I think everyone believes in eternal life.
Some will say they don’t, and of course I can’t prove otherwise, but the way they live seems to indicate that deep down, eternity is set in their heart.
If you really, fully, confidently believed you were going to cease to exist entirely forever after 80 or so years on this earth, would you put effort into improving yourself? Would any kind of sacrifice make sense? Would the desire for a legacy exist?
Wouldn’t it make the most sense to spend every bit of goodwill, reputation, and social capital accumulated, not to mention physical wealth, by the time you die? Why take it to the grave with you if you could cash it out in your final years of existence and have a better time? Why not steal, lie, cheat, or even kill if it benefited you and you were close enough to the end to evade earthly judgements for these things?
Why would concern for the welfare of your children extend beyond your existence? From your perspective, when you cease to exist the whole world might as well cease to exist.
Yet we are concerned with these things. We don’t live as is we’ll be forever snuffed out upon our death. We live as if all of humanity is in some way our business, and our place in it will always matter.
Probably because it’s true.
But the fact that we don’t live as if we’ll cease to exist doesn’t mean that we do live fully recognizing the weight of eternity.
It seem everyone believes in eternal life, but no one believes in it quite enough.
If we were really, truly aware of our immortal souls, we’d likely spend this 80 or so years differently too.
For one, we’d probably slow down. It’s not a race. We can work on our minds, our health, our character, as we should, but without as much desperation for particular outcomes or attainments. We have eternity to keep improving. The habits themselves become more important that what they produce in the blink of an eye that is earthly life.
Same for bad habits. Sure, we can get away with them and put up with the bad consequences for a few score years, but imagine the compounding effects of those habits over millennia?
When you consider the idea that you have to live with yourself for eternity, it changes what seems important to focus on. The news and trends of the day will pass. But who you are will persist.
This is weighty in some ways, and convicting. But I find on the whole it comes as a relief. I don’t need to strive quite so much to achieve specific outcomes or worry about where I stack up in the eyes of others by the time this body fails me. I have eternity to keep working on the things I’ve started here.