COMMENTARY: Into the great hereafter

(RNS) In the hothouse world of a high school gymnasium, one basketball player in my class seemed to float through the air. He was tall, thin, elegant, with an imperturbable expression on his face. Game after game, in a city and state where basketball meant so much, a full house shouted his praise. Although I […]

(RNS) In the hothouse world of a high school gymnasium, one basketball player in my class seemed to float through the air. He was tall, thin, elegant, with an imperturbable expression on his face.

Game after game, in a city and state where basketball meant so much, a full house shouted his praise. Although I never knew him, I knew the game was winnable if he was on the floor.

After graduation, our paths diverged — they had never really connected in the strange world of 1960s integration. I didn’t hear of him again until a mutual friend recently sent me his obituary.


In five brief sentences, it said the man had lived. No wife, no children, no mention of occupation, interests or accomplishments. He had been born into a family, and years later, he died. At first reading, it seemed sad.

Yes, my friend told me, his life had been sad, dominated by alcohol, drugs and associated problems. “I don’t think he ever had much of a life after high school,” she said.

Now comes the moment of truth — the moment that countless preachers have held over their flocks and countless parents have held over their children. It’s the moment that supposedly justified the creation of a global Christian empire that claimed to control access to heaven and hell, and leveraged that claim into absolute rule.

Death comes, and now the judgment. Now comes the dreadful moment of reckoning, the book open and a parsimonious God scanning a life’s record and giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Mess up, the powerful have said, and you will “fry in hell.” Get your religion wrong, and you will be “damned for eternity.”

Don’t worry, say some religious partisans, “I am praying for you.” If they pray hard enough, the message goes, we will see the error of our ways, come to agree with them, and we will walk into heaven together.

Don’t bother, still others say, you’re doomed.

As I read my friend’s small obituary and heard about his troubled life, I realized that I don’t believe such arrogant claims about heaven or hell, who controls access, and what it takes to win eternal bliss, or deserve eternal suffering in God’s imagined chambers of punishment.


I have no idea what happened to my classmate’s life, or if what little I heard is close to the truth. I suspect there is far more to his story than five sentences in an obituary and a few second-hand comments. I can imagine that basketball prowess didn’t lead anywhere. I can picture the predators waiting on him, seizing every dollar he earned, every breath he took.

But I do believe that God suffered along with him. In whatever way he lived, God was there. However hard it was, God was there. His life wasn’t incidental to God. Whether or not he soared in the world’s eyes, God loved him as much as God loves any of us.

So now the moment of reckoning, and it is a glorious moment of truth. I doubt that God is shouting his name as he weaves toward a basket cradling a ball. But surely God is whispering his name, wiping his tears, and cradling his soul in the bosom of eternity.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)

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