When our bodies become worm food. I really hope someone catches a big old fish with the worms that eat me.
Indeed! "Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes but to one table. That’s the end...A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm...a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar"
If one inherits eternal life, where does he live after physical death?
I guess I opened a can of worms and am now obligated to try to round them up again...The short answer to your question is: on Earth in your body.
The ancient Jews and early Christians did not separate the physical and the spiritual in the same way we do, and they certainly didn't idealize non-physical existence. That's Plato or the Gnostics. In biblical thought, humans are physical beings by God's design and intention, and the hope is not that we become non-physical beings, but that physical existence be restored. Physical existence has been corrupted and has all sorts of problems, but unlike Plato/gnosticism, the Bible doesn't view the physical world itself as the problem and hope for escape or transcendence above it. Instead, the Bible views corruption as the problem and longs for the renewal of all things (physical things!). Your hope, as a Christian, should not be flying away from earth as a spirit. Rather, we look forward to the Resurrection in the New Creation - a physical earth and physical bodies free from sin, death, curse, and chaos.
I don't think this is merely a minor nuance either. By making Christian hope, goals, and life about non-physical, future existence, we completely miss the meaning, significance and purpose of the whole Bible, and therefore, Christian life itself. If the sole goal of your life is "getting into heaven", then your focus is only on the future, and your only purpose now is to be pious enough, or to say the words of a magic prayer so that you can get there. You just have to find the key, then you can escape. It's all going to burn in the end anyway! However, in the Bible, Heaven and (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) are not merely future destinations, they are present realities! Heaven is God's Kingdom and (This word is unacceptable on Trapperman) is what humans created when they rebelled and created their own kingdoms. The purpose or goal of human life is to represent God in the world - to be His images, representatives of His Kingdom. The gospel message in the Bible is not "you can go to Heaven", but "Heaven is coming here!" Salvation occurs when you stop living under the authority of hellish human kingdoms and accept the invitation to put yourself under God's authority in His Kingdom. At that point your meaning and purpose in life is restored, and you seek to live as an image of God on Earth now! There is still hope for the future (the renewal of all things in the New Creation when all Earth operates under Heaven's authority), but the focus is physical life in the here and now - not in order to "get saved and get to heaven" later, but because you have been saved and Heaven is here now. Does that make sense or am I just rambling?
