WEDNESDAY
Humans have had an obsession with the afterlife and the pursuit of eternal life for all of our history. The ancient Egyptians mummified bodies so the life force and personality of the individual could be united in the afterlife. They stocked goods and literature that the individual might need in the afterlife to navigate the underworld and say the right things to the gods. According to ChatGPT (I didn’t spend a ton of time looking into this) eternal life wasn’t guaranteed—it had to be earned and maintained through right living according to the Ma’at, proper burial and ritual preservation of the body and soul. Even their version of heaven (the field of reeds) had to be maintained by the living people giving offerings.
Similarly the Greeks had a complex view of the afterworld. They believed one could earn immortality from the gods by achieving great fame and glory. The scene of Brad Pitt playing Achilles in the 2004 version of Troy comes to mind. He ends his epic pre-battle speech with, “Immortality! It’s yours! Take it!” I’m not entirely sure how indicative that really is of ancient Greek thought, but it seems to line up with what ChatGPT says, so I’m running with it. Maybe ChatGPT is pulling its info from that movie though, idk. Similarly, in the movie Gladiator Russel Crow delivers his pre-battle speech and tells his soldier, “If you find yourself riding in a green field with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysiam (a Roman version of heaven) and you are already dead.”
Today the pursuit of immortality is essentially the same but packaged differently. An idea growing in popularity and influence today is the idea of transhumanism. A lot of serious transhumanists get really sci-fi and weird but the basic idea is that a future merging of tech and humanity will allow humans to live forever. Some have frozen their bodies in the hopes that at a future time when science has cured all diseases they can be re-awakened and live forever. There is a lot of talk of uploading the mind to a computer to be redownloaded upon awakening. Some are pursuing a brain-computer interface through an implanted chip. Neuralink is an early expression of this idea. Some are saying that it is inevitable that AI will eventually rule the world and the only way for humanity to survive is to somehow merge with it. They also suggest that there is no way to know if it would be good or evil so we would do well to get in line with it now. Hence why I’m using ChatGPT!
One proponent of transhumanism is Bryan Johnson. He has 572k followers on X, 1.7 million followers on Instagram, and a Netflix documentary about his life. He is a wealthy “techie” who made his fortune when he sold Braintree to PayPal in 2013. Since then, he has started a movement called “Don’t Die” where he is pursuing his transhumanist goals. The headline on his X profile is, “Conquering death will be humanity’s greatest achievement.” In the Rebuilders podcast, Mark Sayers says that he has another tweet which basically said that we used to believe that God created humanity, but now we see it’s happening in reverse as humans have created AI and it will be god-like. Humans will create god.
In his documentary you see how he spends millions of dollars on medical equipment, takes hundreds of supplements a day, and lives an extremely regimented, isolated life to slow the effects of age on his body.
In his comments Bryan Johnson seems to believe that one can be a Christian and still follow his “religion” of Don’t Die. I would argue that they are in stark contrast with one another because their hopes for eternal life lie in two completely different places. One puts its hope in humanity’s ability to conquer death; the other places its hope solely in Jesus who has conquered death.
John 17:2 (NIV) 2 For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.
Jesus gives eternal life to those the Father gives him.
Revelation 1:18 (NIV) 18 I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.
Jesus holds the keys of death and Hades, meaning he is the one who can give eternal life.
2 Timothy 1:9-10 (NIV) 9 He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, 10 but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
Jesus destroyed death and revealed the path to immortality in the gospel.
1 John 5:11–12 (NIV) 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
Eternal life is a gift given us by God in his Son Jesus. When we believe in him, we have the Son and eternal life in him.
John 14:6 (NIV) 6 “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
The only way to the Father and the life of God is through belief in Jesus.
John 11:25–26 (NIV) 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Only those who believe in him will have eternal life.
Humanity will go to great lengths in an attempt conquer death. The beauty of the gospel is that God has already fought that battle for us. He has already risen for us and given us his life. I would love for Bryan Johnson to know that Jesus has already accomplished for him what he is working so hard to achieve.