Imagine

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Imagine

There’s an old song by John Lennon that asks us to "imagine.” There are many things he asks us to imagine… no countries, no possessions, and yes, no religion too. I have a hard time imagining these things because I think at a fundamental level having countries and religions make sense, and even possessions make some sense on a practical level. However, when I let my mind drift off and imagine a different world, the world I imagine is one where no one is afraid to die. I’m not talking about some sort of crazy macho warrior type of fearlessness, but a care-free look at death because we know, not just believe, but really know that there is an afterlife awaiting us.

I came across a Ted talk on YouTube by Thomas Fleischmann, titled: From life to death, beyond and back. He’s a paramedic. At the outset of the video he lays out four basic ways in which people die, and that he’s been at the side of a person when they died around 2,000 times. So he’s seen death a time or two. He also says that paramedics can bring a person back from death about 7% of the time, and that 20% of these report having had post-death experiences after he’s resuscitated them. If you do the math, that means he’s heard first-hand NDE accounts from about 30 people.

If you’ve done any sort of study into NDEs, he really doesn’t tell us anything that we don’t already know. He says the person dies, and then pain, anxiety, fear and noise are all gone. They usually know that they’ve died, and yet there is no anxiety around that fact. There’s only peace and joy. People will see the paramedics working on them, which in his lighthearted humorous way he describes as “annoying,” because there’s no scientific explanation for this since these people have no brain function and therefore you can’t create memories if the brain isn’t functioning! I appreciate his logic here.

He then says that 98% of reported NDEs are positive, with only 2% reporting a negative experience. However many of the negative experiences turn positive. Of the 98%, there is no link to any particular personality traits. He says, “If we could show that Catholics have good experiences, Protestants don’t, we’d have billions for our research!” He’s probably right about that.

It’s at this point that I start to imagine. If we take Fleischmann’s statistics, and extrapolate them across dying people around the world, you would come up with a flood of near death experience stories. And they’re basically all positive. I imagine people really starting to believe, and I wonder about all the ways in which their life would change for the better if they really did believe in these tales of the afterlife.

I actually don’t have to use my imagination too much to figure out how our lives might be different if we did believe. Fleischmann and others note that people who have an NDE come back and show profound personality changes, and the world would be a better place if we all exhibited these personality changes. NDE’ers are more empathic, more socially oriented, they lose interest in material values and become more “spiritual” though not necessarily more religious. While all of those changes sound great, I really like to imagine what the world would be like if we abandoned materialistic pursuits.

But there’s one other change NDE’ers have: they completely and totally lose their fear of death. When I catch the news, every day the main headline is how many people have died from COVID-19. They really like to play up the US numbers because they’re big. But what if we just didn’t care? What if instead of saying “126 people in Australia died of COVID-19,” we said it more like, “126 people got to go to heaven a bit early! Lucky folks! We’ll miss them, but we’re happy for them.” We wouldn’t have to worry about a stressed-out health care system. People wouldn’t be living in fear about getting the virus. How many people work hard to bring heaven on Earth, yearn for a utopian existence here, and yet are afraid to die and actually experience the utopia they crave?

Now, I would bet that some of you might be thinking, “I’m not afraid to die, but I just don’t want to die just yet!” I get that, quite honestly that’s where I am too. I’m not ready to go just yet. But I do trust the Lord, so if I do go, I can trust that He’s got everything under control both for me and those who I leave behind. No stress, no drama, no worries. Imagine that.

by Todd Beiswenger

존 레논의 '이매진'이란 노래는 지상낙원을 꿈꾸는 내용인데, 국가도 종교도 없는 세상을 상상해보라는 가사가 나와요.
글쓴이는 존 레논과 생각이 좀 달라서 국가와 종교는 꼭 필요하다고 느끼지만, 그 대신 아무도 죽음을 두려워하지 않는 세상을 상상해보았다는 글입니다. 아마 코로나로 죽음의 공포가 확산된 요즘 지구촌을 두고 이런 생각을 해보게 된 것 같습니다.

지상에서 낙원을 누리려 온갖 노력을 기울이는 사람들, 만일 죽음 뒤에 낙원이 기다린다는 것을 확신한다면 그런 사람들의 삶은 얼마나 달라질까 상상해본다고 합니다.

죽음 저편을 경험해본 사람들, 근사체험자들이야말로 죽음 뒤에 어떤 세상이 기다리고 있는지 경험해본 사람들인데, 그들의 삶은 근사체험 이후에 완전히 달라진다고 합니다. 그들의 변화에는 여러가지 공통적인 특징이 있는데, 모두 긍정적인 변화라고 합니다. 물질적 소유에 관심이 없어지고, 공감능력이 커지고 사회성이 좋아지며 더 영적인 성향을 띄게 된다고 합니다. 그리고 또 다른 특징은 죽음에 대한 공포가 완전히 없어진다는 점이라는 군요.

우리는 근사체험을 하지는 않았지만 천국과 영계에 대한 많은 정보와 확신을 가진 사람들이니 따져보면 죽음이 무서울 이유가 없다는 얘기가 하고싶었겠지요. 매일 뉴스를 장식하는 코로나로 인한 사망자 숫자에 촉각을 곤두세우는 대신, '아, 오늘 126명의 사람들이 우리보다 좀더 일찍 천국에 가게 되었네. 이별은 슬프지만 그들에겐 잘된 일이야'라고 생각하는 건 어떨까? 이렇게 다소 급진적인 아이디어를 글쓴이는 소개합니다.

물론 교인들 중에 '죽음은 두렵진 않다, 그러나 아직 이 땅에 내가 책임질 사람들이 있으므로 지금은 갈 때가 아니다' 라고 느끼는 분들도 많은데, 글쓴이도 그중 하나라는 것, 그러나 설령 지금 떠나게 된다 해도 떠나는 자신이나 남겨진 사람들 모두 주님 손 안에 놓여있다는 것을 믿는다면, 스트레스도 걱정도 비극도 없을 거라고... 그런 세상을 한번 상상해 보시라고 합니다.

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