The most vivid portrayal of the afterlife came for me in a visit to a Revival Meeting at a local church, the Silk Hope Baptist Church just south of Savannah, Georgia. The name reflects an early ambition to grow silkworms in the Colony of Georgia. This attempt failed but the name remained for this small community. Every year the church invites some inspirational speakers to get complacent churchgoers into a more enthusiastic state for the sake of their souls. Usually it brings in a number of potential new members as well as curious folk attracted by the prospect of a little rousing oratory. Savannah has a long tradition of such oratory having been host to George Wesley nearly two centuries earlier as part of the movement called "The Great Awakening." My mother used to watch with keen interest and devotion similar gatherings on TV with Reverend Billy Graham whose crowds often filled great stadiums. Our local visitor, whose name is lost to memory, was quite something. A fire and brimstone sermon was supplemented by an artist working on large tablets right next to the minister. As the preacher described the fires of hell, the illustrator, using vivid pastel crayons under an ultraviolet lamp, sketched the flames with a frenetic enthusiasm that nearly took him right off the margins of the tablet. We were assured, on the other hand, that there was ample room in heaven for those who wished to accept Christ as their Redeemer. He even gave the astronomical location of this vast heavenly space. I often wish I had remembered it when I look into the night sky. I was duly impressed at the time and in the days following the meeting, I finally took that fateful walk down the aisle during the invitational hymn, "Just As I Am," when I was about fifteen. The following Sunday night I was dressed in a robe of white and fully dunked in the baptismal pool that can be revealed on such occasions behind the pulpit. I remember thinking of that event as a kind of cosmic insurance policy. Later, reading the Thoughts of Pascal, I learned to call it "the wager of Pascal." Still later that great theological ironist, Soren Kierkegaard, referred to such a move as a kind of "leap into faith," a kind of revelation beyond the bounds of reason. Preachers do a good job of scaring people with thoughts of death and the lurid flames that await the unsaved. Who can say that such fear is entirely unreasonable?
Sometimes I feel I will never leave the earth and that long after I have "passed over" (to use one of many euphemisms for the mystery and finality of death) I may be found wandering the streets and byways of the many cities I have loved or wanted to visit--Boston, New York, Montreal, and Paris (a city I have only imagined and dreamed about, like Istanbul with the Hagia Sophia, but never really visited). At times in the night, wandering the streets, I sense the presence of many other souls who once lived here--no matter the city or town--and perhaps walked these same streets. If so, there are many overlays of spirit beings in every city. What crowded places each old city must be! If we are fortunate, these spirits are tutelary beings who guard and protect the living; if not, God help us not to feel too strongly the passions that those anguished souls may still feel who died violent deaths or who feel some great purpose in their lives was unfulfilled. In the current conventional beliefs about such afterlife stages, many souls have to be encouraged to go "into the Light" to leave their earthly abode for parts unknown.
I always loved the story told of the physicist, Richard Feynman, that someone found a letter among his possessions, a letter written to his wife some years after her death. It reportedly begins: "I would have written sooner, but I was not certain of the forwarding address..." Who would not love that man after hearing of such a story? But this letter suggests a more mundane view of the "afterlife:" we exist as we are remembered and celebrated by those who love us or have loved us. If I have one firm belief it is that love is capable of transcending the boundaries of our lives. I often see those I have loved in vivid dreams. I awaken with deep regret for their passing but thankful for the gift of having known them on this plane of existence. Religious views of the afterlife for the blessed I find inspirational but perplexing. I am less happy to contemplate the life after life of those whose lives have taken them far from divine commandments and moral imperatives. Divine retribution for sin may be a necessary balance in our view of justice sub specie aeternitatis but I do not require fear of such a fate to strive for moral excellence. I accept David Hume's life as exemplary despite his failure to be persuaded by the tenets of any religion--even that which he called "natural religion." His philosophy may have had corrosive effects on his generally conservative views of society and politics but he was still le bonhomme David. His works as well as the memory of his friends give him quite an "afterlife." I cannot imagine Homer or Dante portraying Hume as an unhappy man in the next life. I cannot believe a merciful God would provide any horrible punishments for his philosophical errors. A heaven without Hume or Feynman would be a very dull place. I should think the modesty of both men would be an advantage in the afterlife judgment of each man. Besides, I always thought God had as good a sense of humour as any of his more hubristic creatures. (If not, I am in a lot of trouble for my views as a "metaphysical snark.")
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