When loved ones die, regardless of whether you believe in everlasting life or not, it is hard to accept that the person you loved had come to an abrupt and awful termination. Almost like, there was nothing left behind of a life we once held precious.
Human beings, however, have always tended to believe in life after death, and have found it hard to throw the idea away. In just about every culture known to man, there are signs of a belief in survival beyond the tomb.
'Oh, come on,' you might say. 'It's all wishful thinking.
Really? We have turned our backs on death to such an extent that we rarely meet it any more. Centuries ago, the lower life expectancy, the merciless plagues for which cures were unknown, and the absence of hospitals to which the sick could be discreetly whisked off, meant that people were surrounded constantly by the agonizing, implacable presence of death. People know that bodies rotted. There were no sanitized crematoria to reduce the problem to a neat pile of ashes, no funeral beauticians to rouge the cheeks of corpses and make them look good for their final journey. The questions posed by death were more immediate, more harsh, than ever they are for us. And still people believed in an after life.
The questions you have to ask is: was it all just a wistful fairy story - a way of dealing with the problem by denying its importance? Or are there good grounds for believing that something lies beyond the grave?
The first thing to be said is that there is no reason why survival after death should not be possible. A human being is more than just his body. The personality, the individual aspect which makes us unique, is more than just a function of our physiology.
Even more convincing, for a Christian, is the evidence for Jesus' resurrection. There is good evidence that one man has actually conquered death and returned to life. And if Christians are correct in their claim that this person can be known and communicated with today, then their experience of him is absolute proof that life after death happens.
Let's face if, human beings are the most intricate, complex, miraculous product of nature that we know. Does it make sense to believe that nature would produce her greatest masterpiece, allow it to flourish for a few brief years, and then suddenly wipe it all out? Or is it more logical to conclude that anything as fully developed and complicated as ourselves is likely to have a purpose and significance beyond this limited existence?
You can work out your opinion about that yourself. But one thing isn't just a matter or opinion. If Jesus Christ is genuinely, undeniably, unmistakably alive and kicking, then life after death takes place. Prove Jesus is real - and you've proved survival.
We come back for life after life
Many people use hypnosis to help them remember details of past lives they have lived already on this planet, in another century, with a different identity.
Do you live more than once?
Some say, 'I am actually a Christian, and of course a Christian doesn't need to believe anything particularly... You can believe anything you like. And so I believe in reincarnation.'
But wait a minute! The early Christians seem to have had very decided views about what you could and couldn't believe. Paul wrote to Timothy, for instance, 'In later times some will abandom the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons... Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales... Watch your life and doctrine closely.' Clearly, you couldn't just believe anything and call yourself a Christian.
And one of the things the early Christians very definately believed is summed up in Hebrews 9:27. 'Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgement.' No second chances; no successive incarnations. And so if reincarnation is true, Christianity is false.
So what is the state of the evidence?
There are two main reasons why reincarnation is an increasingly popular belief today. One is deja vu; the other is hypnotic regression. Many people think that these two phenomena prove indisputably that we have lived before.
Deja vu is the sense that we sometimes get, when we go to an unfamiliar place, of somehow having been there before. Everything seems uncannily familiar. Yet we know that in this lifetime we have never previously visited this spot. Could it be that we knew the place in a former existence?
Unfortunately, deja vu is fairly easily explained. It's basically a 'disrhythmic functioning' of the twin lobes of the brain (Encyclopedia Britannica). It's a simple mental illusion which means very little; and it is much more common in some kinds of people than others - epileptics, for example, and those who have had brain surgery, or are experiencing serious deprivation of food. The way in which it occurs tends to support the claim that it's just a delusive mental phenomenon.
Hypnotic regression at first sight looks very impressive. Subjects give detailed information about the circumstances of their previous lives, and a lot of it turns out to be very plausible indeed. And yet the people concerned may never even have read a book about the historical period which they are 'remembering'. Where is all this information coming from, if not from sunken memories of previous lives?
In some cases, the answer may be: imagination. The story may seem unbelievably accurate - until some facts may prove that the subconcious mind was simply jumbling together reminiscences of neighbours, stories that have been told, and events of a past.
But that can't account for everything. Is there another possible source of information?
It is possible, at least, that people who are regressed hypnotically go into a state in which they are able to perform the same feat, and feel on the memories of someone else as if they were their own. You can't prove this happens; butit seems just as possible as the 'previous lives' theory, and fits many ases much better.
