"An Inborn Desire to Live
Virtually everyone considers death to be an unpleasant subject. Most people especially seem to avoid discussing their own death or even thinking about it. On the other hand, they are bombarded by television and movie scenes of people dying in every imaginable way and by stories and images of real deaths featured by the media.
As a result, the death of strangers may appear to be a normal aspect of life. Still, when it comes to the death of a loved one or to our own death, there is nothing normal about it. This is because humans have a deep-seated natural desire to live. We also possess a keen sense of time and a perception of eternity. King Solomon wrote that God “has planted eternity in men’s hearts.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11, The Amplified Bible) Under normal circumstances we want to keep living indefinitely. We want life with no expiration date. There is no indication that animals have such a yearning. They live with no awareness of the future.
The Enormity of Human Potential
Humans not only desire to live indefinitely but also have the potential to remain busy and productive forever. There seems to be no limit to a person’s capacity to learn. It has been said that nothing in nature compares with the human brain when it comes to complexity and resilience. Unlike animals, we have creative minds capable of reasoning and understanding abstract concepts. Scientists have barely scratched the surface when it comes to understanding the potential of the human brain.
Much of this potential remains as we grow older. Neuroscientists have recently learned that most brain functions remain unharmed by the aging process. Researchers working for The Franklin Institute’s Center for Innovation in Science Learning explain: “The human brain is able to continually adapt and rewire itself. Even in old age, it can grow new neurons. Severe mental decline is usually caused by disease, whereas most age-related losses in memory or motor skills simply result from inactivity and a lack of mental exercise and stimulation.”
In other words, if we could keep the brain intellectually stimulated and free from disease, it could keep working indefinitely. “‘The brain,’ declares molecular biologist James Watson, co-discoverer of the physical structure of DNA, ‘is the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe.’” A book by neuroscientist Gerald Edelman explains that a section of the brain the size of a match head “contains about a billion connections that can combine in ways which can only be described as hyperastronomical—on the order of ten followed by millions of zeros.”
Does it seem logical that although endowed with such potential, humans should live just a few decades? This sounds as unreasonable as using a powerful locomotive with a long train of freight cars to transport a grain of sand across a distance of just a few inches! Why, then, does mankind have such an enormous capacity for creative thought and learning? Could it be that humans, unlike animals, are not supposed to die at all—that they were created to live forever?
Hope From the God of Life
The fact that we have an inborn desire to live and an enormous capacity to learn leads to a logical conclusion: Humans are designed to live much longer than a mere 70 or 80 years. This, in turn, leads us to another conclusion: There must be a Designer, a Creator, a God. The immutable laws of the physical universe and the unfathomable complexity of life on earth fully support belief in the existence of a Creator.
If, in fact, God created us with the capacity to live forever, why do we die? And what happens after death? Is it God’s purpose to bring the dead back to life? It would seem logical that a wise and powerful God would provide us with answers to these questions, and he has. Consider the following:
? Death was not part of God’s original purpose for mankind. The first mention of death in the Bible indicates that dying was not what God originally intended for humans. The Bible account of Genesis explains that to allow the first human couple, Adam and Eve, opportunity to manifest their love and loyalty, God placed a simple test upon them. It consisted of a prohibition against eating from one particular tree. God said: “In the day you eat from it you will positively die.” (Genesis 2:17) Adam and Eve would die only if they rebelled, thus failing the test. The Bible account reveals that they proved disloyal to God, and therefore they died. In this way, imperfection and death were introduced into the human family."
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