So, you want to live forever?
Most people do, you know.
“Our frantic efforts to outlive ourselves” have been primary shapers of human culture for thousands of years. That’s the conclusion of Professor Clay Jones, a faculty member at Talbot Seminary in Los Angeles, in his recent book Immortal: How the Fear of Death Drives Us and What We Can Do About It.
Jones points out that the history of philosophy is essentially a record of how people, apart from God, make valiant attempts to figure out how to cheat death – or at least cope with the reality that life, for each one of us, has an expiration date. The Humanist Manifesto II (1973) is blunt: “No deity will save us. We must save ourselves.” What might that look like?
To start with, we can pursue one of the three D’s.
There’s denial. “I’m the exception to the rule that everyone dies. Science, somehow, is going to save me.” As deadpan comic Steven Wright puts it, “I plan to live forever. So far, so good.”
There’s distraction. There’s a reason people crowd their minds with rock stars, sports heroes, celebrities, video games, casinos, and booze. It keeps them from pondering their own demise.
There’s depression. In an interview with author Lee Strobel in his book The Case for Heaven, Jones notes that suicide has become a serious issue within the atheist community. When Strobel points out that taking one’s own life seems a counter-intuitive way of facing death, Jones replies that self-harm appears to be a way of seizing final control over that which controls us. Such “deaths of despair” are also connected with the sorrowful conclusion that staying alive seems to have no real point.
What about the dream that one day we can all download our minds into some kind of machine, and then “live on” as avatars? That’s science fiction, says Jones – and much more fiction than science.
So far the human brain, by a long stretch, is the most complex entity we have discovered anywhere in the cosmos. It is comprised of thousands of trillions of neurological connections. Even if we could ever reproduce such a marvel, would “consciousness” naturally emerge?
Some people are betting on cryonics – the preservation of a deceased person’s head and body in separate tanks of liquid nitrogen. Perhaps they can be reunited and restored to life one day when science has solved the mysteries of death.
The bodily remains of baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams, who died in 2004, are currently in deep freeze. His daughter has said, “Cryonics is like a religion; it’s something we can have faith in.” So far there is no scientific evidence that the breath of life will ever be able to reanimate the Splendid Splinter.
Why do these strategies fall short? Jones notes Hebrews 9:27, which affirms that God has arranged things in such a way that people live once, die once, and then face a divine evaluation of what they have done with their one shot at the gift of life.
If you can’t experience physiological, this-world immortality, perhaps you can pursue what might be called symbolic immortality.
You can try to live on through your family, your fortune, your legacy, or your name. Maybe you can transcend death by participating in something that your own demise cannot erase.
The late actor Peter Ustinov suggested that children are the only form of immortality we can count on. The problem, of course, is that any children you bear or choose to adopt may not cooperate with your earnest efforts to be fondly remembered. When it dawned on Sigmund Freud that his brilliant student Carl Jung was not going to carry on his work in psychoanalysis as he had hoped, Freud fainted. Twice.
Jones frequently asks his students if any of them know the first names of their great-great-grandparents. So far only one student has said yes. No one seriously remembers or cares about the lives of those who have gone only a few generations before.
In other words, this-world memories fade quickly. In less than a century it’s likely that no one will remember you were ever here.
What about everyone having their “15 minutes of fame”?
A commercial that aired 20 years ago began, “Someone once said everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” The wonderful irony is that the person who actually said that, pop artist Andy Warhol, wasn’t even mentioned. Apparently his 15 minutes have already come and gone.
What can you do to live on in societal memory? You can put your name on a building. But it’s likely someone else will one day buy the naming rights and put their name over the entrance. You can set a record that no one else will ever break – like the guy who made it into the Guinness Book of World Records by breaking 46 toilet seats over his head in one minute. Perhaps you should aim a bit higher than that.
Or you can aim lower.
More than a few people have tried to become “somebody” by means of a spectacular crime. Mark David Chapman, who assassinated John Lennon, admitted that he wanted to steal the Beatle’s global fame. “The bright light of fame, of notoriety, was there, and I couldn’t resist it.” More than 200 people falsely claimed to have kidnapped the Lindbergh baby 90 years ago. They yearned to become part of that scandalous international story.
Perhaps we can convince ourselves that dying is no big deal.
Dying is good, said Apple founder Steve Jobs, because it clears the way for others to come along and do new things. For the sake of the common good, we should be glad we’re leaving the scene. But that hasn’t proved to be comforting to many people.
The Greek philosopher Epicurus wondered why anyone felt the need to worry about their own demise. None of us remember the nothingness we experienced before we came into existence, so why should we feel despair about the nothingness that lies ahead?
Besides, say a number of atheists, heaven – if such a reality even exists – would be a terminal bore. Who wants that, anyway? Science writer Isaac Asimov is said to have remarked, “Whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”
When all the options are taken into account, it’s challenging for those who disbelieve in God’s existence to face death with a sense of peace and assurance.
It’s hard to figure out a formula for “living forever” when all the data seem to be screaming, “Your life is going to end. You’re never going to see your loved ones again, or enjoy a sunset, or laugh, or cry, or go to Dairy Queen, or take a walk on the beach. You’re going to be forgotten, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Followers of Jesus, however, are convinced there are good reasons for believing that God has done something about it.
As creatures who bear the image of their Creator, our destiny is not dissolution in a cemetery but the receiving of the gift of resurrected bodies in the new creation.
Even though approaching death may feel like walking into a bank of impenetrable fog, Jesus suddenly emerges from that fog, walking toward us out of the future and saying, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die, and whoever lives by believing in me will never die” (John 11:25-26).
Will the next world be boring, with the same old hymns playing on an endless loop?
Hardly. The God who crafted this world with beauty and wonder and joy will surely out-do himself in the new creation. Scripture assures us, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no human mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (I Corinthians 2:9).
Best of all, God knows who you are.
God knows what has made your life a joy and what has made your life at times a real struggle.
You will never be forgotten, because if you have abandoned yourself to Jesus, you are part of his forever family. That means you will always have a story to tell – and people who will want to hear it.
No wonder the apostle Paul wrote so confidently, when faced with the prospect of his own life’s end, “To live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
May God bless each of us with that same confidence on this summer day.
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