Immortality

Every now and then (especially in this honors class), I think about humanity and this infinite search we seem to have for immortality. I don't think that I personally seek immortality, but that we as a collective being all hope never to die. I think it's messing up the world. We aren't meant to live forever. We have to realize that death is real. And it is only by death that we truly come to value life.

What happens when we try to live forever? People are miserable. People are kept on life support, despite any ability to ever come back and live fully. The average age on the planet rises. Retirement gets set back. Jobs don't open up. The economy is a wreck. Houses are foreclosed on. Everyone's in debt. Companies go bankrupt. Cities become overcrowded. The world becomes overcrowded. Food production has to keep up with the population's needs. Organisms have to be genetically modified to meet our changing needs. We try to make them immortal too. Other organisms grow stronger. Horrible outbreaks of disease occur. We have to invent a vaccine or antidote. The virus re-invents itself. Every thing we create causes another problem. People, plants, and animals all die.

We can't control it, but we sure keep trying to. When will the world ever realize that life is cyclical? Nothing can just keep going forever. There must be an end, because all things have come from something else's end. We wouldn't be alive if it weren't for the plants and animals that die for us every day. Those would not be alive if it weren't for the organisms that died for them. Even molecules go through cycles. Nothing stays the same.

Except for God. He and He alone is the exception to this whole ordeal. He never changes. He has no beginning and no end. But the same statement is true:

We could not be alive today if He hadn't died for us.

His death was the greatest death. A death to end all deaths, because He conquered it. He is alive today, and it is through Him that I live and that others live.

...let me not forget...