What the Fork! An Analysis of the Afterlife in The Good Place
by Cameron Cortez
“‘Tis impossible to be sure of anything but Death and Taxes,”
*This article contains spoilers to the show.
Death is one of the certainties of life that every culture, people, religion, nation, and creed for all time have faced, are facing, and will face. You can tell a lot about how a culture views the afterlife much by how they treat their dead. Whether it be the ancient Egyptians who built great pyramids and meticulously embalmed their deceased kings to the Zoroastrians who laid their dead out in the sun in high places in order to not pollute the earth, the rituals, and lengths we go through in preparing the dead says a lot about what we believe about death and beyond.
Currently, postmodernism has added an extra layer over our view of the afterlife as other narratives from various religions and worldviews become relevant and equally true. James Sire in The Universe Next Door states that “Postmodernism is the vanished horizon wherein all stories are equally valid, being so validated by the community that lives by them. The death of absolute truth, where your truth is just as valid as mine.” The current cultural moment we find ourselves in is a plethora of various narratives regarding death and the afterlife each contributing something unique and based on the present social conventions holding a degree of truth to someone.
The American comedic fantasy The Good Place humorously deals with such grave topics like moral ethics and the afterlife in a very postmodern fashion. The basic premise of the four-season series is set in an afterlife where upon death humans are sent to either “The Good Place” or “The Bad Place” based on a cumulative score of their morality in life.
According to Good Place architect Michael,
Each religion got the structure of the universe about 5 percent right--although a stoner named Doug Forcett got it 92 percent right while high on some mushrooms, before promptly forgetting what he’d learned.
The Good Place is an utter utopia of eternal happiness where every wish and desire is granted whereas “The Bad Place” is that of eternal torture.
The series revolves around four characters: Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell), Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper), Tahani Al-Jamil (Jameela Jamil), and Jason Mendoza (Manny Jacinto) and their dealings with various beings of the afterlife primarily the afterlife “architect” Michael (Ted Danson) and Janet (D’Arcy Carden) an artificial being who acts as a Good Place assistant. The Good Place also wrestles with through different theories of moral philosophy of John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, and moral nihilism. A total mind-fork.
Works-Righteous
... for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Only those with the highest moral scores are granted residence in The Good Place which is gradually revealed through the entirety of the season one that each of the four characters does not belong in The Good Place. Spoiler alert: the twist is that each of them was selected to eternally torture one another in an experimental Bad Place revealing Michael as a demon architect of their torment. Thus, begging question of the series then becomes, where is the real Good Place and how to get there? By the time season three rolls around it has become apparent that the points-based system is deeply flawed and that no one has gotten into The Good Place since the 1500s A.D. because the cumulative bad in the world which cascades into every action even if done for good. The system is rigged where no amount of good the characters do can get them into The Good Place. In short, we’re all forked.
Scripture agrees wholeheartedly with this concept that no amount of good works we do will justify us before a holy and righteous God. Deep down each of us knows we stand guilty if measured by the standard of perfection. We may try to exonerate ourselves by comparing ourselves to ruthless dictators, ax murderers, sociopaths, democrats, or republicans but at the end of the day, we are all guilty of something. No amount of effort on our part can absolve us from God’s judgment save the acceptance of His Son Jesus Christ who imputes his perfect score onto us and in turn took on our negative deficit on the cross.
“The current cultural moment we find ourselves in is a plethora of various narratives regarding death and the afterlife each contributing something unique and based on the present social conventions holding a degree of truth to someone. ”
You Complete Me--Soulmates
When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.
A hallmark of The Good Place is that everyone is paired with their “soulmate” or missing half and is united forever in eternal bliss. Each of the characters in the series is paired up with their true soulmate and is meant to be a perfect match based on their personality and preferences. I myself for a time bought into the idea that there was someone out there made to “complete” me and that I had to find “The One.” Even amongst Christian circles, there is this notion that God specifically created one person for us to marry, and that has even given rise to the justification for divorce simply because a couple no longer believes they are meant for one another.
The idea of a “soulmate” actually comes from Plato’s Symposium. “According to Plato, humans were originally androgynous, each one with four arms, four legs, two sets of genitalia (male and female), and one head made up of two faces.” That’s pretty bizarre to behold. “These four-legged, two-faced humans became a threat to the gods, but the pantheon didn’t want to destroy them… So Zeus, the king of the gods, split humans in two, cutting their strength in half and doubling the number of worshipers.” Now that’s just forked up.
Jesus clearly states that at the resurrection, we will neither be married nor given into marriage. Not to throw a downer on happily ever after, but the purpose of marriage is not to become complete for all eternity. It is meant for sanctification and transformation on the journey of this life, hence why in our vows we say, “til death do us part.” I know that it does not sound romantic to say that the grave is what separates a marriage, but that is because we place such an emphasis on the here and now. Our best imagings that we can conjure up pale in comparison to what actually being in heaven will be like.
New Heaven & New Earth--The Eternal State
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!
I would argue that the church has not preached a compelling biblical vision of the afterlife and the eschaton. Much has been assumed and piecemealed from Greco-Roman beliefs and Renaissance artwork. Many sermons focus on topics about Christian ethics and morality, but very few on what heaven is going to be like. That is like talking at length about the details of how you are going to get to Hawaii on your trip versus talking about Hawaii, what it is going to be like and what you will do there.
Photo by Marc A. Sporys on Unsplash
The eternal state in which the entire narrative of Scripture points to will be the absolute zenith of good and for all intents and purposes awesome. As a church we have done a disservice to the world by not preaching, teaching, and painting a picture of truly what the New Heaven and New Earth will look like with the ushering in of the Kingdom of God. So much has been left up to popular culture to imagine and shape that depictions of heaven resemble more of Mount Olympus than they do Scripture. What the fork Christians?!
Concluding Thoughts
The travesty is that even most Christians do not fully grasp what a biblical Heaven looks like and have a pretty dull outlook on what it will be like. We have given way to the secular gospel that emphasizes this life and if there is an afterlife will be some parody of this life. God’s vision of the afterlife is so much more. It involves a wedding feast, a restoration of the earth to an Edenic state, the end of all suffering and wrong-doing, and entering into the eternal pleasure of our loving Heavenly Father. That is the narrative Christians should be the heralds of and should be and is our good place. It will be forking good!
Photo by Michael Krahn on Unsplash
Resources
We’ve created a free downloadable PDF to explore the article deeper. It contains discussion questions about the topic in general terms that will give you a jumping-off point for beginning a conversation.
The second page contains a way to see the topic from a biblical perspective.
And finally, to go deeper into the subject, we have chosen a few curated resources to explore from other authors’ and thinkers’ research or perspectives.
Read. Engage. Enjoy!
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
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