Andy Borgmann's Blog

I have wrestled with a question for years; probably since I was at least 8. It's an odd question, especially for an 8 year old. Ready?

Is death the only thing that makes life enjoyable?

As years past, and my belief in Christ grew, I have later rethought the following question this way: is eternal life really an eternal hell?

I very much enjoyed a short-lived show on Fox this past year called New Amsterdam. It was about a man (John Amsterdam) who had been alive since 1642, who couldn't age or die until he found his true love. Through out the centuries he married different women, held different jobs, but in the contemporary, he was a police investigator. Because of all this, the show had a weird modern crime fighting feel mixed with a quirky historical feel with a slight touch of a romantic comedy.

In the pilot, John asks the following question to his son (yes, his son is the older, half-black gentleman in the clip).

"To be human is to die. To die is what makes life worth living."

I remember being assigned a book to read in high school titled "Tuck Everlasting." I say be assigned because the only two things I remember about that book was: a.) not being able to participate in the Socratic Seminar because I was honest about my failure to read the book, and b.) the book was about people who found the secret to everlasting life and how they grew to resent it. I guess it was made into a movie in 2002 (which I was unaware of until writing this), and it's tagline sums it up: "If you could choose to live forever, would you?"

Seriously. I know I am like the worst minister ever because most of the modern presentation of the Gospel is built on the premise that all want to live forever. But that is not why I believe in the Gospel. Nor is it why I think you should believe in the Gospel. In fact, I often wonder if heaven is going to get boring after a while?

Think about it. If you never die, what motivates you? If you have unlimited amount of time to spend with your kids, do you still want to? If you don't have to eat to stay alive, do you still work? If you have just as much time to marry, or see the Pyramids, or watch the Cubs go the World Series today, as you did yesterday, why do any of those things matter?

The weird thing about it is that we don't really have a choice in this matter do we? We either are eternal souls, and as Colin Hay would say, "waiting for our real life to begin." Or, all there is to this life is the material, and when our 80 years or so are up, we're done. Not sure which is better, but I guess I shouldn't lie around and ponder for too long.