If there is eternal life and you sign up for it, you’ve signed a contract with no termination clause. No matter what happens to you, there is no way out. You can’t change your mind. Your contract is forever.
And this contract has no specifics—just vague promises. You’ve signed the ultimate blank check.
Employment
For example, will you have to work in heaven? Can you do any job you like or will you have to compete for the available jobs? If you were not able to get a good education on Earth, could you wind up dealing with sewage, disposing of rubbish or picking fruit? If not, who will do these jobs? Could you end up doing a job you hate?
Will there be competition between businesses or will heaven work on socialist principles and a planned economy? Could your employer’s business fail so you have to be let go? Could you find yourself unemployed and, if so, will there be unemployment benefits? Could you become redundant? If you see how technology has changed our planet in 100 years, imagine what could happen in a thousand or a billion years.
If you don’t have to work; if all goods and services will be produced by some kind of heavenly magic, if houses keep themselves clean and gardens keep themselves tidy, how will you spend the hours, years, decades, millennia, and thousands of millennia? What will you do for entertainment and to grow intellectually and emotionally?
Will you have to cook, will you hire a cook or will your food be provided by Deity Dinners Inc?
Love
Will you have the same life partner in heaven that you had on Earth? What if you go to heaven and your partner does not? How will you feel knowing your loved ones are being tortured every second of every day? Will God assign you a partner or will you have to compete for one? Will you be unlucky in love? Since women tend to be more devout than men, there’s likely to be a shortage of men and lots of lonely women. Could you be alone for eternity?
What if you are gay? Will God make you become straight in heaven so you fall out of love with your partner?
Is there a chance you will meet someone who did grave harm to your family—your daughter’s rapist, for example? Will you be happy to see him?
Aging
What if you died at an old age after you had become infirm and incontinent? Will you be restored to good health and your age reduced? What about your children? Will they also be made younger to maintain the age difference? If you became disabled in your twenties and restored to the age before the disability occurred, could your children (or grandchildren) in heaven be older than you?
Will you grow old? Will you be able to have children or will everyone be barren in heaven?
If you can have children, will they grow up and become old or will they stay babies forever? Will Catholics be denied birth control and end up with billions of children? What if your children don’t love God? Will they be taken from you and sent to The Other Place?
The bottom line
I could go on all day thinking of questions about heaven but the bottom line is, even if you believe heaven exists, you DO NOT KNOW the answers to thousands of questions like these. You have to sign the contract unseen. You are agreeing to an unknown future with no termination clause.
For me, the very idea of a life that can never end is horrific and I don’t want it. So, even if I could read all the small print, I would say, “Thank you, but no thank you. Let me rest in peace.”
