequences are experienced by each one of us and clearly perceived by everyone interacting with us as traits of our character and behavior that make us better and more desirable to communicate with or worse and less desired or even unwanted. It’s as if we are particles of a river that gradually divides itself into two rivers on account of the incompatibility of its components.
Our bearing the consequences of our choices between good and evil is evidence for the action of an effective judgment which none of us can avoid or escape from. If we continually and stubbornly choose evil, we become bad and unpleasant and we cannot change that; we cannot make ourselves good and pleasant by thinking badly and doing bad things. The action of this judgement and the impossibility to avoid it or escape from it speak for the existence of Someone who has instituted it and is executing it and who is more likely to finalize it than not (having started it already and being so consistent with its execution). The prospect of each one of us being convicted at that final judgement is absolutely certain, knowing that none of us can become perfect no matter how hard we try and how much effort we put into it.
Man cannot become perfect on his own, but his being aware of his imperfection and desiring to achieve perfection is the stepping stone that puts him on the track of reaching perfection with God’s help. Becoming perfect according to God’s standard means not only reaching the stage of perfection, but being perfect all the time as otherwise God would have to separate the human being into two in order to take the perfect part with Him into heaven and punish the imperfect one by sending it into hell, which, apart from destroying the wholeness of His creation, will bring about eternal torture to the part sent to hell. This was just a hypothesis proving the impossibility of this kind of thinking, because in reality none of us can become perfect without God’s help. We are so marred by sin that we don’t even have a clear idea of what true perfection is, so much so that God needs to clarify this idea in us while making us perfect.
God wants to make us perfect, because He wants it and because He loves us. How do we know that? By thinking, trusting, doing and accepting. When we reflect on what we are and what we experience while living our lives, we will come to know some of God’s qualities that make Him wanting to make us perfect and make Him capable of doing it, like supremacy, omnipotence, holiness, faithfulness and sacrificial love. Some of these qualities are ours too (although we possess them to a much lesser degree and a lot more imperfectly) and anyone who practices them will know for sure what it takes to do so and will trust God more for what He says.
God makes us perfect in His way, which is equally valid and accessible to all. Our not knowing what true perfection is and not being able to achieve it, makes necessary our accepting and trusting that someone else should do it for us. How can we know that? By trying Him and trusting Him. If He claims that He can do it and that He is ever-living and ever-present, He must be available to do what we ask Him for, so we are free to ask. I believe that there is no one who has asked God to deliver him from some imperfection and who has not experienced the liberation from this imperfection. Anyone who has tried it once and has loved it and continued asking has been continually freed. This makes trust in God’s being able to free us from all imperfection true and real. As for what this way is, we need to accept His information about it, since our not being able to devise it and being part of so much deception and distortion necessitates His intervention. What is this way? It’s very simple and easy to understand and do by everyone: God exchanges Himself for us: He makes Himself imperfect by taking on our imperfection and makes us perfect by giving us His perfection, bearing the consequences of this act. This means bearing the punishment for our, now made His, imperfection, which is separation from perfection into an imperfect existence, marred by sin, presently known all too well by us as gradual disintegration into death. Being perfect means that there is nothing that can cause and result in improper functioning or failure of the thing or being functioning thus, which makes it able to never stop functioning.
God’s way is valid only for those who want it. He does not force it on us. We are free to do as we like. Only those who ask for help will be helped. Those who don’t ask for it, don’t want it, feeling comfortable the way they are, or don’t want to acknowledge that they need it. These are two of the many reasons that make people stay in their state of imperfection leading to death and be further separated from God and His plan for His creation.
Those who want it and accept it become part of His world of perfection, beauty and love. They start to experience it partly while living here and now and they become fully part of it after the death of their body which frees them completely from the power of evil through sin. It is as He has said it to be:
“Truly, truly I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life” (The Gospel according to John 5:24).
“…I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life” (The Gospel according to John 8: 12).
“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (The Gospel according to John 17:3).