Q. Being in healthcare I have been with several people as they drew their last breath. All (more or less) are different. Several stare as if looking. Others smile as greeting. Some cry as mourning. Thus, I often wonder: What happens the moment I die? As a Christian? As a non-Christian? In the twinkling of an eye?

The short answer is, we don’t know exactly what happens when you die.  I have seen some of the same things that you mention.  Is there something going on there beyond just physical reactions of the body to death?  Scripture doesn’t tell us much about that.

What scripture points to in both the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament is a sense that the souls of the dead have an existence beyond death that is one of peace, purity, and immortality.

Paul is equally ambiguous.  He speaks of death in 1 Corinthians 15 as the putting off of the physical body until a new body comes at resurrection, of the state of death being a naked seed awaiting a body God will give.  The focus here is certainly on one of the things that is clear in the Christian tradition.

We believe that human beings are embodied.  We don’t believe that humans are only bodies.  Nor do we believe that we are souls who only for a time have bodies.  Rather, we are the breath of God embodied.  What makes us, us, is the fact that we are embodied.  That there is no distinction between the body/spirit that is us.

Throughout the New Testament there is evidence of a belief in an intermediate state between death and resurrection.  It is clear that the self does not cease at death.  Scripture, however, does not speak about this intermediate state in detail.

Some affirm that when you die, you exit time and therefore enter into the resurrection (from your point of view) immediately.  There certainly existed in the past, particularly in the Roman Catholic church, a full expression of what this existence between life and resurrection looked like.  However, there is no clear scripture about this.  What we can affirm is two things:

1. Death cannot destroy the communion with God of those who God has redeemed and justified.  What that communion looks like in the meantime we cannot say.  But we know it exists.
2. We will be raised again into an embodied whole, even as Jesus was.

As a pastor, I am reluctant to speculate beyond these basic things that we know.  As those claimed and forgiven by God, we are held by God who is gracious and merciful.  I trust that God will do right by me regardless of what it looks like.  To try and say anything more is speculation at best, which can often lead to bad theology.  At worst it is trying to peer into the mind of God, to be like God, which never works out well for anyone.

So, we trust in God’s claim on us and the promise of a bodily resurrection into new life in God’s own time.

Let me know if you have further questions by contacting me.

God’s Blessings,

Pastor Brian