Thursday, March 14, 2013

I'm going to die one day. That sucks.

For the first time in my life, I had the following thought today (just now in fact)...

I don't want to die one day.

I realised why some people don't want their lives to end. I realise that I could be so much more, do so much more, know and understand so much more, if only I had the time. But I don't. My days are numbered, as are the days of every human, and so therefore the potential that lies within me as a person is tempered by the limitations laid upon my body.

The things we could achieve and become, the ability of our minds to learn and discover would be so much greater if they weren't cut short before we'd even really begun. I'm only 29, and so all this talk will probably sound idiotic to someone older and wiser who has had the time to meditate on and come to terms with mortality. For me however, this is the first time the real implications of the inevitability of death have hit me. I will never ever on this earth become what my mind has the potential to become if I had endless time.

It is a very very strange feeling.

As a Christian however, it is not a hopeless feeling. I will not end, I will merely go elsewhere, leaving behind my body, but remaining me.

Therefore, it is my fond hope that I will have eternity to grow, learn, develop, understand and explore 'life the universe and everything' into eternity. It just won't be here on earth, it will be in Heaven.

Some part of me wants to think 'oh but once Im there it will be pointless, because God will be there who already knows everything, so we can just ask Him'.

That, however, is a silly and simplistic argument. I expect God has not only loaded us with the elements of free will (wherein He observes with pleasure what we decide to do without His forcing us); I expect in Heaven he has also loaded reality and discovery with undefined potential, and will watch to see what we, of our freewill, make and discover in the absence of any specific command from Him. I think God is interested to see what we do on earth, what decisions we make, what we feel and how we choose. I think that he made person-hood, freewill and individuality, partially for the great joy of having others with whom to interact, communicate and develop relationship. The very nature of these things requires their objects to be independent of God in a sense (although He sustains and guides us), and so He gives the great risk and gift of free will. I think the nature of reality in Heaven will share some of the key characteristics of this risk and gift.

I wonder if the part of God who chooses to inhabit the linear time-based world of humanity chooses not to know what decisions we will make, chooses not to predetermine what we will do, so that free will may be real and pure? If so, the implications for the infinite possibilities and discoveries which may lie open to us in Heaven blow the mind. There are no limits, and quite possibly God will not be sitting above us all on a giant throne smiling indulgently as we discover the easter eggs he has hidden for us throughout the garden, possibly he will be watching us with fascination to see what new things we fashion, discover and create from the endless and glorious potential he has gifted us with in that future paradise where we will not die, and will grow ever more in knowledge and understanding.

Heaven is an unspeakably thrilling prospect.

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