And on a side note ..........
I began a Christian fantasy novel over ten years ago that I never finished (and I'm certain I never will -- I abandoned it because the theology started getting very wonky on me and I had to put it down). I will share part of my premise, and you can take what you want from it and puke out the rest (wonky shit, I admit, which is why I stopped writing it). And I am certain I am not the only writer (Christian or otherwise) to ever write this general premise, so I won't even begin to claim it's entirely original.
In my never-to-be-finished novel, the mysterious and elusive creatures whom we refer to in modern times as space aliens are really the half-human and half-angel children from the Book of Genesis Chapter 6, referred to as the Nephilim. They were once very tall and beautiful people, very strong and physically fit -- hyper-idealized specimens of the perfect human, superior to us in matters of strength, physique and inteligence -- and most especially superior to us in good looks and sexiness. Except they are NOT human because unlike us they were not made "in the image of God." Instead their very existence is an unauthorized cheat. They suffer from a cosmic bastardization, so they are not recognized by the Throne of Heaven. They are flesh and blood, and so they COULD die, but they refuse to die because they know that if they die, their spirits will have no place to go. Upo death, their flesh and blood bodies will drop to the floor, and then their spirits will remain standing there with no passage for them into Heaven -- or even into Hell. Instead they will remain marooned here on the Earth until the End of Ages. There are already many thousands of such marooned spirits whose Nephilim bodies died long ago, and now they flit about as ghosts (aka "disembodied spirits"), wishing very much to be back inside of a human body again. Those who successfully do get back into a living breathing human body again are referred to as "demons", and the person whose body they are inhabitting are said to be "possessed."
Here's the heart and soul of my side note ............
But there exists another group of Nephilim who were rescued from death via technology. They CANNOT let themselves die, so their aging and decrepit bodies are withering away, many thousands of years old. They are forcing their bodies to remain alive, intervening for themselves medically with everything they can. But they have no more hair on their once beautiful heads or their once perfect bodies because human body hair barely lasts a century. They lost their teeth because teeth also only last maybe a century. They had to surgically remove all portions of their bodies that have cartilege because cartillege merely keeps on growing for as long as you are alive -- so they took out their own nasal cartilege, took out their ear cartilege. They are disfigured shells of their former beautiful selves. They MUST protect their eyes because of how delicate optical tissue is, so they cover their eyes with dark contact lenses. They stay out of the sun to prevent skin damage. Their spines have shrunk somewhat from bone loss, so they are shorter than they once were. Their heads seem disproportionately large for their small frames, but the truth is they were once mighty giants.
Yeah -- you know the imagery I'm trying to conjur for you here.
I'm describing the typical bald and bulbous-headed "space alien" with the dark shiney contact lenses covering their huge eyes, no nasal bones, no ear cartilege, sickly pale skin, tiny mouths, no teeth. I ALSO am describing a desperate people who cling to a lifeless form of life only because death is not an option.
No. I do not want to live forever. I am greatful for what JRR Tolkien calls "the gift of death."
Consider the Greek Goddess Eos who fell in love with a human named Tithonus. She asked Zeus to grant her lover eternal life -- but forgot to ask for the companion gift of eternal youth. Tithonus grew older and older and eventually shriveled up into a cricket.
No. I do not want to live forever. Not in this frail and makeshift body I don't.
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