CAN MAN LIVE FOREVER?

Humanity has always been enamoured of immortality: in the folk stories, myths, legends and religious code of every civilization are to be found echoes of our collective resilient fantasies about immortality. Sci-Fi books and movies regularly explore the subject. In one sentence: we sustain a copious and curious resistance to the overworn fact that Humans die. We don't want to die. Nay, even more: we don't think we should die.

Yet, there is a dilemma, more like conflict. Two related sets of conflict actually. A first set is underpinned by Geography and the second set is underpinned by Anthropology.

Geography driven conflict:

This is irrespective of where (country, city, town) you live. When we have been home for a while, we long for a "change of environment." When we have a change of environment, we start to miss home again, after a while, and desire to go back, only to soon long for a change of environment all over again. Yes, we long for 'an environment' but neither our normal location nor a holiday location provide the environment we tenaciously seek. It eludes us everywhere.

SUMMARY 1: Home or abroad, we still long for 'home'. Home is not 'home', because we are never truly 'at home,' even at home.

Anthropology driven conflict: 

When someone dies, we feel cheated, slapped, defeated by death, because somewhere inside, we habour a bizarre notion, something more like a recollection than a notion, that humans were meant to live here and to never leave. We do not merely feel our loss of the deceased. It is not simply that we miss her. It is rather that we have this stubborn feeling that the dead herself has been violated, plugged away from her legitimate geography - by the defiance of death... it is this feeling that stalks us. And we are helpless at its hands.

We happen to know, even if we don't know how we came to know, that wholly apart from whether we miss the dead or not, death has no business among humans. You see, people have died for as long as human history has existed, but strangely, as a specie, we – human beings – have never got used to death.

Death never feels genuine. Never.

When a stranger dies, we don't know them enough to miss them, nevertheless, we seem to know just enough to insist that "This ought not to have happened; they ought not to have left..." But geography-wise, we don't feel absolutely at home in the world.

Therefore, at once, we don't want to leave here, and at the same time, we don't feel we fit right here where we live.

SUMMARY 2: We don't want to die, but we don't want this world.

The Bible comes along, and says: You were meant to live forever, & 

This is home, even though this is not yet home...!

THIS IS HOME

God who created the heavens and the earth in the beginning expressed His clear intent. He wanted to have man as His unique reagent on earth to exercise 'dominion' over the rest of His handiwork – through stewardship (Genesis 1:26-28).

To serve as particular home for the man He had formed, God planted a garden Eastward in Eden and placed that man in it to dress and to keep it. The garden was man's home but that wasn't all. It was also a temple of some sort, because God could 'come down' into it without feeling alien or out of place. That garden was a crucible, a controlled ecosystem on earth capable of hosting divinity and humanity. It was a contact point. Heaven and earth intermingled seamlessly there, so that geographically it was a sort of heaven-and-earth on earth. Yes, man's original home had the intricate celestial conditions native to heaven worked into a delineated perimeter - called the garden - here on earth. The garden was on earth, but the conditions were more than earthly. So, the specific place on earth (the garden) Man called home was also the specific place on earth God felt absolutely at home at.

The garden of Eden was man's abode and from thence, he was to govern the earth. It was fitted with all that humanity needed. For instance: it was aesthetically appealing

It had trees good for food

It provided formations that aroused man's imagination and curiosity

It was garnished with natural features that tickled and stirred man's capacity for exploration and for navigation (a river coming in from outside and then parting into four rivers as it meandered out of the garden on its journey to regions waiting to be known and explored). 

The garden also had the tree of life in the midst of it which was man's gateway to immortality

...and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was there too - was there to give man the ongoing opportunity to choose love and obedience.

DISASTER

Then came sin and man became 'corrupt.' But man wasn't the only one affected by his rebellion, the entire creation was fractured and taken out of course for two reasons, at least.

1. Creation's leader and head had become corrupted and consequently, everything that was 'under' him suffered and partook in the corruption which was part of the consequences of his disobedience.

2. The earth in general and the garden of Eden in particular were designed to host man in his unspoiled condition. When he sinned, he turned into something that was no more compatible with his native home – the earth & the garden. To acknowledge and accommodate his new broken condition, the condition of his geography in general had to be altered. And the garden – in particular – was taken away from him.

A broken man should live in a broken broken world.

This was how human death – specifically – and decay – at large – were introduced into the equation of the cosmos.

HOPE

God, plenteous in mercy, had charted a way out for His man and for creation. Even in man's rebellion, God was emphatic that this is not how the story would end. He was going to redeem His human creation from the bondage that corruption brought. It was this hope that was His confidence in subjecting creation to vanity. He knew that creation will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the children of God.

When will this happen? When God's redemptive project for humanity is complete, to be signified by the redemption of our bodies.

So, when I said "the garden in particular was taken away from him" awhile ago, I was not being entirely accurate. Truth is the garden in particular was taken away FOR him.

Our home was on this earth. So this is home. But the conditions of the this earth NOW was not the condition of our original home. Therefore this is no more home. The conditions of the earth will be returned to factory settings someday. Then it will be everything our original home was created to be. Then it will be home again. That is why this world can only presently induce Nostalgia. This is home, but this is not yet home.

By Gideon Odoma