I hope the title is largely self-explanatory.
In this mortal state we all live in an entropic world, among many evil Beings; the tendency towards death is endemic, omnipresent, cumulative - and therefore we will always die, sooner or later.
What sustains us alive in face of this constant tendency to change, corruption, disintegration, degeneration and disease - is that we are each a part of God's creation.
Thus life is a continuing and moment-by-moment divine gift of God; continual, that is, for so long as God sustains it - until God's creation is overwhelmed by evil acts, or inevitably/ eventually by entropy.
In a basic and overall sense, therefore, it is not God that kills us; and also we may be killed against God's plan for us, against personal divine destiny (especially when acutely overwhelmed by evil intent).
However; while we live, it is God that is keeping-us-alive.
Yet God may withdraw His creative sustenance; and then we will soon die from evil or entropy.
God is keeping us alive for His divine, creative purposes; including the hope that we will choose salvation when we die (and thereby escape both entropy and evil, by entering the second creation); and will learn the spiritual lessons that would most benefit us while we live.
Those who have been sustained alive for unusually long periods, into extreme old age; might therefore assume that this is for the purpose of our divine destiny; either in hope we shall chose salvation, or in hope that we will learn some-thing God regards as important for us.
2 comments:
One could speculate from this that the reason so many people lead such long lives now is because of rampant atheism and give them a chance to turn to God eventually. That won't apply to everyone as each individual case is different but it may be a factor in current longevity.
@William W - Yes, that's what I believe - as a generalization, of course (not applying to everybody).
The increased average life expectancy we see nowadays is therefore *probably* due to God sustaining a mostly-Godless population alive for longer, to allow individuals more opportunities to turn to God.
Longer life is therefore Not (usually) to enable people to accumulate more pleasure in this mortal life, as is evident from the tough experiences (intended as life lessons) that so many people have at the end of their lives.
I have never done any empirical study; but my impression is that - if anything - the Godless seem to live longer than the Godly. And many of the best souls - who have made their choice for God, to follow Jesus, and learned their life-lessons very early - will often die more or less young.
So there may be an *inverse* relationship between personal affiliation to God and The Good on the one hand, and life-expectancy on the other hand- and this may apply through history, comparing societies (the shortest lived societies may be the best - in terms of values, the longest lived the worst); as well as at any particular time and place in history.
(More should be said about how this may relate to the development of consciousness - but that's for another post.)
(And I must, again, emphasize that this is just a generalization, and there are surely many exceptions.)
On this basis, when the tough life-lesson has been learned, and/or if the individual chooses to turn to God - then God will withdraw His sustaining power and that person will die with a prospect of salvation, resurrection, eternal life etc.
But even if the lessons never are learned, eventually entropy and evil will prevail - since that is the nature of this incarnated world. Immortality is not an option.
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