Inklings of Immortality

I'll never forget these words from my college writing professor, Jack Simons: "I have more to say than I have life left to say it in." I feel the same way—and I don't think I'm alone in this. I have more to express than I have life left to express it in. This includes thoughts, feelings, ideas, songs, new forms of art, my reactions to beauty and earth's metaphors, thoughts on God and reality and the ramifications of infinity, and so on. I yearn to share and discuss these facets of God's infinitely-faceted beauty with others and develop them through interaction and communal enjoyment. But I cannot—at least not to the degree that would do them justice. For example, I've heard music in my head that I cannot express because my fingers aren't trained and my memory can't retain it long enough for me to go out and learn how to recreate it, and even if I could recreate it, I don't know which instruments would make some of the sounds or even if such instruments exist yet. Add to that my unimpressive singing voice and you can see how the frustration could mount.

Lost inspirations and ideas, songs and inventions, feelings I couldn't describe and that left as quickly as they came—all of this used to make me sad because I assumed they would probably never come again, and it felt lonely because I felt I would never be able to share them with anyone.

We supposedly use only 10% of our potential brainpower; I feel that I express only 0.001% of what is in me, and if I work really hard, then maybe at the end of my life I will have bumped that number up to 0.01%. Imagine all the potential for regret there—"I could have been . . ." "I could have done . . ." "I could have created . . ." After all, it is all there in my mind and my soul.

I have to admit that if I were more of a doer than a dreamer, I'd certainly have more works to show for it. But even if that were the case, I'd still be limited in such a way that I would never be able to fully unleash my God-given potential this side of Heaven. The great limiter here is Sin and the curse that accompanied it—the curse that made humankind just a shadow of what it was meant to be. This causes manifold symptoms in our being to the degree that we truly are sick. With me, these symptoms are ideas and feelings lost in a flash because they were too big and beautiful for my fallen mind to handle or even begin to figure out or make sense of. I just do not have the means, the time, or the sustaining mental and physical faculty to carry them to fruition. And even if I were privileged with all of those, the hardships of this life would certainly hinder it (yet ironically I do realize that such hardships are often the catalysts by which wonderful works of art come into being in the first place).

There are of course those times that I do flesh out a vision, either in poetry, prose, or song. But it never quite matches the original, core "thing" that struck me in the first place. Its expression is imperfect.

Now, by God's grace, I have come to see such occurrences as the Muse opening my soul for a foretaste of the things I'll do for eternity, things that will come to pass—and things that I will do well. It's hopeful now, and I must give much of the credit for this outlook to Randy Alcorn. He has written a wonderful, biblically sound book that I can't recommend enough. It's simply titled, "Heaven." The issues I'm dealing with here (and have dealt with all my life) are addressed in Chapter 41, entitled, "Will Heaven Ever be Boring?" In that chapter Alcorn quotes some notable authors and pastors. The first is Victor Hugo, who wrote:

I feel within me that future life. I am like a forest that has been razed; the new shoots are stronger and brighter. I shall most certainly rise toward the heavens the nearer my approach to the end, the plainer is the sound of immortal symphonies of worlds which invite me. For half a century I have been translating my thoughts into prose and verse: history, drama, philosophy, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song; all of these I have tried. But I feel I haven't given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies within me. When I go to the grave I can say, as others have said, "My day's work is done." But I cannot say, "My life is done." My work will recommence the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes upon the twilight, but opens upon the dawn.

The hopeful news continues further on in the book. Alcorn writes:

In The Biblical Doctrine of Heaven, Wilbur Smith suggests, 'In heaven we will be permitted to finish many of those worthy tasks which we had dreamed to do while on earth but which neither time nor strength nor ability allowed us to achieve.'

This is an encouraging thought. It saves us from frantically thinking that we have to do it all now, or from giving up in despair because of the limits of time, money, and strength, and the duties that keep us from certain things we'd love to do.

James Campbell took comfort in this same idea:

'This throws some measure of relieving light upon the painful mystery of a life brought to a sudden close in the fullness of its power. In the presence of such a tragedy we instinctively ask, Why this waste? Is all the training, discipline, and culture of this choice spirit to be lost? It cannot be; for in God's universe nothing is ever lost. No preparation is ever in vain. There is need up there for clear heads, warm hearts, and skilled hands. . . . If some kinds of work are over, others will begin; if some duties are laid down, others will be taken up. And any regret for labour missed down here, will be swallowed up in the joyful anticipation of the higher service that awaits every prepared and willing worker in the upper kingdom of the Father. . . . He will allow no heaven-born hope to be put to shame, but will bring to realization life's brightest visions.'

