Afterlife? I don't need to talk about the afterlife.

We seriously don't need to argue where or how heaven, or paradise or the eternal kingdom or whatever you wish for, whatever you wish to call it - is going to be set up.

Trust God's judgment. Trust God's competence to manage the details and aspects of the afterlife. Afterlife? I don't even need to guess about the afterlife. I am one life, eternal - not because I was worth it, or deserved it on my own merit! Heck, I didn't even deserve to be born.

God looked, and saw, and said that it was good. God sees all. God saw that you were good. Good, and worth saving. That was God's judgment on the matter, anyhow. God's judgment on humanity was Christ. Was and is - and in him, will ever be.

Christ accepted, then rebuked human judgment - accepted the sentence of death we pronounced, then swept it aside once and for all! For all who heed Christ's call to accept God's judgment - no longer stubbornly preferring our own.

It is not our choice that saves us. By God's choice, we are already saved: Christ came to save us all. But God will not force us against our will. We can always choose to prefer our own human judgment, the fruits of our knowledge of good and evil. We're allowed to reject God's judgment. We're allowed to reject Christ. Or we can accept the salvation, the good news that salvation is ours. At Christ's call, we reverse Adam's fall.

That's all pretty normal and straightforward. I don't see how arguing about shining clouds, or pearly gates, or halo frisbee golf, or alleluia choirs, or the details of wherever and however our heavenly Father shall run his house, the house he has prepared for us - who cares? Do we believe in God, but worry he might bungle these minor matters? Come on. Or the way hell is, or is run. Whatever hell is, it is founded and set in place how God saw fit. God's competent for this junk. Some of the ways I hear people talk about heaven or hell, I find upsetting. But not because I worry God might have actually set it up some crazy or unjust way. It's upsetting to me, to hear people upsetting themselves and others over stupid things. And to make a major case over aspects we can't dictate, but that God surely has covered is stupid. Arguing about the afterlife - is stupid.

I was born twice, I can die once and still come out ahead! - and alive. I was born once to nature, natural inheritor of the natural universe, inheritor of free will and the right to prefer my judgment to God's. "Cursed with original sin," they call it. Ah, children. Grow up, and accept this great gift you see all around you!

I was born a second time in Christ, even as Christ himself - already and eternally one in being with God! - was born, incarnate in human form. Taking on flesh, to wed it to the eternal. Through him, with him, and in him, by God's will, God's judgment and God's grace, I was born to eternity. What astounding news. Undeserved. I accept it gratefully.

I don't need to talk about the afterlife. There's nothing after life. I was born twice. I can die once. I don't mind the minor passages of life, which is eternal. I was born to it.