The Trouble with Having Only One Life

It is impossible that you and I should live a second life; you and I have only this life to live.  Let's begin with this fact.  We will not be reincarnated, and we will not be given a "second chance at life" by God: time marches on, and history has its goal, having and end.  When our bodies die and turn to dust, we will cease to be who we are.  We may, on the traditional, Christian view, transcend our bodies and enjoy the presence of Christ in a "soulish" state, but we will never again be the people we are now.

Of course, it's impossible that our bodies make us who we are here and now.  This is because, for example, my body is in a constant state of change: cells die and regenerate, there is weight gain and loss, hair growth, hair thinning, hair receding.  Teeth yellow and gums recede.  On the other hand, my muscles stay toned as I put them through the rigor of iron and steel, but they continually require maintenance, or else.  I'm not who I was--if my body defines me--two years ago, two days or even two hours ago.  Every passing second means I am changing.  And yet I stay the same, and so do you.  When you're 90, you're you.  When you were 9 months old, you were you.  Not the same by any means at all, but it was you who came out of that womb, and it's you who will rest in that casket.  So you see why it is impossible that you, as you are now, will never exist again.  Is that it, then?

Why can't we have a second life?  Well, this would mean that we would have to have an immaterial aspect to our being that gets reanimated into a different body--for our previous body is now dust.  Fair enough.  It's the materialists and Christian physicalists who don't believe we have souls.  Still, that would make us a different person, wouldn't it?  I mean, my soul in a different body wouldn't be me as I am.  I'm me because I'm me: my body doesn't make me who I am, and yet it's still and integral part of who I am.  There is, however, a second option for a second life, that is the Christian concept of the resurrected body.  I'm going to be me, after all, in the resurrected state.  I'll look like me (and you'll look like you).  I'm sure we'll all be happy with the sizes of our noses, and the shapes of our eyes.  Some people don't like the way they look right now, but they shouldn't worry about that in terms of the resurrection of the body, for Beauty will enfold the resurrection like the long stretches of sun on the early evening lawn: gold on an emerald expanse, where gentle shadows cool the day's blossoms in the resting garden of colors innumerable.

I do wonder: why is it that this life, and this life alone counts in terms of standing before the judgment of God?  What is it about this particular life?  Why doesn't God allow for a second life?  A second chance?  (But again, if we did have a second life, who would we be?  Not the same person).  Surely that's not the reason for there not being a second chance at life: because our identity is possible only in this current life.  It must be possible to be given a second life in the flow of history with the same genetic makeup, given divine omnipotence.  But maybe not.  Maybe history is fixed and there can only be one you because your parents make you you and their parents and so on.  And just because God is all-powerful, doesn't mean he can do any and everything.  He doesn't act contrary to his own nature, for example.  So, if you were to be reborn into a new body with the same genetic makeup as you had five hundred years from now, that would take some miraculous genetic tinkering, and I'm sure people would freak out.  I bet God could do it though.  But ah, no matter then.  God has given us this one life, and this one life will be taken into account before him.

This is the message of the Apostle Paul:  God commands all people everywhere to repent and place faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and the right to eternal life (Acts 17:31; 20:21).  I do wonder a second question: why is it that as a man stands before God's judgment that he cannot repent then and there? Is it too simple? To easy?  Is it that it's a "no brainer": standing before the Almighty Father of creation and repenting of the wrongs we've done?  Someone would have to be a fool to not do that.  Is this life a test, to see if we'll search for God, and grope for him?  Why not a second life then?  Well, as one person asked me, "What other"?  As in, what other life can there be?  There is only this life.  There is no other, because there is only one you.  Until the resurrection: there is another life then; but that life never ends, and it's still you, still me.  So, it's best to search for God while we can.