So, there can be other explanations, besides previous existences, for the phenomena which are sometimes claimed to prove reincarnation. And there are lots of philosophical questions a believer in reincarnation has to resolve. If we all come back for repeated lives, why is the population of the world growing so quickly? Why do so many claimants turn out to have been Queen Victoria or Cleopatra? In what sense does the same person return, if 'he' is coming back with a completely different identity? Which of his 'selves' is he? And if you say, 'None of them - there's a kind of Super-self controlling them al', why is he never conscious of the existence of this 'Super-self', and how can you prove it exists?
Maybe Paul was right to advise Timothy to stick to the doctrine he'd already been taught?
A God of love could not let people go to Hell
I can understand this objection. It seems a bit incongruous, doesn't it, when you look at all those mediaeval pictures of demons with pitchforks herding terrified lost souls down into the flames, so that they can burn in torment for ever and ever - and then you reflect that Christianity is supposed to be about a God of love. It doesn't seem to fit.
But then when you read the Bible you find that no-one in the New Testament talked about hell more than Jesus did. It seems to have been a non-detachable part of his message. So was he wrong? And if he was wrong, is there anything left of Christianity?
I think that if you're going to sort this question out you need to look closely at the three key words in the statement above: 'God', 'love' and 'hell'. Let's do that.
First of all, what kind of 'God' does the Bible talk about? A God who is a person - not a Celestial Examining Board who will one day impassively grade each of us as 'Passed' or 'Failed - please destroy'. And so what God wants from us, more than anything else, is not a performance - a spotlessly pure moral life with no grey bits whatsoever - but a personal relationship. He doesn't insist that we live up to impossible ideas and kill ourselves trying to be good before he will admit us to his air-conditioned palace in the sky. He doesn't invite us to turn from the mess we hav made of our lives, accept his forgiveness, and begin on a lifetime of friendship and trust in his company. The offer is open and free if only we will accept it. But you can't force people to be friends if they don't want to be! And so God must always leave it possible for people to say No.
This is because he is a God of 'love' - the second word. Love doesn't kidnap people. Love respects freedom of choice. If God insisted that everyone should end up in heaven, irrespective of how we felt about it, that wouldn't be love. And also - love demands justice. It wouldn't be loving for God to make certain rules for the running of the universe - and then play fast and loose with them. If God has said, 'The soul that sins will die', he has to keep to his own decisions, however little he wants to. If he changed his mind every five minutes, and kept making exceptions, we wouldn't know where we stood. A universe run by an inconsistent, changeful God would be a terrifying place to live.
You see what I'm saying? If God really is a God of love, it must always be possible for people to opt out of his plans and choose to go the wrong way. And if they do, God's love means that he can't just change the rules and let them off! They have to be freely able to choose to ignore God - and take the consequences.
What are the consequences? This is where we come to the word 'hell'. Most people associate hell with fire, sulphur, flames and burning. Why is this?
Well, it's because the word used for 'hell' in the New Testament was the name of an actual place, outside Jerusalem, which was a Rubbish Dump. It was the place where you put objects which were of no further use to you - objects which had outlived any possibility of having a worthwhile function. And becuse Israel is a hot country, it wasn't a good idea to leave rubbish lying around to grow mouldy in the sunshine. So there wasan endless fire burning, day and night, so that rubbish would be dealt with as soon as it was thrown there.
This is the reality of the picture the Bible paints of 'hell'. Hell is the rubbish dump. It is the place where God has to put people who have written themselves obstinately out of his plans for the universe - people about whom God has to say sadly, 'You have chosen to be of no further use to the future of creation. I have to respect your choice and put you away from my presence, where you have decided to go.' More than this we aren't told, about what hell is like; all those mediaeval pictures are pure imagination.
I don't know what it's like. All I know is that anyone who goes there will have chosen to do so by deliberately rejecting God's offer of new life.
But does it need to be 'for ever'? Well, remember that we are talking about a sphere outside time - where our normal understanding of the passage of days and years doesn't apply. Hell is like being frozen in time, permanently set in one particular moment. It isn't God's plan for any of us. But it is something he will permit - if we are stupid enough to insist on it. A God of real love could do nothing else.
How can God condemn those who have never heard the Christian message?
More people have heard and responded to the Christian message in this century than ever before. But there are parts of the world where it is still unknown. What will God do about them? It isn't their fault that they know nothing of Jesus Christ. And what about somebody who lives all his life in an atheistic country like Albania used to be, where the government openly boasts that all religion has been abolished? If God was fair, wouldn't he give the Albanian as many chances to decide about Jesus Christ as the Westerner who is brought up in Sunday school, exposed to RE lessons in school, and has a choice of twenty or so local churches to attend as an adult?
