“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)
But, because we are spirit-beings created unto “the image and likeness of God,” our beginnings also include the presence of God:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (Genesis 1:26; John 1:1).
In short, when the Holy Bible said, “Elohim,” or “God” said, “Let there be light; and there was light. And the Lord God saw that the Light was good,” (Genesis 1:3–4), Jesus, His Son, was also present; so was the Holy Spirit. For at the same time, — God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, — that GOD, was creating “star-light” or “sun-light,” Jesus was already “the light of the world,” — that is, since before the foundation of the world:
“And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (John 1:4–5).
God is Spirit. We have a spirit, a soul, and, a albeit mortal, biological body. Materially, and also, spiritually, God had already separated the Light from the Darkness; (Genesis 1:4), that is, God had separated Himself, from Satan, and from the material Creation He had brought into being.
Satan is “the prince of this world,” whom God had cast out of Heaven; and God had also separated Himself from “the rulers of this world.” (2 Corinthians 2:7–8; James 1:16–18; 4:4–8; 1 John 1:5–10).
Thus, in the same manner, God had already separated those who are His in Christ Jesus, His Seed, from the wicked people who practice evil, “the Seed of Satan.” (Genesis 3:15; Matthew 25:46; Romans 8:28–30; 1 Corinthians 6:9–10; Revelation 22:14–15.)
But, says the Unbeliever: We will no longer “biologically exist” after we die! Our living existence thereby ends and our lives terminate on the Earth, in a state of “terminal Entropy” or “final Entropy,” which we call, death!
But, still, asks the Doubter: “Where are we going?” Our “inner-being” or “inner-self” — our Soul, our Spirit, our Mind, our Heart; the “Person” within our bodies, our “decision-making free-will Self,” our “Personhood,” our “inner-Person,.”. . .etc. . .?.
These abstract spiritual-moral “character traits of Personhood,” are surely different, separate, and independent from our physical-biological bodies! The body can be “paralyzed,” yet “the Mind lives!” A good example, “in our times,” was Physicist Stephen Hawking! What happens to the “inner-Person” who says: “I am?”
“Where did we come from?” and “Where are we going?” make up the “conundrum” which “Human Nature” must always “deal with,” even as we “wrestle” with “the Human Condition.”
We, as little babies needing diapers and regular feeding from adults who gave us birth, our parents, know nothing of the world in which we find ourselves at birth. Yet, God, our Creator, foreknew us, even before we were born!
“For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalms 139:13).
“I praise thee, for thou art fearful and wonderful. Wonderful are thy works! Thou knowest me right well; my frame was not hidden from thee, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth. Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance; in thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalms 139:15–16; Jeremiah 1:4–8; Galatians 1:15–17.)
We have “a lifespan.” Laws of Thermodynamics,” “Energy processing,” or “Energy Transformation,” demand that every thing that operates in Nature, must also have a beginning and an end. Thermodynamics thus requires “cycling of reiterative events” or of “patterns of processing,” falling within the frame of “the Organizing Principle.”
In short, there has to be “a method to the operations,” or “modus operandi” for each phenomenon that impacts our life-support systems on the Earth.
And in durations of Time, we measure these “rates of change” or “cyclical changes” thereof, e.g., We’re born; we mature and age; and then we grow old and die. Yet, we must continue to live! God blessed us with life as an indescribable gift! A blessed endowment which we are commanded to cherish and nourish in the love and admonition of the Lord! Once we accept the brevity of our existence, as a prized blessing from our Creator, we can then “navigate through” or “negotiate” the different cycles of repetitive events that characterize our life-span!
Don’t we continuously inhale and exhale the Atmosphere into our Lungs that then extract Oxygen there-from to nourish our blood that’s circulating throughout our body’s organs? In the same manner, we have “sleep and wake cycles;” “labor and rest cycles;” “consumption and waste-disposal cycles.”
Thus, some people might conclude that “Life is its own justification;” and hence, the reason why, that suicide and murder, are not only unthinkable, but also not committable or performable. We will die ultimately anyway; so why accelerate the process!
But as “the physical” has its own destination (Genesis 3:19); so does “the spiritual” (Luke 12:4–5). What is physical is physical; what is spiritual is spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:42–50).
Nonetheless, we choose to hope “to die only of natural causes.” (Psalms 79:11; Ecclesiastes 3:2).
Some people might want to debate or open for discussion, if we choose to do so, “where we were,” that is, before conception and birth. However, because we’re already here, we have a life, we think and do, we ponder and act, we have a life-span, then, “where we’re going” also matters.
But “Where are we going?” matters, in a way that, “Where did we come from?” cannot be framed.
For we did not know then, but, now, we do know! — that is, we didn’t know “when we came into being;” or, “when we were formed” in our mother’s wombs, nor when we were “created into a living being;” nor when we were born, or came out, of our mothers’ wombs!
For, we did not know then; we could not have known then! But NOW, we do know that we’re alive, moving, breathing, thinking, and doing! We do know! And that “makes all the difference” in the whole world, in the whole Universe! (Matthew 13:40–43; Matthew 15:17–20; Luke 6:45; John 15:22–25).
Thus, in the same manner that we are unaware of our biological-physical birth conditions, yet, the Word of God tells us: “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:22–31).
Why are they different situations, “different paradoxes,” or “different conundrums?” Our ignorance at birth; and our understanding at death?
We could not self-consciously witness our own conception or birth, nor when we came out of our mothers’ wombs. But, now, things are different. We are living now while fully knowing that our lives are temporary and will eventually end!
Because “we are in-the-know,” because we are self-aware, (e.g., self-consciousness of good and evil, and the difference between them), and because we are aware of other Humans, — thus, we are also aware of other things, of society, of our physical environment; and of the very thoughts and ideas such knowledge and understanding generate in our hearts and minds, souls and spirits.
We are also self-conscious of such things as, the very “flawed patterns of operations” undergoing in our minds and our bodies — what we think, how our body’s organs are working, and what we freely choose to do!
Even those of us who would claim “not to believe in the after-life,” will entertain some form of doubting at one time or another; because the ways in which we apprehend, perceive, or understand “Reality” — or how we reckon with “Reality” (1 Corinthians 13:11–13) — through our “perceptual lenses” that often err because they rely on appearance: Our