Later in the chapter Alcorn quotes Bruce Milne:

The one who is Lord of the whole of life was never going to bring us at the end into an eternal existence of mental constriction, or of emotional and creative impoverishment. Creativity will surely be valued, for such an anticipation must be in keeping with the nature of him who set the morning stars a-singing when he created them at the beginning, and whose joyful, uninhibited cry echoes across the battlements of the new creation. 'See, I am making everything new!' . . . What creative possibilities await us in the unfolding of the eternal ages no present imagination can begin to unravel.

Lastly, Alcorn quotes from pastor Mark Buchanan's book, Things Unseen:

Why won't we be bored in heaven? Because it's the one place where both impulses—to go beyond, to go home—are perfectly joined and totally satisfied. It's the one place where we're constantly discovering—where everything is always fresh and the possessing of a thing is as good as the pursuing of it—and yet where we are fully at home—where everything is as it ought to be and where we find, undiminished, that mysterious something we never found down here . . . And this lifelong melancholy that hangs on us, this wishing we were someone else somewhere else, vanishes too. Our craving to go beyond is always and fully realized. Our yearning for home is once and for all fulfilled. The ahh! of deep satisfaction and the aha! of delighted surprise meet, and they kiss.

Now everything makes sense. I have more to do and express than I have life left to do it in. But let me adjust that sentence: I have more to do and express than I have life left in this present body of death to do it in. I am immortal! Unquestionably, I have more in me than 70 or 80 years could ever allow. Even if those years were graciously unhindered by physical and mental limitations and the general hardships of life that often force us to take stifling paths, and even if one had every creative tool and opportunity at his disposal every day of his life—even if all of those things were the case, a normal human lifetime would still not allow enough years to express God's image in oneself. I don't think even a million years would be enough. Like all humans, I am made for eternity. Therefore, by nature of what God has made me (an immortal), I must be filled with desires, passions, and skills that are able to be developed to the degree that eternity won't outlast them. Not to mention those aforementioned unexplainable inklings of future desires, passions and skills as yet unimagined because we have not yet seen the new colors, the new sounds, the new ???s, the new objects and concepts and realities to which these new and ever-increasing desires will be attached.

Mortality, not immortality, is unnatural. Death is unnatural. Sin brought death into this world. We were made for something far greater than this fallen universe allows. We are so much more than short-lived earth folk, because our Creator made us in His image, and He is infinite and unfathomably good, deserving eternal expression. We are vessels for that expression, each one uniquely tailored by God to reflect His glory and enjoy Him forever. And I am here only explaining the manifestation of this reality in my own soul—little me, one of billions.

Those who tell themselves that this life is all there is consequently come to life-limiting conclusions and world views, adopting humanistic philosophies all of which, upon slightly closer examination, turn out to be so sadly empty. Here's a common one (often the moral of a movie): "It's enough to know I lived a good life and made the world a better place. I can die now." It's certainly commendable to make the world a better place, but is that all that this life is about? You die and cease to exist, but at least you made the world a better place (too bad you won't be around to enjoy the improvements). Even the good feelings you would have about yourself and your magnanimity would vanish the moment you died. You would have nothing—you would be nothing except a memory to those still living, and you'd be lucky if that memory lasted more than two generations. Frankly, if this life is all there is, your end is dirt.

Even though these humanistic philosophies are more hopeful than, say, nihilism, they are all ultimately still hopeless. It always depressed me when I felt that group pressure—the kind that insists that you settle for their "good news." I remember being indoctrinated with it in public school, and I still see it in the banal messages of many films and other media. In light of God's reality, their good news is not only bad but awful, and their philosophies are oppressive, and always vain. They glorify man instead of God, but ironically they also devalue and dehumanize man because they don't allow him to be the eternal, God-imaged being that he is. Look at communism and Nazism, and what their atheistic conclusions led to.

Here's the liberating truth: All good things will receive expression. It fits with God's character. That Christ died to save sinners is certainly The Good News. However, that Good News encompasses much more than we often realize: when Jesus died, He not only redeemed sinners, He also redeemed the currently-cursed universe. It will know this redemption only at the end of the Age, when He refashions the universe and creates a new heavens and new earth. John Wesley sums it up: "The best is yet to be." For more on this, read the Bible. Oh, and need I plug Alcorn's book again?