I recently saw a news segment about a tech billionaire named Bryan Johnson. He was claiming that we can live forever. I don’t know if he believes a person can literally live forever, but he certainly thinks we can greatly extend our physical lives. I guess he believes that future advancements in science will allow a person to attain physical immortality. Maybe he believes Artificial Intelligence will be the key to reaching that goal.
Johnson is a devoted disciple of what he preaches. He spends millions of dollars to follow a very strict diet, rejecting all meat, carbs, and bread. All his food is organic. Through nutritional scientists, he has developed much of what he eats, including liquid supplements. He has built gymnasiums in his different homes to strengthen every part of his body and follows an intense daily regimen of exercises. He has developed a specific sleep schedule and has rejected what he calls “legalistic religious beliefs,” which causes him to avoid stress. He does constant medical tests on himself to measure how he is doing. He claims to be the most tested and the healthiest man in the world. To prove the success of what he is doing, he shows pictures of himself from eight years ago and from today. He appears to be getting younger as he gets older. He is almost fifty years old, but says the medical tests show he has the organs of a man in his twenties.
I don’t doubt that many will be encouraged to follow Johnson’s example. But very few people will have the money and the time to do what he does. The vast majority of folks are not billionaires. They have jobs to go to and families to raise. They can’t build gymnasiums, devote ten hours a day to exercise, conduct medical exams on themselves, or obtain the special food needed to reverse the aging process.
In some sense, we might conclude that Johnson is doing a good thing. Most Americans are unhealthy. It would do many of us good to take better care of ourselves. But Johnson’s whole life is a fool’s errand. Men will never be able to live forever in these bodies. Maybe someone like Johnson will live a longer-than-usual life. Maybe he’ll live to be 130 years old. However, if he has even one genetic mutation of the hundreds, if not thousands, that are detrimental to humans, he might have a shorter-than-normal life expectancy. The same would be true if he were involved in an accident or became the victim of war or disease.
If the Lord does not return first, Johnson will die. So will all of us (1 Cor 15:22). The arrogance that would lead one to think otherwise is off the charts. It reminds me of Adam and Eve’s foolish desire to be like God (Gen 3:5).
The truth is that our present physical bodies will not last. All the right food, supplements, sleep, A.I., and exercise will not change that fact. That is obvious, and only a mind blinded by pride would think otherwise. If the Lord delays His coming, and Johnson lives into old age, he will come to realize that. Sadly, Johnson does not understand that all of us will, indeed, live forever, but not in the way he thinks. I don’t know what it will be like, but the unbeliever will have a body of death and will live in the lake of fire forever. The believer has the gift of eternal life from Christ and will live in His kingdom in a glorified body forever.
Most of us would benefit from eating and sleeping better. Most of us would benefit from being more active. But let’s keep our feet firmly planted in reality. Our sure hope of eternity lies in the One who conquered death for us and who has promised us His life if we have believed in Him for it. Not only is that reality, but it sure is better than the foolish alternative of spending millions of dollars in an attempt to avoid the inevitable.
