I was intrigued by the recent story of the Ballard businessman who witnessed a car accident outside his store. As one car burst into flames, he ran to the vehicle, opened the door and pulled out a three-year-old girl, saving her life. The driver, the girl's father, could not be saved.
A few nights later, according to this hero, he was visited by the man who died in the fire. In this vision, the man asked the hero to visit his place of work and tell everyone not to be angry with the driver who caused the accident. This businessman did just that. The deceased man's co-workers, still in a state of grief, were thankful for his visit.
Stories like this make me wonder. Is there an afterlife? If there is an afterlife, is the veil between the living and unliving so thin that at times they interact?
In Luke's gospel the Sadducees come to Jesus to try to discredit him before the people. They didn't believe in the resurrection, not because they didn't have faith in God, but because they believed in strict adherence to the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, and the Torah doesn't give mention to an afterlife. They hoped to trap Jesus by showing the resurrection is illogical, using Moses' Law that a women who is widowed is to marry her deceased husband's brother. The Sadducees take this to an extreme, asking Jesus whose husband she would be in heaven if each brother she married after being widowed also died.
Jesus used the Torah in answering. While the Sadducees drew upon an explicit teaching of the Torah to ask the question, he points to a truth implicit in the language of the story of Moses and the burning bush to craft his response. God, in speaking to Moses, says, "I am the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob." They must have somehow still been alive to use the language, Jesus reasons. He also tells them that their question makes no sense since there is no marrying in heaven.
Do you think Jesus' answer is convincing? What do you think about life after death?
I do not know whether there is an 'afterlife', a heaven and a hell. I think what Jesus is saying is that it is not about the physical death of people that he is teaching us. The rules that we live by on Earth does not apply after our physical death. As Jesus says,(Luke 20: 35-36) “...the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels....” In the verse, Luke 20: 37-38 tells us that God is not the God of the dead but of the living.
ReplyDeleteI believe in “life after death,” but it is not the same as life after a 'physical death.' It is the death of my 'old self ' and the resurrection of my new self in Christ.
I'm counting on being able to talk with my parents again someday. I think they are present with me now in some form, but I want to hug them agian. Yes I'm sure there is some human emotion in my belief or need that I will be able to do that, but I also believe in the resurection of the body.
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