Contemplative Bible Reading

Matthew 19:29 (New International Version 2010)

And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.

This is one passage that mentions eternal life. There are many others. Christians through the ages have looked forward to the promise of eternal life, to never die, to never suffer the precursor of death.

Let’s try to take a different view of eternal life. Let’s view it from the standpoint of chemistry, physics, astronomy – the natural sciences. Life here on earth is a comfortable life in the right climate. This stems from our abundance of water, oxygen, and energy. The main source of energy is our sun. We don’t think of it much given our life span of less than a hundred years, but one day our sun will have consumed all its energy and will go dark. Life here on earth will become quite uncomfortable.

I don’t have to worry about the discomfort of life on earth with a dark sun. I will die long before that happens. Unless, that is, I have eternal life.

And then there are all the other stars in the sky. They are much like our sun providing energy to the universe. They too will one day have consumed all their energy and will go dark. When all the stars in the universe go dark, the universe will be a cold, dark, uncomfortable place.

I do not want eternal life. It would be horrible, it would be unimaginably horrible to live after our sun and the other stars go dark.

That is the curse of eternal life under the natural sciences – a cold, dark, horrible existence.

Now we bring God into view. We can’t explain God and God’s power with the natural sciences, i.e., God is super-natural. Where we spend eternity is a topic of debate – a topic for some other day. For now, I believe that Revelations means what it says in that a new heaven will come down and rest on a renewed earth, and that is where Christians will spend eternity with God. Eternity on this earth, but not the eternity explained by the natural sciences where the sun and eventually all the stars go dark and we have a horrible existence.

No, eternity with God will be different. God will change time and space and the consumption of energy by the stars. God will remove the curse of eternal life. Thank you, God.