Exploring the possibilities of an alternate theology.
Be warned: These are merely the swirly thoughts of a student who has yet to take any college-level theology. The following may run on inconsistencies, incompatibilities, maybe contradictions, even—but such is the mechanism of the swirly thought.
What is death?
Death is, in Christian tradition, the gateway to eternal life; it is the step a soul takes from the physical world of things to the metaphysical realm of the Divine. Those who scoff at the visualization of a soul leaping out of the body and flying upward into Heaven most probably also scoff at this interpretation of death.
Consider this possibility: death is the limiter of life, a limiting function, if you will. Because this life is limited, it can be of value; If life as we know it were infinite, after all, we would experience an infinity of existential angst and complete boredom—meaninglessness. Thus, the interplay of death and life becomes the grounds for our sense of wonder at the beauty of Creation.
This doesn’t depart from the Christian view of death. In fact, this affirms it—would an eternally meaningless existence be of any worth? No, it might as well not last for more than a day! And we find ourselves flung into this life without any warning or briefing, facing the possibility of death one day.
The timing of that day is very important, as well—if we knew just how far our lives stretched, then the meaning we derive from it would, proportionally, stretch that far, too. Yet we do not know just when we die—every day we live is possibly our last, and death may come at any moment in time. That, methinks, stretches the meaning of our lives infinitely, as the meaning of life becomes infinitely significant in every living moment. Our lives explode with meaning. Death, then, becomes yet another kind of gateway, to another kind of infinite life.
