I finished Season 3 of Six Feet Under last week. In one of
the episodes that I watched, Claire Fisher's departed Dad takes her to
heaven, or some realm of the afterlife.
In a
park in heaven, Claire sees her ex-boyfriend, Gabriel Dimas, playing
frisbee with his little brother. Gabe's little brother shot himself in
an earlier episode of the series while Gabe and his friend were using
drugs. As for Gabe, we did not know what had happened to him up to
now. Gabe was engaging in destructive behaviors, and he even robbed a
grocery store for beer. At some point, he disappeared.
As
Gabe and Claire talk in heaven, Gabe says that he could not handle life,
in which he was selfish. In heaven, however, he feels free to give to
others. He is even home-schooling his little brother! What I got from
what Gabe was saying was that, in life, Gabe was weighed down by so much
inward baggage and burdened by outward pressures, that he really could
not give to others. In heaven, however, he was liberated from all that,
and thus he felt at peace and was free to give.
That reminded me of something that I read by Rodney----Mere Trinitarianism: C.S. Lewis, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Evangelicalism. Rodney says as he discusses C.S. Lewis' view on human participation in the Triune God's greatness:
"Lewis
goes on to expand on this idea of participation in 'The Three-Personal
God': 'It is only the Christians who have any idea how human souls can
be taken into the life of God, and yet remain themselves–in fact, be
very much more themselves than they were before.' In the Bios or
natural, we are bundles of self-centered fears, greeds, hopes,
self-conceit, and jealousies ('Let’s Pretend') but in Christ, (according
to 'Counting The Cost') God 'said (in the Bible) that we were ‘gods and
He is going to make good His words. If we let Him,–for we can prevent
Him, if we choose–He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a
god or goddess, a dazzling radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all
through with such energy and joy and wisdom, and love as we cannot
imagine[.]”
Like Gabe Dimas, C.S. Lewis thought that people in
this life were weighed down by inward baggage----self-centered fears,
greed, jealousy, etc. Gabe believed that he could only be free from
that in the afterlife, where he could truly be himself. Lewis, however,
appeared to maintain that we can be on the path to freedom right now,
as we participate in the Triune God's greatness and thus become who we
truly are.
I agree with Gabe Dimas and C.S. Lewis that I am a
victim of inward baggage and outward pressure. I don't think that the
solution is to forsake this life in favor of an afterlife, however,
because we're in this life for a reason. Perhaps this life prepares us
for the afterlife by allowing us to mature in character, or it makes us
long for a realm of righteousness and goodness, and that longing makes
us better people in the here-and-now. Does embracing evangelical
Christianity provide people with a foretaste of heaven----the sort of
thing that Gabe Dimas experienced in the afterlife? It can. It does
for many people. Others enjoy happiness through other paths, such as
twelve-step programs, or other religions. In my case, things are
messier. Simply believing in doctrines does not make my life a bed of
roses. Giving is something that I struggle to learn and to do, but,
hopefully, I'm growing.