What Happens After Death?

Will there be pain, suffering, or hurt in heaven? Not in the heaven I dream of. But I have to refer to this question each time the discussion on the afterlife is presented.

I remember as a kid, one of my brothers’s had a toy that I dearly wanted. It was a cobalt-blue Hot Wheels car. I wanted that car so bad. I took it and hid it in my room. Well, my brother knew how much I admired the car. When it went missing, he came directly to me. I was determined to keep the car, so I steadfastly denied taking it. We had a bitter battle that lasted what seemed like hours.

I was raised by my mom and stepdad. My stepdad was the son of a Baptist minister. Though we were not Baptist, we would on occasion visit my Grandfather’s church. On a Sunday, a few weeks following the Hot Wheels incident, we worshiped at his church. During the sermon, he mentioned a member of the church who had recently passed away. In a very consoling tone, he said, “The dear sister has moved on. But do not despair; she’s in a better place. She’s up there looking down on us.” I was mortified. What that meant to me is my two uncles, who had also passed away, saw me when I took my brother’s car. For the next couple years, I was a very good kid.

But a conflict was developing within me. Attending a Christian academy, I was often taught stories on heaven. Heaven, as I was taught, is a place of unimaginable beauty, it’s a place where pain and suffering cease to exist; and death will no longer occur. One of the appealing characteristics after all, is that we will live in peace through eternity.

But if when we die, we go directly to heaven, what are our emotions when we see our loved ones on earth hurting or suffering? If someone you care about is diagnosed with a terminal disease or catastrophic illness, and you’re observing that experience from heaven, do you continue to gleefully fly around heaven as if all is well? Or do you hurt for your loved ones who are suffering? If heaven is the next step after earthly death, the implication is that there is pain and suffering in heaven.

I think to some it’s comforting to believe that someone they love, hasn’t really ceased to exist at their death, but rather, they’ve moved on to another existence. For this reason, the belief that we go to heaven at death has persisted in Christianity and is taught as biblical truth. But this state of being would not be a spiritual blessing, but rather a curse of being eternally subjected to misery, pain and hurt.

God is so much more gracious than that. The Bible teaches us in Ecclesiastes 9:5 that “the dead know nothing”. In verse 10 it continues, “…for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” Psalms 146:4 describes the state of the dead like this, “his breath goes forth …in that very day his thoughts perish”. Clearly the Bible has not allowed for any form of consciousness while dead.

So why is this gracious? Aside from complete exemption from all of earth’s ills, it means that after death, the very next image we’ll see will be our Saviors face, when He returns. That is divinely glorious!