Two Kinds of Immortals
There are precisely two kinds of
people in this world: 1. Those who believe that Jesus is the son of God and was
sacrificed on the cross for the sins of the world, effective for all those who
put their faith in Him, and 2. Those who do not.
My wife and I are one body according to the Bible. Paul says this union is a mystery. I am the head of my wife. And Christ is the head of the Church. Ephesians 5. It is difficult for non-believers to understand how close a man and his wife are in a marriage of believers. Being qualified by the Holy Spirit (an infinite being in power, love, goodness, mercy, strength, knowledge, longsuffering, and kindness), my marriage is necessarily closer than is possible for any non-believers.
This explains how a non-believer
could never understand how I can make a decision for my wife regarding something quite
personal, something essential to her being, and it be good, pleasing to God. We
are two spirits in one flesh, that is something that non-believers cannot
understand and realize (fill out in reality) even though they are married. It
is a lesser form of marriage, a pitiful shadow of true union.
As beautiful as love and marriage are, we must never forget that Jesus spends more time speaking (and warning) about hell.
C.S. Lewis said something most interesting and illuminating regarding the ineluctably immortal nature of human beings.
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all love, all play, all politics. These are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life to ours is as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. Our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the blessed sacrament itself, you neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is hour Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorfier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.[1]
I believe many non-believing people today take false comfort in the assumption that at least they get to die and be done with existence when their mortal flesh is used up and through with this life. They are created free to make such assumptions, and to live by them. However, they are not free to create the rules of this universe. They did not create this universe anymore than they created themselves, an obvious fact from which amazingly enough people are able to hide themselves throughout the span of their lives, until it is too late.
If the Bible is correct regarding the truths it plainly teaches regarding the afterlife, then our neighbors, friends, acquaintances, and coworkers who are not believers are in for the most horrifically rude awakening that is so bad words cannot scratch the surface in any attempt to faithfully describe the horror of their future into eternity.
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