After sixty years as a devout Southern Baptist—and now nearly eleven years as a former Christian—I find myself cringing when I read statements like the one recently shared by Ken Boa, a respected Christian author and teacher.
Now approaching 80, Boa reflects on his life and legacy with language familiar to anyone steeped in evangelicalism. His July 22 message, Principles and Practices I’d Like to Pass On, is steeped in Scripture, sincerity, and the framework of a life shaped by Christian belief.
But when read from a post-Christian, naturalistic, or atheistic perspective, Boa’s words expose a deep disconnect from the real world—the only world we know exists.
🧠 Framing Time as “Borrowed”
Boa opens by saying he’s “living on borrowed time to accomplish unfinished business.” In Christian language, this is a noble sentiment. But it’s also based on the unexamined assumption that time belongs to God, not to us.
From a secular standpoint, your time is not borrowed. It’s not leased from a deity. It’s yours—a finite stretch of experience granted by chance, genetics, environment, and human history. Life isn’t a divine loan with spiritual interest payments due. It’s a fragile, beautiful accident—no less meaningful because it ends.
📖 Devaluing This Life for the Next
Boa quotes Psalm 90:12:
“So teach us to number our days, that we may present to you a heart of wisdom.”
This could be a powerful call to presence and mortality awareness. But instead, it’s tethered to an idea of presenting ourselves to God—measuring wisdom by how well we’ve obeyed, believed, or evangelized.
He goes further:
“The best of this earth will be surpassed by the least of heaven.”
This line captures a core problem with supernatural belief: it minimizes everything we love about being human—relationships, beauty, discovery, art, even awe—by comparing it to something we’ve never seen and can’t prove.
Heaven, in this framework, becomes a cosmic escape plan. And Earth? A temporary waiting room.
But from a non-supernatural perspective, this life isn’t a dress rehearsal. There’s no green room before eternity. This is it. And that makes it more precious, not less.
🏗️ A Tent from God?
Boa cites 2 Corinthians 5 to describe the body as an “earthly tent” and the afterlife as a “house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” He speaks of groaning under the weight of mortality and longing to be “clothed” in a heavenly dwelling.
This metaphor is beautiful—but also deeply misleading.
Modern neuroscience offers no evidence that a conscious soul survives death. Consciousness arises from the brain. When the brain stops functioning, the person is gone. No tents. No new clothing. No ethereal home in the clouds.
This passage reflects a dualism that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny—one that often leads believers to resent their bodies or disengage from the here and now in favor of the world to come.
⚖️ The Fear of Judgment
Boa continues:
“We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ…”
This notion—the cosmic evaluation of every deed, thought, and motive—was once a central part of my worldview. But it’s built on fear, not freedom. The idea that morality comes from divine oversight is deeply ingrained in religious consciousness—but it’s unnecessary.
We do not need a divine judge to be ethical. We need empathy. We need reason. We need systems that protect the vulnerable and promote well-being—not threats of hellfire.
Fear-based morality is not morality at all. It’s compliance. And it infantilizes human beings by placing them under eternal surveillance.
🔮 “There Are Better Things Ahead…”
Boa ends with a C.S. Lewis–style flourish:
“There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
He means heaven. But what if he’s wrong?
What if there’s nothing ahead? What if this moment, this body, this breath, this blue planet—is all there is?
Then to place hope in heaven is to miss the miracle of here.
We are not promised another life. And once we stop pretending we are, we begin to live differently: with urgency, with presence, with kindness not because we’ll be rewarded—but because it matters now.
✨ A Different Kind of Wisdom
Boa is right about one thing: the days do pass quickly. And nearing the end of life does call for reflection.
But instead of asking, “Have I pleased God?” we might ask:
Did I show up in my own life? Did I love others authentically? Did I seek truth, even when it cost me certainty? Did I experience the miracle of existing—not as preparation for eternity, but as the very thing itself?
There is no tent and no house. There is only this brief, strange, dazzling existence—and it is enough.
God or Delusion? 