What If Death Is Like Near Death?
What If NDEs Aren’t Just Oxygen Deprivation?
My target readers here are skeptics who think near-death stories are dreams or hallucinations. A friend once told me about a patient who met Clint Eastwood and Charlton Heston in the afterlife. I can’t say I blame him for putting that tale in the Bigfoot category.
Just for fun, though, turn your doubts on themselves for a minute or three. Imagine your inner cynic is wrong. What difference would it make if a lot of the stories are true? What if compassion is a central feature of reality?
Nearly every person sharing a near-death experience (NDE) on YouTube said a loving presence enveloped them. They were immersed in love. It felt intense. It felt like home.
I believe love is why we’re here on the planet and that ultimately it’s our purpose for life. They say people who’ve had near-death experiences often report back that at the end of our lives we have a life review and we’re asked one question, and that question is, how much did you love?
People who found a purpose to their life on Earth through an NDE have almost always talked about love. They say they were meant to learn about love or to lovingly help someone.
My inner cynic wants me to sneer. Heaven sounds like a great place to learn about love, but a planet full of war, rape, poverty, betrayal, and bitterness strikes me as a terrible classroom for the topic. It’s like cooking Spam on a dirty griddle to prepare for a career as a French chef.
Here’s my cynical “Nazi test” for the theology of compassion. Love your enemies? No, not the Nazis. Turn the other cheek? No, not to a Nazi. People who do bad things are bad people and ought to be dealt with as such.
The premise here, of course, is to imagine the cynic is wrong. What then? What if loving in the face of hate is the best choice? What if stark alienation can teach you something amazing about love?
Even the memory of mild alienation would take on a new perspective in the afterlife. You’d regret having looked at so many people through jaded eyes. You’d realize how much spiritual beauty you missed by stuffing coworkers, neighbors, and cousins into pigeon holes like:
- nitpicker
- bore
- gossip
- tattle-tale
- egotist
- scaredy-cat
- fool
- oddball
- jerk
Every last one of those people may have earned their label by stirring too many pots, but judging what they’ve done should never justify some final verdict on their worth as a living presence. You are much more than your past mistakes. So are they.
If everyday judgments are wrong in the light, they must be wrong here in the dark too. Maybe we’re meant to think, feel, and do wrong things. Maybe we’re meant to learn how awful it feels to turn our backs on God.
So, that’s long enough to suspend disbelief. If you expect to stop existing when your body stops breathing, that’s okay. You might learn something by expecting to end.
Just the same, keep the other option in reserve. Use it as hope when your life goes horribly wrong. Leave open the possibility that your worst nightmare — the thing that should never have happened — was really the challenge you were meant to face. Failing at a job, falling ill, losing a lover, or destroying your own reputation might be just what you needed.
If that were true, what might you learn about love?
