Is There Life After Death?

We all have near and dear ones who have left this world for good. There is none who is spared. But the more sobering fact is that we all would face death someday. None will be spared again. Rich or poor, young or old, every one will face death. Death is the greatest leveller, they say! My father-in-law passed away few days back after battling cancer for over a year. Of all the people I have known, I would remember him – Nank Kishore Sanghi – as the one person who has the purest heart. (Infants do have pure hearts, but I am not taking them into consideration now.) He was a hard working scientist and an honest person! The ethical excellence he strives for, in thought and in deed, was marvellous. There might have been such people or better people in the past, and there may be still be such people or better people around. But I do not know anyone who is like my father-in-law. He does not claim perfection. But verbally and through action, he teaches those around him to strive and strive and strive for moral excellence.

If there is one person who could earn salvation by good work, he would qualify to be one of those individuals. But he would say that his good work is not sufficient to earn him salvation. Salvation is only for those who are morally perfect or for those who are forgiven. And he thought that he is not morally perfect. He thought so because moral perfection is just too high a standard for a human to achieve. He has weaknesses and shortcomings and therefore he is far from being morally perfect. And so the only way to get salvation is by way of forgiveness; by being pronounced 'not guilty' or 'not blameworthy'. And he believes that only through Jesus Christ could he receive forgiveness. He arrived at this conclusion after years of inquiring how one's own iniquities could be cleansed. Being born into a family that knew not Christ even in remotest sense, it was a long journey. Yet at certain point in his adult life, he arrived at a conclusion that apart from Christ there is no forgiveness of sins .

Jesus Christ was put to death on the cross by the Roman authority while he was in his 30s. His disciples claimed that on the third day after being put to death, he came back to life. They claimed that they have seen the resurrected Jesus Christ, touched him, ate with him and been with him. They claimed that Jesus has conquered death. He is resurrected from the death, they say. But the fact that he would come back to life after being killed have been told in advance by Jesus himself to the disciples. The disciples found it hard to believe until it really occurred. The entire Christian community all over the world that is there yesterday and today and will be there tomorrow hangs on this story – Jesus is risen. The implication is that if Jesus is truly risen, life does not end with this physical death. And based on the words that he had said, there is also the hope for life beyond this three dimensional world for all those who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and God; that this death is not the end of the story.

My own father is no more. Yet there is the hope that I will see him again along with my father-in-law in future. This hope is based on the historical claim that Jesus Christ is risen from the death. Whether the historical claim and therefore the hope is based on historical evidence or not is open to critical examination. On my part I have applied academic rigour and intellectual honesty to examine the claim, and I have found the case to be very convincing. Christianity is a religion that can be rendered meaningless, if this claim can be proved to be wrong. But if one examines the case and found it convincing, it could be life-transforming. Whether to critically examine the claim or to dismiss it as fiction without examination, God has left the choice open!