Life Assessment

SAT., NOV. 3, 1990, 6:28 AM
FARM, STUDY

You know that one of the “features” of a genuine near-death experience is a full life assessment. This means that you have a chance to view a panorama of your entire life, with all that you did and didn’t do all before you. Obviously, the people who have described such experiences have returned to conscious life, so they were not truly dead. But they were close to death, and hence they got a foretaste of the experience. I affirm to you that most of the experiences, as described, are real, for consciousness does continue after the body, even the brain dies.

Now if the brain is dead this cannot be the same consciousness that you experience daily. Rather, it is the spirit’s “version” of what your life has been like. Your spirit makes an assessment of all that your brain causes you to think and to do. When your mind and your spirit are in relative harmony (and this usually depends on the strength and maturity of the spirit) then any assessment by the brains’s functioning is not greatly different from that of the spirit. Many life events are inconsequential, but the spirit can show you the chances you missed to be the full person you could have been.

And yet there finally is little point in dwelling on your shortcomings in a kind of punishing. If the orthodox Christian paradigm were true there would be a compulsory life assessment, with emphasis on what sins you committed, how your life measured up to My Teachings as Jesus, and even how fully you accepted Me as Lord, with the grace I give. Since virtually no one would get a perfect score for a total life there would have to be some judgment on what less-than-perfect score would quality you for heaven.

One relatively simple judgment would be the actions, thoughts, and commitments at the moment of death. This would require no assessment of a whole life, but only of its last moments. Well, only a few have the chance to die “ideally.” This would be a rather quick death, with virtually no pain (or at least manageable pain), but time to turn your heart entirely to Me, with a full readiness to meet Me. Ah, that’s an interesting point. Is the ideal getting-into-heaven death one that gives up earth life freely and fully? If so, what about people who die wanting to remain here being of real service to others?

If this at-the-moment criterion is too unfair and some life assessment is necessary then some comparison of virtuous and sinful behavior must be necessary. This raises the question of what balances what. Does one noble act count more than a lifetime of relative disregard for Me, My Church, and the welfare of others. Or does a lifetime of small services overbalance no true commitment to Me and no real opportunities to do something remarkably noble? Is commitment to Me, in spirit, more important than actual deeds? Does being active in church… even supporting the church with money… gain you “points”?

If this is a decision that sends you to a lonely heaven or a tortuous hell for eternity, with no chance to have the decision reversed, then the exact criteria should be known. If you were giving grades in a class and these were to be Pass or Fail and your standards were very high but only vaguely known by the students, and you passed only a few, you surely would be considered unfair. Would your Heavenly Father be this unfair?