The Meaning of Life

It is not surprising to observe that humanity is in a terrible time of crisis. There are many reasons for the specific crises but there are two underlying causes of all of human’s problems and questionable future. One is diminishing rather than increasing understanding of what a human being is and the human’s relationship with God. The other cause is the wounded (imperfect) nature of human being, which only increases as humans think they are becoming more superior. This blog posting is meant to shed some loving but very clear light on “what is the meaning of life.”

When a human is conceived, the moment that the embryo “quickens” is when God sends a soul into that human’s body. Quickening refers to the attachment of the embryo to the mother’s inner uterine lining, and then its first growth to indicate the process of life is engaged, which is the first division and growth of cells. At the moment that the embryo is attached to the wall of the mother’s womb, it goes into “growth” mode, where cells start to divide and multiply in order to start the growth of the human. It is at that very moment that the embryo is considered at the start of its human life and is “viable” in God’s eyes. At that first step of growth, the quickening, God sends a newly born soul into the body plus assigns a guardian angel. That is the beginning of the life of a human in God’s eyes. The guardian angel, by the way, is the one who will shepherd and guide an infant who dies before being self aware to heaven. So no infant, even the pre-born, dies alone, and they are brought to heaven by their angel.

Now, here is the surprising part, though it should not be if anyone really reads the scriptures and thinks about it. With that first implanted and quickened embryo starts an eternal life. Once a soul is created it is eternal. So the implantation and quickening of an embryo, receiving a soul, embarks on an eternal life. The soul starts out in a body, yes, one that will live on average to be at the most one hundred and twenty years in length, as stated in the Bible thousands of years before geriatric medicine was invented. God put a “cap” on human’s life because of original sin, where humans demonstrated that they think they can put their will and bad behavior ahead of God. Now that’s not punishment, but compassion as I’ll explain in a bit. First let me remind the readers that one hundred and twenty years is a good long time, but not even a speck of sand in size compared to the infinite timelessness of eternity. So in reality, all of a human’s lifetime, whether one hundred and twenty years, or dying before one is even given birth to, is actually the preborn infancy of one’s eternal life. In other words, one’s entire life is the process leading up to being born, and when one dies, one is born to God.

The normal gestation of a human baby is nine months, until the baby leaves the womb and becomes a physically separate human being. What I am explaining that everyone’s lifetime is that “nine months.” If a person lives to 65 years old, he has gone through his “nine months” in the womb. If a child lives to only 10 years old, she has gone through her “nine months” in the womb. If a lady lives to 120 years old, she has gone through her “nine months” in the womb. If a man lives to 99 years old he has gone through his “nine months” in the womb. If a baby is aborted, he or she has gone through her “nine months” in the womb. The life span that each person lives is their time in the womb before being born to eternal life. This is why it’s not a matter of being “fair” or “unfair” as to the span of a person’s physical life, because all are born equally into God when they die and pass from this life. God is not being “cruel” but rather, is guaranteeing the ultimate equality. No matter if pre-born or born, if young or old, the entire span of a person’s life is simply the giving of a soul and an angel to a new person and their gestation before being born to eternal life.

Jesus often spoke of the harvest, likening each human to fruit, or grain that grows from a seed until harvest. It is then that the worthiness of the harvest is assessed for the nature of its eternal life. Some people will be as ripe and healthy grains of wheat and they will be harvested for eternal life in heaven. Others will be like an apple which may be small and tart in taste, yet they have in them their own vigorous seeds for their children walking in righteousness… and these apples will be harvested for eternal life in heaven. Some people will be like a pomegranate that grows beautifully, but is bruised by life and perhaps trampled upon, or thrown to the hogs. Those people will be harvested into heaven. But woe to the people who allow worms to grow within them, or who chose to be weeds. For the willfully rotten fruit and the weeds that grow within the wheat will be harvested and thrown into the eternal fire. The Qur’an is consistent with the Bible and with the teachings of Jesus because the Qur’an often describes heaven as the garden that thrives where the righteous are at rest.

