Do Christians have any idea just how frightening the concept of eternal life is?

Question

So here's a thought experiment in realizing how long eternity is. Imagine you have a nice durable spoon, and enough time to eat your house, one bite at a time.

Then, you spoon up your state. All that wonderful chewy soil and rock, one bite at a time.

You move on to the earth, spooning up one tastey morsel after another for untold billions of years until you're done. Then you move on to the sun, for a real meal.

This hasn't taken up much of eternity, so you turn your spoon against the galaxy, and then the rest of the universe. One bite at a time, you digest everything that exists.

Congratulations, you still have as much time left as you started with.

Now don't you think at some point between here and Andromeda, you'd think, "wow, this whole eternity thing sucks, I wish I didn't exist?"

You know the phrase "be careful what you wish for?" You better hope that you're wrong about God. I'd hate to be forced to exist forever. It'd get awful dull after a while.

Yeah yeah, Heaven is going to be just peachy, I'm sure. Do you realize that eating the whole Universe could be your homework one day if God just wants to go out golfing and needs to give you busy work? He could call it a day trip for you and it would be pretty accurate considering how much time you have to kill. You'd be alive so long one day you'd eventually forget the whole incident out of the sheer amount of experience you'd had.

You people don't understand the basic problem - being conscious for eternity sucks, no matter what you're doing.

Answer 1

how right you are....

the problem isn't that people really like the idea of living forever, once you get them to face the magnitude and consequences of such a thing most understand how frightful it really is

it has more to do with the fact that people have a much greater and irrational fear of yet another concept.....death, the permanent and eternal annihilation of their particular consciousness

Answer 2

In every religion the aspect of eternity is the ultimate goal for your soul.
What your viewing as pointless existence is actually the fulfillment of the relationship you nurtured here on earth. With Christianity that relationship is with God/jesus/holy spirit.
The Eternity that you would find dull is dull because you are dull, not because eternity is dull. Existentially speaking, imagine you are a but a cell.Then image you learn something about you, that when you focus you can split yourself, effectively doubling yourself, continue doing so and the because tissue. After time you became muscle, bone, epidermi. Soon you become blood and air and food and the very earth around you, above you, below you. You wouldn't even be half way close to not being an a**hole. You have a hole in you. People do not seek to find nothing, you just think you are smarter then them and look the other way. Eternity is bliss when you have God. If you don't, well I believe the eternity you are describing is hell. Not the fire and brimstone kind, but actaul hell, the alienation of your soul from love and peace, in other wors God. I am careful what I wish for, Do you even know what you need?

Answer 3

Its going to be like a caterpillar and butterfly - except the butterfly lives on. As a caterpillar your life is limited. Life now can be nasty, brutish and short (pessimistic philosopher Hobbes) - it may be very nice for some, but just reading a paper or watching a documentary shows that not all are so blessed. Its certainly the christian expectation that everything unpleasant and frustrating, including presumably boredom, won't have place in heaven.

Answer 4

Yeah, the character Q from Star Trek hated his immortality. He was so bored, he wished for death to save him from the boredom. I think we would be the same way. No matter how nice something is, I wouldn't want it for an eternity. Even the most wonderful paradise becomes another hell after too much time.

Answer 5

Frightening?! No way! We are stiving to live as we should and have the Lord in our hearts so when we leave this earth we can spend eternity with the Lord! Scary! Not at all. What is scary and frightening is knowing the other side of the coin if we don't live for the Lord where we will end up. Burn in hell living in our sin for eternity. What is scary about never crying again or feeling sad or and never feeling pain again! Not scary at all.

Answer 6

Do you go to church? You've missed the entire concept of eternal life (except the ones going to hell...then you've hit the nail on the head). Eternal life, for those going up to Heaven to be with God forever, is going to be a wonderful thing. So wonderful that you'll forget about time and how long you've been there.

Answer 7

I do think an eternal life sounds scary,and every once and a while I think about it.But then I think the eternal life will be great because you get to spend it in Heaven and God will make it all worth while.

Answer 8

well if you apply the human pshycology of our time to it.. then yes it would suck.. BUT i believe that the way humans think when they go to heaven (the ones that do) changes ... the standards of good and bad change, the limit of ones knowledge changes... and thus for a life that has an end like this one, people have been created to expect death .. but a life that has been set for eternity, one would be conditioned to live with it and love it... i think this makes sense.. what say you

Answer 9

I answer your question this way- eternity is a very long time, and I would imagine it would be horrible to think about living eternally if you did not believe in God- With God, and His salvation through His Son- living forever worshiping Him is wonderful. Serving Christ is my greatest desire, so if I can do that forever, that is fine with me. I guess if I chose not to believe, I would not want to live forever, because of where I would be.

Answer 10

Now just imagine spending that long eternally boring eternity playing the same song on your harp and singing the exact same song of praise for1,204,035,385 quaddrillion, pentillion, octillion, zillion years, and that is just the beginning.

Eternal life sucks.