Heaven and Hell

Imagine our world in black and white.

Not black, white, and gray. Only black and white. Every color, then, would have exactly two options for its appearance. There would be no middle ground, no halfway choice between the two diametrically opposed states of being to choose from.

That's what the afterlife is like.

There exist only two options for our eternity: Heaven and Hell. Each person who walks this earth has to fit in one category, or the other. There's no middle ground – no gray.

Are we really so fundamentally different from one another that some of us reach ultimate happiness and all others writhe in fire? Can one man really be destined for the everlasting peace of Heaven, while the man standing next to him is doomed to the tortures of Hell?

How is this designation determined? Does it really all teeter on the one question of whether or not a person believes in God? What if a murderer believes in God, or a life-saver doesn't? What carves that invisible, ineffaceable line through our society that separates those bound for Heaven and those bound for Hell?

Is our ultimate destination determined from birth? Does each of us come from the womb with an invisible dog-tag strapped to our ankle, designating our final home? Or are we born as a blank slate – a tabula rasa – with a pen poised upon it by God, Who scrawls every good and bad deed we commit in indelible ink?

Will we ever be able to answer these fundamental questions, that internally bombard us as we meander through life?

Of course. But only when life falls away... and we are confronted with either Heaven or Hell itself.