Question from Douglas:
Do people who commit suicide go to heaven? Just watched the movie “The Discovery” on Netflix.
Answer by SmartLX:
Obviously The Discovery is a science fiction story, not a documentary, but like all good sci-fi it’s intended to provoke people to think about the real world and where we’re headed. Besides, (MILD SPOILERS) where they go in the movie isn’t exactly heaven so it doesn’t inform this question much.
I don’t think people who commit suicide go to heaven, because I don’t think there’s an afterlife, let alone a heaven, for anyone to go to. The identity is destroyed with the shutdown of the brain and it no longer exists to go anywhere.
Regardless, I’m against people committing suicide in most cases because of its straightforward consequences in this world: your own life ends with no possible chance of improving your circumstances or anyone else’s, and lasting anguish can be inflicted on those you leave behind.
I say “most cases” because I’m also in favour of voluntary euthanasia or assisted/accompanied suicide, when a person has reached a measured conclusion that continuing to live is too painful to justify any potential benefits. Organisations like Dignitas do a good job of making the decision and the action carefully considered, rational, compassionate processes with a minimum of drama.
I’m aware of course that religious approaches to this question are very different. If taking life is a sin, then suicide gives one no time to absolve or atone for the sin of taking one’s own life, so the shortcut to heaven is barred. This has a practical religious purpose in both the religious and secular view. For the religious, suicide prevents one from serving the mysterious purpose one’s deity has for one. For anyone on the outside looking in, it’s a simple way of preventing belief in an ideal afterlife from sending a religion’s followers to an early grave and depopulating the religion.
The exception which gives a religious rationale for suicide is sacrifice. If you get something important done by putting yourself in harm’s way, this might very well be your holy purpose, whether to be a martyr who gathers support or to take a lot of unbelievers with you. So really, there are religious reasons both to die and not to die and you can twist it any way you want, which is dangerous.
4 thoughts on “An Early Ticket To The Afterlife”
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As smart as SmartLx, seems to be, guessing about a subject that no one really knows anything about is just that a guess. One must go to another source for information when they do not themselves have the answer. And on phrase that seems to have eluded the understanding of SmartLx, is “I don’t know”. So to comment about and discount that which has so captivated and activated the minds of so many without going to a source that has indeed proven itself in so many ways, “the Bible”, is actually hobbling, and limiting oneself, to the understanding of the stone age.
The Bible tells us that there is an afterlife. Not as some Christians have falsely learned from a priest or pastor, or any other person, (mainly, well meaning Christians) who have simply accepted what others have told them without doing a full biblical study on the subject for themselves, or who have simply dismissed what they have read in the Bible preferring instead the concepts of what others have told them.
The Bible tells us, in many places of the Bible that when man dies, he goes back to where he was created from and goes to sleep. This is found in the first book of the Bible, in Genesis chapter 2, which is not another creation as many have assumed, but an extra account of what took place during creation, only with added details. The Bible simply and clearly tells us that God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, because if the did, they would die.
“15 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
Now we know what is death, but because of the lie that follows told to the Edenic pair, when satan came to foil, God’s plans, man has now formed and fashioned the idea the death is not death but merely a passing on of part of themselves to another place or realm. But God told Adam that He would die. And God told him what would happen to Adam. We see what God told Adam in Genesis chapter 3. “19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
Notice that God does not say anywhere about a part of Adam would return to the dust, but that Adam would return to from what he was created from. Dust or dirt.
But from satan’s lie that contradicted God, “4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:” Genesis 3, and also implying that God could not be trusted. And this very lie, many of the Christians denominations have continued to pass on, ignoring what God told us from His Word. Man would die. They accept this even though they have no Biblical written authority to believe this. For one the Bible tells us that man is mortal. Man was a created being, not a spirit that had been around for years and then was given a body to live in. Adam did not exist before God formed him out of the dust of the ground and then breathed into him the breath of God, not the spirit of God. So when God gave Adam life and later on Adam died, Adam’s breath of life, and not a ghost of Adam or the spirit of Adam, went back to God. The breath of life that God originally shared with Adam, went back to God. And this is where we can see the influences of erroneous teachings first being used by the translators of the Bible. They had learned that part of Adam was immortal, and that, that part was a spirit that separated itself from Adam’s body, and went on to purgatory, heaven or hell. But there is no biblical, passages that one can present that allows us to formulate this concept. God said man would die. And it also tells us that God prevented man from achieving immortality. Look at Genesis chapter 3 again.
“22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
23 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.”
