Afterlife

I would like to share with you here my response to a question posed to me concerning my beliefs as to what happens to "sinful" people in the "afterlife". The question stemmed from a reflection on the true meaning of the term "sin" and a passage from scripture that talks about death as being the wage of sin.

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Dear Friend,

Since you asked, I will share with you my personal thoughts and sincere beliefs concerning the "death" of the soul. When a soul makes a free will (willful) choice to break away from God, it is (for all intents and purposes) ultimately a choice to be God. Usually, a choice would subsequently be manifested in the form of an act by the body as controlled by the mind (the mind being influenced by the soul).

Please allow me to clarify further that not all acts committed by the body originate from the soul (a large chunk of our actions are sparked by human programming - whether it is natural programming or social programming). It is oftentimes difficult for our mind to discern which acts originate from the soul and which ones originate from human programming. Nevertheless, I would not allow this element of uncertainty to distract me from my resolve to simply live my life striving to do as much acts of love as I can manage to do in my lifetime because acts of true love are manifestations of a soul's choice to be in union with God (for God is Love and love is God).

Whenever I address any question posed to me, I first try to establish commonality in the meaning of terms used - in this case "afterlife". I will presume that we are both taking this word to mean the eternal life after the SCC (Second Coming of Christ). If that is the case, then here is the answer - the SCC (or the end times) is the final moment when a "showing of hands" occurs (as in the showing of hands in a poker game). All acts committed within all lifetimes of a soul will reveal whether a soul chose to be in union with God or if it chose to break away from God.

All souls that choose to be in union with God will live in union with God for all eternity. Now what about those souls that choose to break from God? What happens to them at the end times? Well, there are well-known passages in scripture that allude to an eternal state of existence in "fire" (note that the term "fire" as used here is not the same as fire as we know it in this world - it is a spiritual fire). There are also passages that allude to these souls being "destroyed".

Well, what clues can we use to answer this question? Let's look at the example of the fallen archangel Lucifer who was supposedly the most beautiful of all angels and of the highest form. So high in form was Lucifer that he became filled with so much PRIDE, and shortly thereafter, exalted himself to being equal to God. In so doing, he broke his union with God and immediately after he did so, his beauty withered away and he turned into the hideous and imperfect being that most refer to as Satan. In like fashion, all the legions angels entrusted by God to this archangel and who followed Lucifer (in breaking away from God) ended up with the same fate.

Humankind is in this imperfect and fallen state as well because of the choice of Adam and Eve to break from God and be like God. Fortunately for mankind, God sent Jesus to be the new Adam and make a redeeming choice to reunite ALL mankind (regardless of whether they know of Jesus or not) with God through the sacrificial surrender of Jesus' free will to God's will.

Long story short, I do not know what exactly happens in the afterlife to those souls that chose to break from God. It is really not my business to know (the truth concerning this) and it is of no relevance to me since my eternal choice is to always be in union with God and to let my life reflect this choice by always striving to do acts of true love as much as i can. Let me end by reflecting on Mother Teresa's insight (that she shared with us and as exemplified by her life) that we all cannot do great things, but we all can do little things with great love.

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