After Life
The afterlife is a mystery. Where do people really go when they die? This question is asked by young and old alike. Heaven, hell, reincarnation; it doesn’t matter what it is called; many people around the world believe that their spirit goes to some location or goes through a rebirth after their initial life is over. If a person’s belief is reincarnation, then they believe that after they die, their spirit will be reincarnated into another form depending upon how they lived their life before. People who base their faith and beliefs in religion believe in heaven and hell. Heaven is a reward to those people who are good or place their lives in the hands of a deity. Hell, on the other hand, is a punishment for those who did not place their life in the hands of a higher power and who committed evil throughout their life.
Christianity based religions believe that their God has prepared a specific place for them in his heaven above the clouds. However, there are restrictions as to how a person can get into this beautiful place with streets of gold, such as accepting that there is only one true god and that his son died and rose again after being in the grave for three days. This is the main thing that must be believed in and followed in order to go to heaven. To go to hell, however, there is no restriction. Hell is a punishment for those who commit evil deeds or sins. These people are thieves, smugglers, murders, and those who do not believe in god.
Other theologies, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, believe that a person’s spirit will be reincarnated into something either worse or better than being a human. According to the Hindu way of believing in reincarnation, to be reincarnated into the form of a cow means that the person was a very holy, very important person that put others before themselves. If the person is reincarnated into an insect or other animal they may not have lived a good life previously.
Believing in an afterlife is one way that society, over the years, has found to give hope to those who are in utter despair. Those who have had nothing to look forward to for their entire lives, who have lost everything and who need hope look forward to death and the afterlife. They want something better than what they have in this current life. People believe that things are able to get much better than they are now and they attend church or practice a religion in order to find out how to obtain a better life. Statistics show that the number of people who attend church on a weekly basis has gone up by a considerable amount since the tragedy of September 11, 2001. It shows that sometimes it takes a major catastrophe to get people in the pews, people who thought they had it all going for them before the disaster. So whether it is due to a bad event, or simply because a new hope is needed to get through the remaining days of one’s life, there is a form of afterlife in which to believe.
Copyright @2006 After Life
