Wednesday, May 3, 2023

Striving For Eternal Life

The longing to "live on" past death has inspired everything from oral traditions of telling historical stories to trying to upload human consciousness into the new body of computer hardware (a likely impossible thing)--or the hope of creating AI programs that talk or act as if they are a specific living/once-living person.  Having others remember you through stories and digital personalities, even if the latter was truly conscious, is still not the same as obtaining eternal life.  Having others remember you or think of you generations after your death is not eternal life, and neither is dying and then having a separate AI imitate your personality.  You are still dead.  All the same, there are distinct trends across historical time periods where many people hope to somehow, by one means or another, achieve some kind of eternal life that will transcend the death of the body.

The Bible does not teach what many assume about this.  Yes, it does acknowledge the deep desire to exist forever that some experience (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and it brings this up in the most directly existential book of the entire Bible, all while being very transparent from Genesis onward that death of the human body and soul is the natural consequence of breaking alignment with the source of all contingent beings (the very existence of creation is metaphysically tied to God's existence so that if he wished otherwise or ceased to exist, all of humanity and nature would vanish as Acts 17:28 somewhat addresses).  To live forever, one must have an unbroken or restored relationship with God, and it is obvious that the Bible presents general humanity as being too selfish and stupid to care about more than their own convenience or whims.

There are many ways that the Bible makes it as clear as language can that eternal existence is not something that everyone has or will have.  Not only does it say in many verses that cosmic death awaits the unsaved (such as in Matthew 10:28 and Ezekiel 18:4), but it also repeatedly affirms that humans do not live forever by default.  It is not as if the Biblical stance on the issue is that all humans exist forever and whether they will reside in heaven or hell is the crucial part.  No, the Bible, even the New Testament that suddenly talks more directly about the afterlife than the Old Testament, affirms that to live forever is the grand reward for the saved and to perish is the deserved fate of the wicked (with the seeming exception of demons like Satan in Revelation 20:10 and perhaps the subcategory of humans mentioned in Revelation 14:9-11).  Jesus and Paul are rather open about death and eternal life being the contrasted destinies of general humanity.  For instance, Romans 2:7-8, even in isolation from other verses, establishes key details about the Christian afterlife and what is truly meant by the phrase eternal life:

"To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, he will give eternal life.  But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger."

Romans 2:8 does not clarify what exactly this wrath of God will result in as passages like 2 Peter 2:6 and Ezekiel 18:4 do, but Romans 2:7 has already clarified that eternal life is not the birthright of fallen beings.  It must be received.  That which a person already possesses by virtue of being a person is not something they can gain because they already have it.  Of course, this is just in part a restatement of what Jesus already says in verses like John 3:16, namely that eternal life is the merciful reward for commitment to Christ.  After human sin in Eden, there is no such thing as a person who automatically has the eternal existence that so many Christians have claimed everyone has whether they wind up in heaven or hell.  Eternal life is something gained, and it is indeed gained by doing something (committing to Christ), just not by deeds like serving others or carrying out just actions (Ephesians 2:8-9 would contradict other verses if it meant literally no mental/physical action whatsoever, including choosing commitment to Jesus, secured salvation).

As Paul puts it, eternal life is something that some people strive for and others forfeit by their worldviews and deeds.  As Jesus puts it, eternal life is something derived from a specific king of standing towards him (John 4:13-14), not by whether one is human.  Otherwise, eternal life would not be a divine gift for the righteous or the saved, but something all people possess with or without an amended relationship with God.  Immortality is not the norm if most people are on a pathway to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14).  On the contrary, immortality is the privilege of the saved.  This is not even particularly difficult to discover in the text of the Bible.  It actually takes ignoring the many relevant passages scattered across the Bible or making assumptions about the concepts and wording to lead someone to the evangelical theology of soteriology, hell, and eternal life.  References to eternal life for the saved and to permanent death for the unsaved are almost never hard to find in the Bible wherever the afterlife is the focus.

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