When Eternity Sounds Exhausting (part 1)

I remember the first time my brother told me he was worried about my eternal destination. I was nineteen, he was twenty-one, and we were standing outside our mother's condo in northern Los Angeles. I thought we were bonding over our Marlboros and a momentary escape from the familial cacophony that is a Christmas vacation, but he had other plans. We shared a lifetime of family joys and frustrations, but it was at that moment that I realized how completely our paths diverged as we entered our adult years.

We both grew up in a more or less secular household. We had been Catholic for about six months - just long enough to get baptized and confirmed and then stop attending - and our mother had experimented in Pagan and Wiccan practices, but overall we weren't all that concerned with how we got here or where we would go next. I, armed with the theory of evolution and the worldly feeling of unparalleled omniscience befitting any teenager who called herself an adult, was certain that my existence was limited to my physical presence, however long that should be. As an adult, however, my brother began dating a young woman whose faith was the basis for all parts of her life. They fell in love faster than most people can fall down a water slide, and so his journey with Christ began. With his newfound faith came the oft-seen born-again Christian determination to evangelize loudly and frequently, and apparent I was no exception to his audience.

On this particular night we began by discussing how much life we were sacrificing by smoking, a prospect that did not garner any serious attention from either of us. Imagine my surprise when my brother followed with, "But I know my death will be celebrated because I will return to Our Lord. Where will you be?" Um . . . in an unmarked grave in England? Cast out to sea in the gulf of Mexico? Strapped to a laboratory table at a prestigious medical school in the New England tri-state area? I could see plenty of possibilities, but none were what he had in mind. He began speaking through scripture and perception about my final destination and the inevitability of hell for anyone who was not a believer. I made the typical arguments for a while - if God is all-loving, he will forgive my lack of faith, I'm a good person even if I don't label my values as "Christian," etc. - but he was ready for all of my arguments. He framed his own arguments in the brotherly sentiment that he loved me and did not want me to spend eternity in hell - a sentiment I appreciated even in my atheistic position.

At that point I stopped trying to argue with him spiritually and decided instead to discuss my idea of the physical reality of the moment. I was in hell. I was behind the wheel of a car when my friend was killed. I sat next to her, unconscious and on the verge of my own death, when she died. I lived everyday knowing my legs would never be the same, my brain would never be the same, and yet all of that was meaningless compared to the reality that Nicole would never be back. Every day I lived was one more day she never lived, one more event she never experienced, one more emotion she never felt, one more milestone she never reached. And I was the one driving. That, I told my brother, living with all of that  . . . that was my personal hell. For once, he had no response.

I took that argument with me through the next several years of my life. I hardened myself to the idea of religion - partly because I couldn't bring myself to believe in a God who put all of this in my life, partly because I wasn't convinced religion held any answers for me anyway, and partly because I figured if there was a hell, they had a spot all ready for me when my time came.

End of Part 1.