What Afterlife Will You Choose?

Author’s Note: 

Sometime in 2018 or 2019, I was accosted by a man holding a “Heaven or Hell?” sign while walking to get lunch at a local town festival. He was polite enough, but I’d had long years of preparation to answer his sign’s query. He didn’t like my answer. I quoted scripture to him, directly out of Jesus’s red ink, and he got rather peeved with me (the man, not Jesus). Later that day, police rounded up this man and his fellows because they did not have the proper paperwork to be at the festival, and they were made to depart. However, all of this got me thinking about what really happens after we die, and it is a topic I have returned to many times in the intervening years. 

The Scripture I quoted? It’s the one where Jesus tells people not to be performative with their piety. Matthew, 6:5: “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.” In this case, I’m pretty sure that reward is a reference back to one of the options on the man's sign. But who can know for sure?

I hope that, when the time comes for me to expire, I am surrounded by my loved ones. Nothing would please me more than to spend my final moments with the people I love most in the universe. If, however, that option is not left open to me, I have often fantasized about going out while doing something terribly heroic, saving lives or defending the innocent. I know that's not very likely, but I can honestly say, of all the possible endings, they both fit my philosophy.  

As Hamlet so eloquently points out, death is “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns.” Over the eons of human history, our species has created millions of possible afterlife scenarios, all of which are based on no evidence at all that we know of. A recent book about the topic, the 2010 bestseller *Heaven is For Real*, is ostensibly about a little boy’s trip to Heaven when he briefly “died” from complications of appendicitis. The book blew up, and I remember people putting it on hold and complaining that we didn’t have enough copies. In the years since its publication, though, it received a lot of criticism, mainly by other Christians who called it “Heaven Tourism” and a “cash grab to pay medical bills.” There’s no evidence to suggest that the boy in the book was ever clinically dead. The whole thing seems like a ploy to exploit rubes, like all such books and stories, but people still read it all the time and probably believe it.  

It’s not just Christianity. I know of no monotheistic religion that has ever managed to believably prove its own version of the afterlife. Not that most of them have created an appealing afterlife to begin with. Some seem brutal, others unspecific, still others cannot seem to agree among themselves about what their own books say. Despite this, they proclaim to know without doubt what each of us can expect when we, again quoting Hamlet, “shuffle off this mortal coil.”  

Evangelicals have very strong feelings about heaven. Indeed, they use it as one half of a hammer-and-anvil combo intended to guilt people into belief. Problematically, Evangelicals claim to want everyone to go to Heaven, while simultaneously holding the incoherent belief that not everyone can be “saved,” as they put it. This goes nowhere in explaining the incessant Bible-thumping. Yet, specific questions about heaven are rarely forthcoming. I was told, as a lad, that we would get to see our lost loved ones, live eternally, and enjoy things that our fragile terrestrial bodies couldn't manage while living. When I dug deeper, though, I was put off by what I found.  

Heaven, it turns out, is not endless ice cream without tummy aches and soaring like an eagle. Rather, it is the mindless worship of a capricious and disturbingly self-absorbed deity, who demands constant adoration for all eternity. That sounds too much like the DPRK to me. Even the examples of heaven given in the scriptures that differ from this are dubious. References to mansions, pearly gates, and storing up treasures feel too full of avarice and greed to be anything truly heavenly. The message seems to suspiciously address the poor masses with an unctuous promise: “Just wait till you die and things will get better.” If one is living in a Hobbesian nightmare, like serfs in a feudal dystopia, then images of relief from pain, being reunited with lost loved ones, and eternal joy probably sound great. Still, to enjoy that one has to cease to live. It feels like a scam.  

As a child, I was told that I would be able to meet members of my family who had gone on before, so long as they had accepted Jesus as their personal savior. Of course, there was no real way to know who had agreed to this proposition. A question of this nature plagued my mother about her father's position in that afterlife for most of her own life. Since she could never know, it was a source of doubt and pain. He became, in essence, Schrödinger's father, and the only way she could ever know was to “wait and see.” She truly suffered and yet said little, because we were also told that longing to see our loved ones in heaven was akin to ancestor worship and idolatry and therefore, a sin.  

