If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied Illuminate the "no's", on their vacancy signs If there's no one beside you, when your soul embarks Then I'll follow you into the dark. (I’ll Follow You Into the Dark, by Death Cab for Cutie)

I have been reflecting a lot lately on death and losing our loved ones to the Great unknown.  Now I know that the Great is known for many, in fact you could probably tell me all the specifics about Heaven and Hell if I bothered to ask you. I mean, for sure there was this time when I thought I had all the answers about the afterlife, Heaven and Hell, Jesus, religion and Christianity.  In fact I was certain about the “facts” back then that, if you say this prayer and go to this church and read this bible and hang out with these sorts of people then your after-life was a sure and certain thing – a veritable guaranteed paradise.  Sort of like winning the afterlife lottery if you will, because after all grace is freely given by God, we don’t get to pick God, he picks us and his grace is sufficient – right? It all made sense back in the day to me, you know a benevolent, loving God comes down to earth as a man to die on the cross for our sins because he loved us so much (John 3:16), so that no one would have to perish (like an old carton of milk) and all we had to do was accept this gift. Now I am not belittling this incredible story of love and grace and apparent passion that our father god had or has for us.  I believe it is great.  But then at some point I just had to start asking questions, much like this song asks questions of our current explanations of Heaven and Hell and the afterlife. What if Heaven and Hell are full when my loved one dies?  In the case that it is possible, would I choose Heaven over the one I love most in the world?  Would I pick to be celebrating in Heaven with Jesus if my wife were in Hell roasting like a sun dried tomato on the vine?  Could I be happy?  Could Jesus? The song quoted above is about denying uncertainty for the certain, and when we honestly take a look at the stories of Heaven and Hell that we have been told, whether from the Bible or in a Chick pamphlet or our own memories of Sunday School or church last week, can we truly say that we are certain about any of those things?  No really.  No I mean really.  Ask yourself the questions: -      Streets of Gold?  (So god is just as preoccupied with money as we are?) -      Mansions in the sky? (Uhm refer to the above statement and add onto that other questions like, who plunges the toilets and figures out the electrical issues and fixes the roof in Heaven?) -      Larger mansions based on how much you evangelized here on earth. (what?) -      Praising God forever through musical worship (Okay, forever?  I mean I get into a little Lord I Lift Your Name on High once in awhile, but forever?) -      Eternal Happiness?  (How?  I mean if we have followed the teachings of Jesus, how could we possibly be happy knowing that ¾ of the planet, our friends, family and other loved ones are burning in eternal conscious torment?) No, when I think about the afterlife, I think we have to be like Jesus.  Jesus who said, no matter what is on the other side of this, I am going to be with you in the end.  Jesus who said "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13) Jesus, who died for our sins, would die again and again to save us.  If eternal conscious torment is a real thing and my wife goes there because she “chooses” this somehow, then I pray to God I will have the courage to go with her.  I pray that I do, because the alternative seems more like extreme cowardice than anything close to righteousness.  To run off to Heaven, never looking back, never caring or wondering what happened to the others, smells a lot more like egocentric narcissism and nothing at all like Jesus. So the question that emerges from this little discussion is this, would you say "no" to paradise in order to save your loved ones? Well for me, even in “The Blackest of Rooms” I wish to follow you into the dark (the great unknown), because in the end, I feel that it is what Jesus would do. Here's a little parable called "The Rapture" written by Peter Rollins to consider. Here's the song in it's entirety: