What Happens When We Die?
Scripture seems to raise more questions than it answers
In our latest episode we discuss what we do and don’t know about what happens when we die. Do we face judgement in that instant or do we sleep for a while? Would we even notice a difference? Are there some folks like the martyrs and saints who are immediately taken into heaven? Are we somehow “in Christ” until the Second Coming and final judgement? What could that mean? Listen as your hosts examine the various and often competing voices from scripture and tradition and try to sort out what really matters here.
Chad: I don’t know that it matters that we know.
Charlotte: Something curious here to me is that if we think about the philosophy of religions, they all seek to answer this existential dread and this most pressing question of what happens when we die, and all of the world’s faiths have different answers for that… and then ours is so ambiguous. But maybe the point of some of that is just to keep pulling back to it’s this world, it’s this world, it’s this world that really matters. The lessons, the things we are told, are to love other people, here now, and to make this world a better place, here now, and that’s the focus...
Chad: I think we are supposed to have this hope that death is not the final end, so don’t fret that, but that’s supposed to enable us to live the life now, the kingdom now. The kingdom that is coming, we are meant to live that kingdom now based on the sure hope that even death can’t separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.
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I came across a quote from Bernard of Clairvaux that touches on the traditional/tri-part understanding of the postmortem process: death, intermediary rest, resurrection. He is talking about our experience of divine love in life, through death, and then after resurrected life. He compares it to a dinner party where our "inebriation" and fulfillment from divine love grow stronger as we go.
"Eat before death, drink after death, and we will be made drunk after the resurrection." (Bernard of Clairvaux from On Loving God)
I take it "Eat before death" is a head nod to the Eucharist. The "drink after death" represents the intermediary state between death and resurrection. That doesn't tell us much, but comparing it to a dinner party that just keeps getting better sounds pretty good. :)