Is That All There Is?
Adolph Hitler died, as did Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; all of whom were dynamic figures during the first half of the 20th century. Other famous individuals and celebrities also died; people such as Sigmund Freud, Mortimer Adler, John Wayne, Buddy Holly, Michael Jackson, Nelson Rockefeller, and countless numbers of other people. Death is inescapable! Eventually, each one of us will experience death; the end to this human life on earth. Considering that there is an end to each of our lives on earth, the issue that we all should consider is whether “Is that all there is”?
For those individuals who call themselves materialists or naturalists, the answer is simply, “Yes, that is all there is.” There is nothing after one’s life on earth. There is no judgment, no heaven or hell or some other type of existence. Death is indeed the end; there is nothing more. There is no God, no judgment, nothing. With this belief, the materialist’s worldview during life is likely to be very different from the worldview of those who do believe in God, judgment, and an afterlife of heaven or hell. Essentially the materialist places all hope and joy in his earthly life; stating that man is actually the determinist for all that occurs on earth. Man and his associate, Science, are the gods of the materialists. They determine right and wrong, changing right and wrong as they see fit rather than accepting a universal definition of right and wrong. Man as a god, changes all concepts of morality as he sees fit. It is “doing your thing’ to the extreme. Thus the determinist philosophy leads man to chaos rather than to freedom.
With man as the sole judge of morality, then the man who controls the levels of power will be the determiner of all morality. The most powerful will be the judges of what is moral and what is not. In Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia it can be seen where the powerful materialists have led mankind – almost to the abyss of annihilation and certainly to the depths of depravity, seldom seen in human history. The Nazis and the Stalinists, followers of the philosophies of Nietzsche and Marx, turned human history into the hell they did not believe in.
Those who believe in God and an afterlife existence certainly have a different worldview from that of the materialists. God is the objective reality of all existence; thus man’s earthly life consists in striving to know Him and to join Him in the life after death. Our earthly existence is a trial during which we seek out God’s will for us and then strive to fulfill that will….with the assurance that God will help us along the journey. However, God does not promise earthly prosperity or even happiness; He does promise salvation and eternal happiness in the next life. Fortunately, He also provides us with a road map and a set of instructions on how we should read the map and strive to do God’s will. God is our guide and helper…if we seek His advice. God is very much the Father, caring for and providing for his human family. All we must do is honestly and continually seek Him and His will for us. This will require effort and, most importantly, the subordinating of our ego and pride to the will of Him. That is the challenge for man; taking the “I” out of the equation of life and inserting God in its place.
All too few people can relinquish their attachment to the “I” and thus they remain unreasonably attached to the false promises of man. The promise that death is indeed all that there is….the promise lacking in hope. All of us are given the opportunity to make that choice – hope in God and freedom or death and conformity.
Man is made for More!