My Immortality

In literature, you often see a closing image that highlights or completes the opening image. It can be for good or for bad. It brings the theme full-circle.

Sometimes it’s forced and cliche, especially in movies. But when it’s done well, you feel a sense of completion that you can’t always put your finger on. Writers often go back and rewrite the first line after they know how the story ends.

In my first book, it showed up accidentally. (It’s very exciting for writers when this happens and contributes to the sensation of magic, whispers of a muse, and feeling like you are a conduit.)

The more I read the Bible, the more I see glimpses of poetic mirror images. I think the year I read through the Bible with The Bible Project app was the fundamental change for me—and recognizing patterns was one reason. It was the second time I read through the Bible and I remember telling my husband, “I know I’m called to do this. But I don’t want to sit another year in all this confusion and offense.” I didn’t like the Bible…

No longer do I take my English translation so literally, at face value, without context. I search differently, wait and question. I’ve grown to love and trust the mystery of it. There is more than meets the cursory glance.

I see parallel images throughout, often signaling something ending and new things starting. Or just causing me to sit up and say, “Hey now, this means something.”

A quick example, when God created Adam, he breathed into him in Genesis 2:7. “Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”

Something started.

Then, after Christ had died and risen, but before he’d returned to heaven, and before he told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem, he did something similar in John 20:22. “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit…'”

Something new started.

The Tree of Life

So I think it’s significant that the story of creation ends with banishment from the tree of life and heaven begins with some people receiving rights to the tree of life. Even if it was a literal tree in Eden, it could be a metaphorical tree in eternity. But since Jesus ate in his resurrected body (demonstrating it as physical resurrection, not just spiritual), there will be a marriage feast, and possibly a literal tree that produces different fruit every month—we can infer that eating isn’t one of the things we do away with in heaven.

But then comes a startling question: “Why would an immortal soul eat from the tree of life?” Is it symbolic? Is it just to keep our physical body from decaying? But that poses a few questions about the physical bodies that live in hell. What keeps them going?

I remember hearing a doctrine from LDS friends, which said our souls existed in heaven prior to conception. It is a reason to have more children—souls are waiting for their turn in life.

And I actually thought, how arrogant to think we existed before time with God.

But then I had to ask myself, why do I believe my soul will live forever?

Is that not arrogant?

Will I innately live forever because I’m human? I’ve been told this is the difference between humans and animals, and it’s true that we don’t see God breathing animation into animals at creation.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. The word perish is not common in our society, so it loses its punch in translation.

It seems like this verse that most people know tells us our option is to “pass from existence” or to “live for eternity.” So, again, why have I always believed my soul would automatically live forever?

I think the full circle image is that Eden gave access to the tree of life and the choice to trust God.

Now, here in earth, if you choose to trust God while it is still day, heaven grants the right to live forever with him.

If you will not live forever under your own volition and innate characteristics, what would be a motivation to even eat from the tree of life—unless you wanted to spend eternity with the God you love?