Death is Certain. Afterwards, Not so Much.

I feel like one of the biggest things religion tends to do is answer the unanswerable questions we mortals were strangely given the power to ask but not know. Of the many questions, I find death particularly interesting, because of its inescapibly universal charateristic. I know that certain religions have defined certain paths souls or spirits or what-have-you take in the afterlife, often times depending on the acts this individual committed in his or her time on earth. This seems like a harmless enough of a mechanism through reward and punishment to guide the religious in their lives. But for most people that I've observed (including myself at a younger age), the mechanism seems to have the same effect that comes from parents telling their kids that Santa Claus is always watching, and if they are good, then they get loads of presents of all their favorite things; if they are bad, they're damned with coal and socks (I always need socks these days so I'd say that damning gift is case-based) and back-breaking chores, like digging the parents a pool in the backyard.

The effect of all this, however, isn't so straight forward. On paper, you'd think if kids were told (and assuming they believe Santa has the power to do this in addition to making them feel uncomfortable in various shopping malls) that Santa knows if they ever act bad thus begetting them crummy gifts, then the children would straighten up, pat each other on the back, and start preparing those tax forms for Daddy (it's always about the taxes) in order to get the gifts they justly deserve. Instead, after the first few Christmases that the kids are conscious of this broad schema, they start to notice that maybe they weren't so good throughout the year, punching their little brother in the stomach or setting the window curtains on fire, and yet lo and behold, they still receive presents promptly on Christmas morning. After a couple go-rounds of this they start relaxing a bit even though they still share that initial guilt during the worst moments. I feel like this is about as good as religion's reward and punishment scenario can work on the whole. People generally try to be good, but they're human - they're animals at their core, and sin will inevitably come in some form or another, maybe not all the time, but at least once in a while (more often with more stringent criteria - I'm looking at you, guilt-inducing Preachers).

But, you can always be redeemed, you can always be forgiven, because if you couldn't the Church would either be empty or full of liars. So there's always that creeping feeling of guilt and shame, but after a few repenting days/weeks/months(/years in jail) you're reborn and as good as new - people put on the rinse and repeat cycle for all their years. I feel like if people actually witnessed their friends and families who had sinned and died without repenting burning in Hell, then the point might hit home a little harder. Fortunately, we don't witness these things, and we also don't see the "good" ones playing tetherball with Papa God up in heaven, daquiries in their free hands. In fact, we don't witness anything that happens to the dead. We witness nothing. I mean we can still see their body and feel the warmth leave, but it becomes pretty clear that something very important is missing.

Again, this is where the consciousness comes into play for me. It appears that they can no longer experience anything, because there's no activity, no brainwaves, no letters home from camp in the clouds. They are no longer functional, but more importantly they are no longer conscious, and all that's left will become one with the rest of the natural world in no time at all. But these molecules, these particles that composed their body, were not suddenly introduced at birth and whisked away from existence at death. They've always been there. The only real change was the consciousness, on and off like the flip of a switch. Why, after all of eternity, do we suddenly get this blip of light in our eyes, sound in our ears, and the world at our feet, and then return to the same eternity that came before? Seems pretty ridiculous. But it happened.

This is where I start to wonder why people worry so much about death, painting pictures of burning, horrific hell or 72 degree, sitting pretty heaven, heaping golden chains and tridents on the casket for showing off in the afterlife, or laying out blueprints for the constellation they want to become. People can spend their whole lives worrying about death. Ain't that a little, I don't know, useless? After my brief high-speed internet search on afterlife in Judaism (out of curiosity, because I don't think I had learned about their thoughts on it before), I learned that there really isn't a whole lot of emphasis on the afterlife in Judaism (pending credible source). Seems, they think it's more important to reap the rewards of good deeds in the living life not the dead one. I have to say it makes a lot more sense to reap the benefits of loving all things in the life where you can actually feel some of that love returned to you. Now, don't get me wrong, I know their are instant rewards (ie in this lifetime) in likely all religions (obligatory Lennon's "Instant Karma" reference), but I just thought it practical to not have to worry so much about things we can't actually know. We've got life, so we should live it. Plenty of time for eternity later. And I think if anything, returning to the consciousness element of it all, death appears most like sleep, well dream-less sleep. You're just out, at rest, at peace. And that doesn't really seem so bad. For something (death) that so resembles what everyone can pretty much agree on that they love (sleep), it's almost surprising people don't welcome such relief at the end of a long life. But then again, it's hard to see humans welcome anything they don't understand.

I don't know, in the end I feel like the kids outgrow the whole Santa sham, but realize they should still probably be relatively good, because no one cares about assholes, in this life or the next. In the same way, I would think the religious (the reasonable ones) would also guide themselves more immediately on the consequences of their actions in this life and maybe take into account the whole heaven/hell thing as a more of the figurehead to their morality, just hanging out and looking powerful until death shows up. Thereafter, it's out of anyone's hands, leading to an involuntary leap of faith. So I guess if believing in something on the other side makes the leap easier to take on the preparatory steps up to the edge, go for it. Otherwise, I'd say just worry about things in this life, enjoy your blip, and have faith that everything will continue on as it always has whether you're alive or not (it will).