Many Christians I know think about life after death. Questions arise on what heaven will be like, what hell will be like and every what, where, when and how on life after death.

When people reach middle age and they become more and more the oldest generation, I get that these questions can rise. Also, in cases of the death of a young person, these questions can play a role. To me, these questions actually don't play a role in how I live an think about my faith.

Don't get me wrong: I do believe in the existence of heaven and hell. The concepts of heaven and hell bring along questions on what God is like and who will end up where. In this post I won't talk on that subject - I will save that for another post.

What I'm saying is that I'm not that interested in questions on life after death. There's a distinction to be made in types of faith in this subject. There is death centered Christianity and life centered Christianity. The first one revolves around death. Everything in this type of faith is related to life after death. Matters of sin and forgiveness, ethics, etc. The latter is focused on life before death. To me this is a more practical focused type of faith.

To me there are three reasons that life centered Christianity is closest to me.

1. You can't know anything about heaven and hell. The Bible doesn't tell us actually anything about what heaven or hell is like. The only disclosures the Bible gives are images to make incomprehensible things a bit comprehensible. The Bible also tells us that we can't comprehend. So why would we try?

2. Trust. If we can't comprehend what life after death is like, we must trust God that heaven will be a good place and hell won't be. There will be more on this in another post (as I wrote earlier). Also we can trust God that our sins are forgiven and heaven is the place for us. Isn't that enough?

3. It is more important to practically act on your faith than worry on life after death. If there is no worry about life after death: in what way will we act in our daily lives? I think the only thing remaining is to love others as we love ourselves and love God above all. Love is the remaining thing. Love others for who they are and what their lives are like. This also reflects on ethics. What the good life is depends on this kind of love.