If the AFTERLIFE gives your current life purpose, what purpose will you have in the afterlife?

Question

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If you need an afterlife to give meaning to your life now, what meaning can you look forward to in an eternal afterlife?

If you anticipate that, once there, you will never die, then you will face no risks. If there is time, it is endless. If, on the other hand, there is no time, you will have no sense of life being everlasting because a second would be equally as lengthy as a millennium.

If you get to keep your percepual senses, how will you discern beauty with no squalor with which to compare it?

And with no choices that could be worse than any others, how will you feel a sense of a directed life in the world to come?

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INNOKENT:
So there will be failure and struggle and resulting sorrow in the afterlife? Somehow I'm not certain your vision meshes well with the scripture and typical theology. Where do your ideas come from?

Answer 1

Afterlife is a hilarious concept.

Answer 2

~~~ NH ,,,,, According to The Concept of Reincarnation the "afterlife" is the same "place" as the "pre-life",,, or as some interpret as The Ethereal Plane or Realm. In this realm the Time/ Space Continuum does not exist as we know it here. Consequently it is difficult for most human minds to conceive that "a second would be equally as lengthy as a millenium." To your 3 Qs- During our "time" on The Wheel of Karma and going through the Birth/Death/Re-birth Cycle we use The Etheric Plane as a Staging Area between Human Lifetimes. When we finally follow the Wisdom of the great teachers like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, etc, etc, then we will eventually attain "Enlightenment", thus becoming An Enlightened Being. Our "Human Senses" should not be confused with our "perceptual senses", as you refer is our Conciousness, in general, which we are here to develope.We then have the option to become a Bodhisattva, who as an "enlightened one" can return to assist in The Collective Soul Growth of Mankind OR we Graduate from "Earth School" and on to another Multi-verse or,,, somewhere else in this Universe in a galaxy far, far, away,,,,, ~ Namaste`

Answer 3

I see this life (and the ones before it) as short feild trips to learn stuff. Each time I've had a couple of "themes", something to work-out. After this trip is over, I plan on going back Home and continuing my work, probably in the entertainment or music field, enjoy my little house with all my plants and trees, and enjoy the occasional celebration, or party. Evidentally there is no negitivity there in Heaven, no need to sleep, or eat... This doest sound weird, but I'm sure we already know how do exist there, since we come from there. I suppose we can remember this hell hole when we want contrast to beauty.

Since I'm having a hard time this life figuring out who I am and what I'm supposed to be doing... My hope is that eternally in Heaven, I wont feel so "lost"... This helps me with taking the pressure off of hurring up to "find myself"... I am going as fast as I can.

Answer 4

this could be how an Atheist thinks. For the Atheist, there is no longer something greater suitable than residing and shortage of existence. as quickly as lifeless, you now no longer exist for all eternity. If this type of theory have been genuine, then why no longer get all you additionally can as alive? Why no longer earnings from others, get wealthy, make our very own lives the main comfortable as achieveable, regardless what takes place to others. fairly, why no longer get rid of the disabled, the undesirable, etc. they are dropping our time and components. Why have morals? they only get interior the way and carry us back. Why even enable existence stay? If we blow up the planet, might the universe omit us? a minimum of there could be not greater suffering of any style. i've got confidence there is greater to it than basically residing and shortage of existence. i do no longer think of it is basically to propogate existence in basic terms. i've got confidence there is a few thing previous dying. What that some thing is i'm no longer able to assert, yet i can't settle for the Atheist selection. It isn't clever.

Answer 5

No one knows exactly what the afterlife is like, people don't come back to tell us. But imagine a place where everything is perfect and nothing could ever possibly make you feel anything but extreme happiness and joy.

Answer 6

although i do believe in an afterlife , it isnt that belief that gives this life purpose ( that would be my kids etc )
but from my beliefs , we have many things we can do in the afterlife
things to learn , work , hobbies , entertainment ( so to speak )
and this life has given us as much to discern with
and I do not believe that the next life is without choice and free will

Answer 7

I traveled through this question on your blog earlier *smile*

Live every moment of this life to the fullest, no matter what you believe, because whatever comes after this life will be significantly different.

Answer 8

This occured to me before:

I dont think the afterlife is any different than this one.

Apart from no death and no STDs ^^

I hope to God I can work there.

Assuming I go to heaven to begin with! haha

Answer 9

The afterlife begins here. Christ asserted in prayer "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the one true God."

The whole of the Christian life is drawing nearer to God and becoming more like Him. That is both the goal and the content. This doesn't change after death. We'll simply proceed from "glory to glory" as we become ever more like Him, but being finite, we can never encapsulate Him. We, thus, will change and progress for eternity.

EDIT:

I never said anything about failure. I just said there would be change. I should have clarified that. The change itself means that life will be vibrant and meaningful (Where, as an aside, do you draw the conception that we will be static or that sorrow is necessary for the good life? I doubt Scripture).

For the passages, this is the doctrine of theosis. It's a bit too foreign to explain in detail online, but I'll include some links to explain it.

Basically, we are promised that "His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having excaped the corruption that is in the world through lust." I Pet. 1.3-4. We can never encapsulate fully the divine nature, and thus, we "with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed in to the same image from glory to glory." (II Cor. 3.18).

By becoming like this, we become sons of God by grace (Mt. 5.9, Eph. 2.8-9). In the Church, Christians can become one with each other and God in a way like that between the Son and the Father, for the Lord when He prayed, "I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may lieve that You sent Me. And the glory which which You gave Me I have given them that they may be one just as We are one." (Jn. 17.20-21). This makes us "sons of light" (Jn. 11.36) and fountains of Living Water (Jn. 4.14, 7.38).

The Church is a nation of priest-kings (I Pet. 2.9), and as such, we mediate Christ, not so much to unbelievers as to all of creation. For man's disobedience corrupted the world and brought the Flood (Gen. 1-11), but our obedience is designed to redeem the world in the same way. This process allows God to be "all in all" (I Cor. 15.28). Even the unbelievers will burn in a "lake of fire burning with divinity" (Rev. 19.20, 20.10; the word θεῖον means both divinity and brimstone, a play on words lost in English). This is just as the men throwing the young men into the furnace in Babylon were killed by the same fire while they danced in with God (Dan. 3). God, truly, will be all in all, even the wicked.

This is a small sampling of the Scripture in support of the view I advanced. It is the standard view of the Orthodox Church, and we can find it testified outside of Scripture back all the way to the earliest days, and as my post indicates, it is replete in Scripture. While not everyone will find it joyous by any stretch, the afterlife is exploring and experiencing one facet of God moving to another, always merging our natures with His, but being finite, we will always change. The doctrine is theosis (or also called divinization or deification), and it is supported throughout the millennia (and NOT to be confused with the Mormon doctrine, which sounds similar but is quite different).

Answer 10

I live my life to learn lessons and grow. And if I don't learn them all, I get to come back and figure it out again. Cool huh? :) So its all about life.