As bald-faced and tawdry as these doctrines appear in hindsight, they are specifically designed to hold people hostage by their legitimate grief and longing to be reunited with those who have died. Emotional manipulation and coercion seem a high cost for the proclaimed certainty of heaven. When I see proselytizers holding signs with “Heaven or Hell?” painted on them, I have an answer prepared that might shock them if they ever ask me which I’d choose.  

Judaism has a heaven, possibly borrowed from its ancient Hellenic or Mesopotamian traditions, where we might be able to commune with our ancestors or great ones from ages of yore. I admit that this is desirable to me. Judaism is less of a gatekeeper than a speculator, it is true, and places more value on legacy in its most temporal sense than on some paradise in the clouds. Those who don't rate that afterlife wind up in Sheol, a bleak and gloomy underworld, sometimes translated as “the grave.” Hey, at least there isn’t eternal torture.  

It would be interesting to be able to commune with Einstein or Spinoza in a Judaic heaven. Sadly, a cherem was placed on Spinoza by his coreligionists for his writings, which they believed he composed to disprove God. This excommunication was intended to deny him access, among other things, to his faith's afterlife. Pretty audacious, we might think, but this sort of thing happens all the time in monotheistic faiths. However, Spinoza was far too humble and never said a word against his accusers. I take pleasure in noting that we remember him and his incredible contributions to philosophy and human thought, while the greedy and dogmatic mammals who signed the ostracism order have long been forgotten.  

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Buddhism and Hinduism take pages from earlier, possibly pagan religions far older than Christianity or even Judaism, and add ancestor veneration as a noble and expected practice rather than a sin. Both describe Nirvana not as a place, but as the final achievement of absolute emptiness after eons of purgatorial reincarnation. Loved ones who live good lives may progress from human to more noble beasts, but weak or evil humans could be demoted to bugs or worms or other vermin. Eventually, if one lives well enough, ultimate emptiness can be achieved. This afterlife, although the multiple-lives aspect seems absurd to me, has the merit of at least nodding at the most likely physical reality, to which I am coming.  

The polytheisms and folk religions, generally, have no afterlife to speak of, but my favorites are those where the way one leads life determines their afterlife. The Norse mythologies depended heavily upon a fatalistic belief system. If one died in battle, a most desired end, one could be sent to Valhalla, to battle in the coming universe-ending cataclysm called Ragnarok. If one died at sea, one went to the realm of the sea god, Ran, and his wife, and ate roasted fish for eternity. A more underworld-like afterlife awaited those who died in bed because of illness. None of it is particularly attractive, but it says a lot about how people imagined that what they did in life echoed in eternity.  

The many natural religions, which are sometimes called heathen, pagan, or indigenous, seem to have a deeper respect not just for humanity, but for all life and the planet as well, and therefore, often feel like a more believable solution. In these faiths, after we die, our bodies go back to the earth to make something else grow. This seems a desirable form of eternal life and also puts the final, inarguable position into play: that we are made up of what makes up our planet, our galaxy, our universe, and that, in the end, we go back to it. As Carl Sagan so beautifully put it, “We are made of star stuff.”  

I find this deeply enchanting. It is likely the most reasonable and scientific reality as well, and as such, is the least problematic position. However, if one really feels the need for a defined afterlife, then I propose another option, which is that we make our own afterlife. And no, I'm not talking about consequences, as in Hell or damnation or reincarnation. Rather, I am suggesting that we literally compose our own afterlife, as we would like it to be.  

I'm not a fan of the traditional afterlife options, but I can take the best elements from some of them. I love the idea of huge tables of food, each surrounded with people one might wish to speak with. I would obviously choose Tolkien, Orwell, Lewis, Doyle, Churchill, the Cromwells (Thomas and Oliver), Socrates, members of my family that I have missed or never met. We could eat without getting full and chat without getting tired. We could even have debates, where I could continue to have the brilliant experience of learning and growing. I mean to say, why stop after death, right?  

