Together on the Journey: A Weekly Blog from Fr. Andrew Sheldon

I have a complicated relationship with the afterlife; well, at least, notions of what the afterlife entails.

But having said that, I should name that for me there are no complications regarding the notion of hell. I do not for a moment believe that God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, would consign people to the eternal torment of fire and brimstone because they do not live up to some arbitrary code of behaviour.

With that out of the way, I return to my initial point which is that I have a complicated relationship with the afterlife. And this also includes notions of heaven as a physical place where people are rewarded for eternity because they did live up to an arbitrary code of behaviour. Big houses on streets of gold where we are consciously reunited with those who have gone before us for endless rounds of golf, or card games, or drinks is something that I struggle to embrace. And yet, I know that many people, who both profess or not profess Christian faith, believe this very thing. As a Priest who is committed to pastoral care and to proclaiming good news, I struggle with my doubts around this way of thinking. Yet I also struggle to affirm this way of thinking.

Recently, I came across an account of an 8th century Sufi mystic and poet named Rabe’a al-Adiwiyah. She was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra in Iraq, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, “I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise, so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but simply because God is God and worthy of our love.”

By carrying both, the mystic intended to remove the external motivators of fear and desire, encouraging a love for God that was independent of consequences, of reward or punishment. This love is seen as the purest form of faith.

This compels me because it puts the emphasis on where it should be: on this life and not the afterlife. What we do here and now is what matters, and it should be motivated simply by our love for, and commitment to, God, and not by the promise or threat around what comes after. We love the Lord our God with heart, soul, mind, and strength, and we love our neighbours as ourselves, simply because this is the right way to live, and because it assures us, and those we love and serve, of the best possible life in this life.

Nonetheless, I do want to affirm that death is not the final word. As I often note at funerals, I am inspired by St Paul’s words to the Christians of Rome when he writes that: “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” To me this speaks of belonging; that in life and death we belong to God. That for us what may be the shocking, or sudden, or sad, event of a loved one’s death, is for them a seamless transition from one way of belonging to God to another way of belonging to God and that the same holds for us on our death.

To me, this notion is both profoundly mysterious and profoundly true. To me, this makes my relationship with the afterlife perhaps not so complicated after all.

Andrew+