How can God send people to hell just because nobody ever told them?
Well first, the Bible doesn't say that God does that. It insists that God is a totally fair and impartial judge, who does not play faourites - 'There is not favouritism with God' is a statement that occurs no fewer than six times in the New Testament. However God judges (and we're not told many of the details), we can be sure he'll get the verdict right.
Second, God does not want anyone to be condembned. 'He is patient with you,' explains Peter, 'not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.' In other words, if there is even the faintest chance of allowing someone to enter heaven, God will take it. The last thing he wants to do is to exclude anyone.
Third, just because people haven't heard the full story about Jesus Christ, it doesn't mean they have no awareness of God at all. When God put people, it was no mistake, according to the Bible: 'He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach ou for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.' There are plenty of indications in the experience that every human has, that God exists and needs to be reckoned with.
What sort of indications? Well, there are two features which seem to be common to human beings in just about every civilization in the world's history. First, we all have an inbuilt sense of the supernatural, and even of a divine power - an awareness that there is someone who is bigger than we are. Second, we all have a conscience. We all believe that some things are right and other things are wrong.
And it is in the light of these two thins that human beings will be judged, if they have not heard the Christian message. 'For,' says the Apostle Paul, 'since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.' Hearing about God's requirements helps to make it all much clearer - but just hearing isn't enough. 'For it is not thoe who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.'
So - how will God judge those who haven't heard? Fairly and justly, without any penalties attached for ignorance. But maybe that's not the question you ought to be worrying about. For many of us, a much more important question is this one: How will God judge me if I have heard and still refuse to do anything about it?
Now that we can create life artificially, we have no need of God
Human engineering, genetic manipulation, test-tube babies, experiments on embryos - science has taken and amazing leap forward in our lifetime. Ideas that used to exist only in the wilder reaches of science fiction (cloning? genetic selection?) are not being seriously discussed as possibilities for the very near future.
We've never been able to create human life before. Our grandfathers thought only God could do that. Well - now that we can, do we need God any more? Aren't scientists 'playing God' quite successfully?
I think there are three reasons why God hasn't been superseded - and never will be. Here they are.
First, we need God because 'creation' and 'procreation' are two different things. What we human beings do is 'procreate' - we produce new human beings, whether through sexual reproduction or artificially in a test-tube. But we don't 'create'. We aren't responsible ultimately for holding the whole framework of being and existence in place. God does that.
When you watch a film on television, the actors in the film may seem to be totally responsible for their own actions, and (if it's a reasonably good film) everything they do will have a full, satisfying explanation in terms of the plot and their own motives. But at the same time someone right outside is 'holding them in being' - you! Because you have the power to switch them off by pressing a button!
In the same way, we can develop and manipulate all sorts of physical processes within this world system - and in fact the Bible tells us that God has commanded us to! But the whole show still depends on his creatives control. Undertaken in the proper spirit, human engineering is not playing God at all, but serving God: playing the man if you like; but not playing God.
Second, we need God because every person is an individual, with a significance and freedom given by God. Just because we can 'create life', it doesn't mean the people we produce are just puppets we can play about with. Every human being is unique, however he was brought to birth in the first place. Even if we cold 'clone' people - that is, produce a nw human being who was a perfect physical and mental copy of somebody who already existed - the 'clone' wouldn't be an identical dummy version of the original person. Because what makes a person or individual is the unique pattern of experiences and relationships which make up his life, and that can't be reproduced. The simple fact of biological likeness doesn't mean a loss of uniqueness or dignity. Every human being still stands apart from every othr, and will only find the true satisfaction of his or her individual nature in a personal relationship with God, which fits the various parts of his life togethr and makes them make sense.
Third, we need God because science is a human business. It's wrong to think of science as an abstract, clinical affair conducted with total objectivity. Science is done by human beings, and so it involves human choices, value judgements, sometimes temptations. The results of science can be used for good or evil - to heal sick children or blow up cities. The kind of research done has to be chosen by people, and they may make the wrong choices - from reasons of pride, or stupidity, or greed, or inhumanity.
And our record so far shows that human beings are not very good at applying morality to science. Despite our stupendous discoveries, we are still selfish, greedy, conceited people. And the more we can do, through science and technology, the more damage we can cause! Man's biggest problem is himself. And on his own, he shows no signs of being able to solve that problem. He needs someone to come in from the outside and sort out his evil nature.
'No need of God'? I'd argue the opposite. I'd say we need God more desperately now, than ever we did before.