Excising the Scalpel of the Soul: Learning About Human Nature From Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

For many, who dare to sit in the quiet rooms of a darkened home, eschewing the touch screens, devices and tidbits designed for the pommeling of the ears with the cacophony of voices--the voices!--choosing instead to shut them out and remain in the silent hours with the express purpose of introspection, meditation and self-scrutinizing judgment, such a daring enterprise tempts on the borders of self-loathing and despair at the site of that which lies in the recesses of the heart.  And there are other things, darker things in the abyss.  These are the things that bring trouble to the mind in flits and sparks of frantic flame.  Whence are these thoughts and feelings?  Is there not a scalpel for the soul, used for one purpose and only such, that one might cut out and remove the evil that lurks within?  Alas, there is no such tool of excising precision.  What a helpless lot mankind is, full of chaos and ruminations of greed, disdain and apathy!

That time when the toddler was dragging the blanket behind her and you knew she'd trip, but you did nothing, because, as you surmised in a flash of deductions too frivolous to catalog, you didn't "feel like it," due to either lack of energy or mere lack of desire, and so did not capture the train of the child's treasured robe in your hand and so rescue her from her fate, resulting in her fall, you knew--you knew it would happen.  And maybe there was a fleeting thought--oh it was there!--that she in fact deserved it, and you justified the action believing she would learn from her mistakes, the little hellion that she is anyway.  Besides, you justify, you know of others who do the same with the express purpose of educating the child.  How she held her head and cried in pain!  Nevertheless, call it remedial punishment in the passive sense: she must learn from her own mistakes.  And yet, that gnawing sense of guilt festers in your heart and mind and brings a dizziness to your head with lightning and stars flickering in maddening fervor.  You knew she would fall, and you did nothing.  You even smiled at the prospect.  Are you not a wretch?

Like the time when you thought of that starving orphan but shrugged it off with a C'est la vie?  Or when the elderly person died and you concluded the good thought that there is now less of a debt burden upon society.  Oh, how could you?  But no, you didn't actually hold on to that thought.  You dismissed it as evil.  Good show!  And you do other things like that.  Still, you wonder, you ponder, whence are these things?  What is its genesis and spring?  And how might I excise these irksome appellations from my innermost being?  Alas, there is no such tool of excising precision.

Dr. Jekyll, noticing in himself as the good doctor, not an hypocrisy, but rather upon his desire to be seen as a nobleman, covers up his "impatient gaiety of disposition," wanting the townsfolk to see only his mature, solemn side.  It is this that causes the poor doctor to realize that in man there are two natures, good and evil: "I have been doomed to such a shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two."  The scalpel he concocts in his laboratory shall remedy this disjointed prison!  Alas, there is no scalpel of the soul, as the evil in Dr. Jekyll arises as the more powerful, insatiable monster who lusts for dominance, Mr. Hyde.  Dr. Jekyll laments, "It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together--that in the agonized womb of consciousness these polar twins should continuously be struggling.  How then, were they dissociated?"

But the madness of the abysmal depths of man's heart knows not this boundary only: that there exist two, rival twins doing battle for good or ill.  Ah ha: something worse.  There is the whole person, under which these two natures are subsumed, that smiles and welcomes the malice and repugnant poison coursing through the veins of the heart.  The despairing doctor tells us his experience as both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,

Even as good shown on the countenance of the one [Dr. Jekyll], evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other [Mr. Hyde].  Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body and imprint of deformity and decay.  And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome.  This, too, was myself.  It seemed natural and human.  

You see the dilemma.  Dr. Jekyll is still there in some sense, even as Mr. Hyde views himself in the mirror, the "person" of Dr. Jekyll welcomes the "nature" of Mr. Hyde, the evil side of him.  He (Dr. Jekyll) reflects upon this viewing of his evil side and knows that there was no repugnance at the evil, but rather a welcome.  He then concludes that "This too, is myself."  The introspection here on the part of Dr. Jekyll, the afflicted nobleman, leaves him in a desert too barren to yield the fruit of his former disposition of gaiety: he dies in a gnarled, fetal position, putting an end to himself.  Rather he puts an end to the selves in his self.

Alas for an excising tool to cut away that part of man that so easily bends toward ill will!  In this chaos, where are the wings of an eagle to hover?  Where is the painting brush with which to take the disjointed colors on the palette of our souls and recreate something beautiful?  Who will mend us together, and where may we find rest in order to benefit from an integration of our fractured selves?  It starts with soaking in the silence and letting the questions come.