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Opinion: How to live eternally ... without dying for it |
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Tuesday, 05 December 2006 |
 | | Marc Mullinax |
"When one sees Eternity in things that pass away and Infinity in finite things, then one has pure knowledge."
– Bhagavad Gita
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MARS HILL ‚Äî Would you rather have eternal life or everlasting life? What if you can‘t have both?
Much local religion is driven by both sugarplum and demonic visions of an everlasting afterlife. We are urged to "get saved" in order to become card-carrying members of the sugarplum variety, and escape the demonic. The solution to life is ultimately found in an afterlife.
That
afterlife, whether heavenly or hellish, is a world very much like this
one, except on spiritual steroids. We imaginatively transport the very
best of this life – and the very worst – and make such imagined worlds
the solutions to this life‘s needs to reward and punish.
Some faiths
focus so much upon the reality of the afterlife that their sense of
responsibility and care for this life pales in contrast to the energy
with which one should prepare for the next. Their only worthwhile
spiritual question is, "Brother, are you saved?" This question implies,
are you ready for heaven?
Funny, we are
only secondarily (if at all) requested to become saved in order to
share enough God-vision to make this world a place where God could be
ever-born in, ever-grow up in, without poverty, environmental rape and
war.
The main vehicle
by which we are able to imagine afterlife worlds is time. Time is an
artificial construct. So it‘s even more artificial to solve the issues
of time by adding more minutes to the time clock ... an everlasting
life somewhere. Do you see the problem? If time is artificial, how can
it solve anything?
Our vocabulary
reflects this problem. When we hear the words "eternal" and
"everlasting," we conflate their meanings, to form a single meaning
tilted towards a long, long time. Time without end is actually the
definition of "everlasting."
"Eternal" is
something else altogether. Everlasting is to quantity as eternal is to
quality. Eternity is not infinite time extension, but timelessness.
Eternal life belongs to those who live in the present." As a friend
puts it, it means to live abundantly in the face of death.
We have the
possibility of living an eternal life without having to die for it.
(Repeat that sentence!) Just start living. To aim for an everlasting
life through religion that is little more than the search for the
fountain of youth by sanctified names – is perhaps to miss the eternal
life which all religions at their best point us towards.
Since the
afterlife cannot solve time, just extend it and its problems, then
clinging to everlasting time is not faith, but one of frantic,
fear-financed clinging to a false self.
Here‘s what‘s at
stake: Clinging to the hereafter-time rather than living in "herenow"
eternity is atheistic. Thinking of ourselves as most fully alive in a
Next Life avoids and denies God in This Life. Beliefs in personal
survival, heaven, hell and the like are obstacles, ego-driven
projections of a hopeless self, and are antagonistic towards authentic
faith in God. Clinging to everlasting time-constructed hereafters
prevents authentic eternal life herenow.
You either get
all you‘re gonna get now, or never. Realize this, and you won‘t give a
rat‘s ass about immortality. It just ceases to matter, because in the
full experience of the Eternal Now, a future marked by time-anxiety
disappears. Once you realize you‘re going to die without a guarantee of
a time-share afterlife, you‘ll have a new reservoir of increased energy
to make something of this life.
We‘re here on Earth to experience God, incredible things and incredible people. Let‘s get to it. There‘s not a moment to waste.
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Dr. Marc S.
Mullinax, chairman of the philosophy and religion departments at Mars
Hill College, can be reached at mmullinax-at-mhc.edu.
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