Is there life after death? — The question arises until it annoys us. It is often that terrible that many ones, while just hearing about that question, run away, deciding never to come back.

I could agree with them: one must not ask questions of the kind that no one is able to answer. The question whether there is a life after death, indeed is a question of that kind. Alike the question whether God, being almighty, is able to create a stone that heavy that He is never able to lift it.

If God is able to create a stone of that kind — and He has to be, as He is almighty — it will be a consequence at once that He will be unable to lift it. So what about his almightiness? For in this case one asks whether the Almighty is able to deprive Himself from his own power.

Now, don’t be astonished: in Christianity this question is being answered affirmatively! For by his own free decision, the Almighty principally is unable to deprive man from his freedom. God did create us in his own image, after his likeness, as the book of Genesis says, and this means: as a free being, as a being that is able to choose and, more accurately: as a being that is able to choose between good and evil.

No one can deny it: in Christianity, the Creator has handed over a bit if his might to his human creatures. Yet, his ability to do so isn’t but paradoxical from a too narrow perspective on things. For this paradox is being annihilated by a second one. This second paradox consists of the fact that God does not diminish his power by leaving a piece of it into man’s hands. On the contrary: his power is being increased by this very act of generosity!

How can this be the case? — thus one could ask. And at this point I may invite you to ask yourself the question which of both of the following ‘gods’ is the most powerful:

Our first god creates ‘human’ beings who do not have a free will; they behave exactly as He wants them to behave: they worship Him and they only do what is good. They cannot sin as He does not make them sin. He just imposes his law to them, and they respond it in a most accurate way.

Our second god, on the contrary, creates human beings able to choose themselves between good and evil. For sure, they have full knowledge of the divine law that asks them to do the good and to stay away from the evil, yet they posses the freedom to respond the divine law as they wish. So, under these human beings of the second kind, there probably will be some who obey their Creator.

You already have foreseen the question that arises from this dilemma, and that sounds like this: which one of both the gods is the most powerful: will it be the god whose creatures are being forced to obey him, or will it rather be the god whose creatures are able to follow him by their own free choice? Which one of both the army generals is the best one: is it the one who has to force his soldiers to fight, or is it rather the one whose soldiers do follow him spontaneously to the battlefield? At least it can be said that the latter one has soldiers much more brave than has the former one. And soldiers fighting voluntary are soldiers whose wishes are identical with the wishes of their leader. The creatures of a ‘forcing god’ do follow their god just because they cannot act otherwise, while probably it could be the case that they wished otherwise.

The ‘forcing god’ who, in fact, is a dictator, needs a forcing system in order to be able to assure himself of the obedience of his creatures: he will be in the need of controlling systems, of all kind of laws and punishments, and of an economy with a monetary system and more things like that. Yet the other kind of god doesn’t need all this, for his creatures do obey him out of free choice. And we all know that someone’s might increases as his needs diminish…

As a matter of fact, one could throw up that the latter god — the one who forces his creatures — in the end is not necessarily obeyed by all of his people. Theoretically it is even possible that, in the end, just none of his creatures will obey him. It is not unthinkable that even all of his creatures eventually will prefer to reject Him and to do it their own way. Considering this possibility… what about his being almighty!?

I will not run away from this objection, for it is a realistic one — probably it is a more realistic one than we tend to accept. On the other hand it must be said that — at least in Christianity — the not-forcing God has at least one true and faithful adept, who accordingly is being called “Son of God”. In this way, the Christ in fact is the one who is proving the statement that the non-forcing God is the most powerful of both the gods proposed in here, and that, in this way, He turns out to be the only possible God. In doing so, the Christ just protects the Creator from the ultimate failure of his plan, for a God who has at least one follower on base of his own free choice, is more powerful than a god who has to force his legions to obey him. Perhaps, the not-forcing God must have thought that, anyway, nothing ever could have sense apart from love... And only the obeisance on the base of free choice testifies of true love.

The question whether God is able to create a stone of the kind He cannot lift, is being answered affirmatively in Christianity. Though, this answer does not imply this divine art to be a sign of Gods weakness. On the contrary: the power speaking from this very answer belongs to a higher level than the level of the muscle-power we were thinking about spontaneously at the beginning of this story. And this only means that our initial question was arising due to a lack of knowledge. In asking the question, we wrongly did believe it could never be answered; yet at the moment each difficulty has disappeared: we just mistook the problem.  

In asking the question whether there is a life after death, it appears that we tend to make an analogue mistake. Departing from what we believe to know, we also do believe that no one will ever be able to answer this question in a sound way. We might think that we make a trap for the one to whom we are asking the very question. Yet, also in this case, there is no trap at all: it is just our ignorance that is bothering us. So this is at least what we pretend to be the case: we just need a thought-framework that is broad enough to give us a perspective not determined by just things on the level of the muscle-power. For sure we may not ignore the muscle-power, but at the same time let us remember that there are many more kinds of power in heaven and on earth.