Then, of course, there are the other desirable possibilities. I could imagine myself wandering the edges of a Scottish loch, dwelling in a deep pine forest on the side of a mountain, just sitting, listening, feeling, observing, never cold, hungry, wet, or tired.  

I could wish to see the progress of my children and grandchildren and other members of the family that go on without me. Since the one unbreakable rule seems to be that one cannot ever come back, though, it might cause stress or strain to wish to intervene, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, to the benefit of reputation or to aid in some way.  

Ironically, that brings me back to an aspect of the afterlife that has always fascinated me but which I find to be more daunting than any putative damnation. What if, when someone ceases to live, rather than passing on completely, they get stuck, unable to find peace, and wander in a twilight realm between life and death? Sounds too much like other silly ideas, like purgatory or limbo, to me. Still, it is a daunting idea.  

Speaking of Tolkien, his idea of Valinor, the Undying Lands beyond the western sea, has always been something I wished were true. The idea that death is not the end, and that we go on, is one that is a formative part of the way we see the universe. The hardest thing in the world is to imagine a world where one no longer exists in any way. This is impossible for a conscious mind to consider, specifically because consciousness cannot imagine no consciousness.  

The ancient works of Bushido, as written in The Book of Five Rings and Hagakure, both express the requirement of the human mind to contemplate death at every possible opportunity. This sounds morbid, but there is a point beyond the depressing nature of the topic. Thinking of oneself being burned alive, cut open, attacked with spears, swords, bullets, wasps, a gang of hoodlums, or even being rent to pink mush by a trampling rhino are all intended to get the mind used to the idea that we are impermanent. Life is fragile. None of us will get out alive.  

That thought is daunting. Our natural position is to fear death. We know at some very intuitive level that, to quote Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, a thing we don't talk about at parties, that we are not here for long. We manage to convince ourselves otherwise and live in a veil of self-delusion. This deception is compounded by the lies told by religions that pretend there is something else beyond the wall of death, which both cheapens and ultimately negates our behavior in the moment.  

This mindset is off-putting. Why should I only do good in life because of a promised reward after death? I also shouldn't behave in life because I fear eternal punishment when I die. Neither of those positions puts the onus on us to be our best selves in the moment for the right reasons. This is why it seems that some monotheists are miserable.  

Focusing on death may seem to be a similar motivation, but there is one difference. Understanding that we are going to die—must die—and that our end can happen at any point and with little input from us, means that we have to try to take advantage of living in the moment. Understanding our mortality boosts our morality. If we know that this moment is all we have, we tend to behave better in that slice of time.  

It also helps us to be less egocentric. I’m not the only one who suffers and eventually will die. Everyone else is experiencing those things as well. How can I help them? By telling them that things will be better when they die, or by showing them the compassion and empathy of solidarity in mortality? I know which one seems right to me.  

I know what my answer would be to the “Heaven or Hell?” question on that sign, and I have and will give it again. Neither. I certainly don’t want to be remembered for spending my Saturdays holding up religious signs by the highway. To me, focusing on what happens after we die cheapens the one real miracle most of us take for granted every day: we’re alive now. Since I don’t know if I’ll be here later, or tomorrow, or even in a week, I want to spend more time with the people I love now. That’s the legacy I want to leave behind.  

That’s the one thing that I think the Norse and Germanic folk religions get absolutely right. Our legacies are the part of ourselves that really do live on in the hearts and memories of those who knew and loved us. That is how we go on. Someday, when our grandchildren are old, they will look back, hopefully with joy, and remember me, and in that way, I will live on. When they tell their children and grandchildren about me, I will live on, just as my mother, her father, and my grandparents live on in my heart and mind. That’s the real afterlife. That’s the one that I will ultimately choose. Unlike other variants, the work starts here and now, and, it makes the most sense.