So whenever people, either faithful or atheist, are bitter toward God because of the shortness or hardness of a human’s life, they totally do not understand that a lifetime is an “easy” or a “hard” birth, dependent on the circumstances of one’s life. Let’s look again at the trodden pomegranate person example, and imagine this person as a woman suffering in Sudan. Her entire life is a hard birth, and an unjust one, because she is being afflicted by other people. As much as the fruit of her life is being bruised, she will find salvation at the end of her hard birth. But those who oppress her are blackening and rotting with worms their own harvest of their own birth, and they will be flung into eternal fire by angry and righteous angels who will harvest them out.
Therefore while there is no consolation for injustice, there is consolation in the knowledge that this physical life is “only” the birth process, hard or easy, for eternal life. This does not mean that like a human baby in the mother’s womb, however, one is only along for the ride and can claim the ignorance of the baby for whatever deeds one performs. Adam and Eve threw that right away as they decided they could make their own choices. Animals still have that right, because all that they do is innocent, because it is for their survival and reproductive imperative. They are not trying to outplay or outwit God. Yes, Jesus Christ died as the Messiah to wash away, with baptism, original sin. But remember an event from the life of Christ that many have puzzled over. This is when Christ cursed the fig tree that did not bear fruit when Christ was hungry and needed food. The meaning of that event was not that Christ was “unfair to the tree, who has rights” or “in a bad mood” or is “discriminating against figs” but to underscore that food is no good if it is not available when the people hunger. Likewise, all people are equal in their opportunity to yield a harvest that through grace and works merit heaven. Grace gives every human being a soul and an angel, and the opportunity to be righteous and good, and yield a good fruit or grain for harvest, even if humble, bruised, or small. Grace provides that potential and the garden bed. Works determine if the fruit is at the end rotted or at the end worthy of eternal sustenance. The deeds that one does determines if a human chooses to allow themselves to grow as a weed, from start to finish, or to start as a good fruit, but allow its heart to be blackened and rotted through ill deeds toward others, or one’s own internal corruption.

This brings me back to the comment about 120 years being, in general, the maximum to be hoped for life span being a gift rather than a punishment. If you think about it, particularly as society is evolving toward more selfishness and depravity, a long life span only allows the fruit to be exposed to more chance to rot, or to be replaced by weeds. I’ve noticed that even good people are increasingly sucked into the spiritual sewage around the neighbor’s garden. When the great Patriarchs of the Old Testament lived for hundreds of years-sometimes to amazing ages-that is because they allowed their personal garden’s fruit to be permeated with the Holy Spirit, through the physical presence of God, who still walked much among them. So these few people could live a long life span and not risk being corrupted over time because they permeated themselves with only the wholesomeness of the Holy Spirit. Times changed, though, with the bringing of humankind’s “civilization.” I’ve noticed that those who are now young or middle age who crave cures and life lengthening technologies increasingly do not look forward with faith and joy in their birth into God, but want to seek self gratifying activities to go on forever. It is one thing to be kind to the elderly and prolong life, which I completely agree with. It’s another thing to view extended lifetimes as being the “be all and end all” of one’s own self gratification.

So I hope that this blog post causes a much needed radical shift in thinking to clarify what is the meaning of life. Physical life is the initiation of one unique soul, accompanied by an angel, which is a birth process during the lifespan that leads to a harvesting into eternal life. If the person has a birth, easy or hard, that yields good fruit, then the person is harvested into heaven and eternal life of bliss and rest. The vast majority of people in heaven didn’t make themselves the biggest, smartest, or most successful apple in the barrel. Many were humble people living simple lives, trying to do the best they could, raising or being participants in families, who simply remembered that they are the harvest, not the harvester. When a person tries to be the biggest, smartest, or most successful apple in the barrel, like Adam and Eve, they start confusing who is the harvest and who is God, the harvester. This is not so difficult to understand, as the Bible and the Qur’an both spell it out through the generations. Because of human’s inevitable egotism, however, it seems to be increasingly difficult to understand and to live as the good harvest, in the process of a lifetime of being birthed. It’s not exactly a secret. Both the Bible and the Qur’an speak of Prophets who explained and warned, yet were persecuted and thus harvested as good fruit by those who allow their own yield to be rotted. This is why the Catholic Church preaches so much about the blood of martyrs in the harvest. If is not a need to be gory, but rather recognition that the martyrs set the ultimate example of their understanding that life, long or short, is a birthing that brings on death a good harvest, if righteously lived. Even children went willingly to martyrdom, and it’s not because they didn’t have video games to self actualize in their time. Christian martyrs demonstrated that long or short life, easy or hard, that the time alive on earth is of vital importance because it is the gestation of the fruit at the end of life.