The actor Keanu Reeves (of The Matrix fame) was on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert recently. At one point, Colbert asked his guest, “What do you think happens when we die, Keanu Reeves?”

Both men are no stranger to tragedy. Colbert lost his father and two of his brothers to a plane crash when he was ten. Reeves and his girlfriend, Jennifer Syme, lost their daughter a month before she was due. Syme later died in a car accident.

Reeves paused, considered, then replied simply: “I know that the ones who love us will miss us.”

After Reeves answered Colbert’s question, the host paused, looked into the camera, and smiled.

“If a man dies, shall he live again?”

A twenty-four-year-old Norwegian woman rescued a puppy she found while vacationing in the Philippines. She brought the puppy back to her resort, where she washed it and played with it. Her family later told reporters that she received “small scrapes” from the dog.

When she returned home, she fell ill. She was admitted to a hospital on April 28, where physicians determined she had contracted rabies from the dog. She died on May 6.

In other news, two sightseeing planes collided Monday afternoon off the coast of Alaska. Six people were killed. And a traveling carnival worker has confessed to killing two women and a teenager within an eighteen-day period in Virginia.

Humans face no more relevant question than the one asked by Job so long ago: “If a man dies, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14).

“Be not wise in your own eyes”

As John F. Kennedy noted, “We are all mortal.” Given the reality of death, I am amazed by the degree to which people are willing to bet their eternity on their personal opinion.

Imagine Stephen Colbert asking Keanu Reeves, “What do you think happens when you contract cancer?” Would Reeves respond to a malignancy based on his subjective beliefs or on an oncologist’s professional experience?

Our opinions…