by Chase Hawkins
When I was in 8th grade I visited Washington DC with my family. One of the days on our trip, we decided to visit Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. The cemetery is 600-some acres of the graves of just a fraction of the men and women who have served our country.
In the cemetery lies the body of former US President John F. Kennedy (the nation’s first Catholic president!). Kennedy’s grave is one like no other. The gravesite’s claim to fame (other than being the resting place of a president who was assassinated in 1963) is that the grave displays an eternal flame.
The eternal flame is a propane-powered flame on the Kennedy’s gravesite that never goes out. I was in awe at the spectacle. Not necessarily that a gas-powered flame could be eternal, but that the meaning was so special. The flame symbolized eternal life, a display of Kennedy’s Christian belief in everlasting life.
As I walked through the rest of Arlington, I wondered about the faces of the many men and women who were buried there. A recurring question popped up in my mind; that is, the question of God’s existence. Remembering the eternal flame, I was confident in God’s existence.
If we found out today that there was no God, that God was a myth, a fictitious figure conjured up by desperate humans in search for meaning, our world would be drastically different. On the outside, the world would seem the same. From a quick glance, the world would be “in order”; nothing would seem different. Upon a deeper look, the world actually wouldn’t be the same.
Human existence would have a whole new meaning. Existence would be simply just that – existence. By this, I mean that humans would have no other purpose than to take up space in the universe, to simply exist. If God didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have the slightest hope of everlasting life. We would be nothing but a wax candle, dimly flickering in the dark space that is the universe. When our wax runs out, we are nothing but a shell of our former human self, rotting in the grave. With God in existence, however, once our wax runs out, it is as if the spark of our life ignites an everlasting flame – reminiscent of the everlasting flame at the grave of President John F. Kennedy. With this in mind, humans would have no true hope in life; we would be inevitably doomed to death. We would exist only to die and decompose in a grave.
If humans were nothing more than the roll of the dice on the face of the planet, those who are born into desolate conditions would have no hope of ever escaping into true happiness. In other words, the maximum happiness they could achieve would be “worldly happiness” (i.e. sex, drugs, alcohol, family, friends, parties, winning, etc.). Not that worldly happiness is always bad, but it still does not compare to eternal happiness; the happiness that God has intended for humans in Heaven.
To an extent, with no God, we cannot amount to anything more than a casket dug into a hill. We become like death row inmates, pacing their cells, waiting for the switch to end it all.
-Chawkins.
In the cemetery lies the body of former US President John F. Kennedy (the nation’s first Catholic president!). Kennedy’s grave is one like no other. The gravesite’s claim to fame (other than being the resting place of a president who was assassinated in 1963) is that the grave displays an eternal flame.
The eternal flame is a propane-powered flame on the Kennedy’s gravesite that never goes out. I was in awe at the spectacle. Not necessarily that a gas-powered flame could be eternal, but that the meaning was so special. The flame symbolized eternal life, a display of Kennedy’s Christian belief in everlasting life.
As I walked through the rest of Arlington, I wondered about the faces of the many men and women who were buried there. A recurring question popped up in my mind; that is, the question of God’s existence. Remembering the eternal flame, I was confident in God’s existence.
If we found out today that there was no God, that God was a myth, a fictitious figure conjured up by desperate humans in search for meaning, our world would be drastically different. On the outside, the world would seem the same. From a quick glance, the world would be “in order”; nothing would seem different. Upon a deeper look, the world actually wouldn’t be the same.
Human existence would have a whole new meaning. Existence would be simply just that – existence. By this, I mean that humans would have no other purpose than to take up space in the universe, to simply exist. If God didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have the slightest hope of everlasting life. We would be nothing but a wax candle, dimly flickering in the dark space that is the universe. When our wax runs out, we are nothing but a shell of our former human self, rotting in the grave. With God in existence, however, once our wax runs out, it is as if the spark of our life ignites an everlasting flame – reminiscent of the everlasting flame at the grave of President John F. Kennedy. With this in mind, humans would have no true hope in life; we would be inevitably doomed to death. We would exist only to die and decompose in a grave.
If humans were nothing more than the roll of the dice on the face of the planet, those who are born into desolate conditions would have no hope of ever escaping into true happiness. In other words, the maximum happiness they could achieve would be “worldly happiness” (i.e. sex, drugs, alcohol, family, friends, parties, winning, etc.). Not that worldly happiness is always bad, but it still does not compare to eternal happiness; the happiness that God has intended for humans in Heaven.
To an extent, with no God, we cannot amount to anything more than a casket dug into a hill. We become like death row inmates, pacing their cells, waiting for the switch to end it all.
-Chawkins.