God did not want man to live forever in sin. So He prevented Adam from eating from the Tree of Life”. So unless God failed, which the concept of part of man living on past the death of the body, is actually implying, and which many Christians look the other way on when the read these lies, or man’s concept of what happens to man when he dies, is a missed understood and a erroneous teaching that satan has placed in the minds of those who fail to use all of God’s Word to ascertain just what God really wants us to know about death. The theme of man’s whole being dying is taught all through the Bible. For one thing the Bible clearly tells us that there are no immortal beings save God. 1 Timothy 1:17 and 1 Timothy 6:16. Not even the angels of God would be able to live forever without God granting them the ability to live forever. And since God prevented man from eating from the Tree of Life, man also missed his opportunity to have life eternal at that time.
https://www.amazingfacts.org/media-library/book/e/4/t/absent-from-the-body
https://www.amazingfacts.org/media-library/study-guide/e/4987/t/are-the-dead-really-dead-
https://www.google.com/search?q=man+is+not+immortal%2F+amazing+facts&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS747US747&oq=man+is+not+immortal%2F+amazing+facts+&aqs=chrome..69i57.15057j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Please visit all of the different links from Amazing Facts.
This should clarify what is death and what is error about death.
I think the afterlife belief is partly a monument we humans have built to our own egos …
We feel we are so important that there must be a purpose / life beyond our current real existence!
When one looks out even a bit into the universe all this ego and concerns about our continued existence seem laughable.
Imagine a football field, place a football in the middle of it … place a pea at the boundary, on the diagonal … the football represents the sun, the pea is the earth and we (human beings) are like the micro-organisms on the surface of that pea!
And of-course the solar system is not even a speck when compared to the galaxy, the galaxy being a speck itself etc.
I can’t think of anything else to say about the childish subject of the afterlife.
The kind of magical/ wishful fiction I like to think about in my idle time is the stuff by JK Rowling (isn’t incredible beasts and where to find them interesting 🙂 ) … the kind nobody takes seriously and everyone finds it fun to muse about.
Rohit your statement is laughable. You think! What do you know about a subject that has filled the minds of so many ever since man needed to be picked up from his fall. If we haven’t found how life started. If we haven’t found the explanation for all around us, then we know even less about our minds and who we are. We assume to guess how all inanimate matter coalesced and became matter. What caused the atom and what makes them up to become matter. But when it comes to explaining life, we are fools to assume that we know anything. How did we get to be separate from inanimate matter? What or who chose our path that caused us to have life, even if we squander it? The problem with you and all others who look squarely into the face of infinity, is that you settle for maybe’s and assumptions, for an answer that is bound to blow your minds, if you would only desire to know, and not settle for the “we came by chance or an accident”, explanation. You speak about how inferior man is compared to the universe. Ha. the universe has nothing on man. Why within our minds is a cosmos far more vast then all of the universes put together. It is only that we fail to, or maybe even have grown tired of trying to see who we are. And maybe even we have seen how far we have fallen from where we were, that it sickens us to look any more. If you continue to settle for the “accidental, rocks to man” explanation, then you will miss out on the “man created in the image of God” truth. It is up to you which you will believe. Error or truth. And to stand in front of a mirror, continuing to believe that you are only a lump of clay, accidentally put together, when you are able to contemplate your own existence, is quite sad. And quite a great loss of brain power.
And as far as to what happens to a person who ends their own life, fortunately that is not up to us. The God who created that person, and has given Himself to provide for and care for that individual, is the only One who can decide the ultimate fate of that individual and every one of us, that He created. Some many do many rash things and say things that they fail to actually think through when they are in the midst of saying or doing them, but then in a moment of clarity, they would take it all back, if they could. And that is what God is also including when He is making His decisions. Should we plan to say or do, that which is wrong, is far different then someone who absentmindedly does or says something. Even those who out of despair and grief perform what is so unlike God, as to end their lives. But God knows and He understands. And He knows that if those of us were to perform the duties and tasks that we are here to fulfill, then those who are so lonely and ostracized and beaten by the worries and cares of this life, would be able to feel the love that others have for them, would be able to allow God’s love to flow through them, so that that person, could and would find the strength, to hold on. To hang in there. Will there be people who are lost because they ended their lives, I don’t know. But I would suspect it will clearly depend upon why they did it. Some do it to avoid retribution. But some do it to save another. That is left for God to sort out. Right now, it is for us to seek out those who are headed in that direction. To get over ourselves and be mindful of those around us. If we don’t know where a person is, doesn’t mean that we can’t take steps to head them off at the pass. Be the friend. Share that smile. Lend a helping hand. Give the dollar. Fill up the bellies. Share the warmth of a hearth and your hearts. Let them know their is someone who cares. And for those who know the Ultimate Care giver, share Him especially. It will make a difference.