The concept of a bucket list, a list of things you want to do before you “kick the bucket,” is entirely understandable for people who believe that this is the only life they will ever live, and that after they die they will no longer exist. It’s even understandable for those who believe that after they die, they will be a ghost forever and won’t have actual bodies. But for us as Christians who believe in the resurrection and the coming New Earth, we should be the last people to think in terms of a bucket list.

Now, there’s a distinction between making a bucket list and having some things you would like to do and experience with your family if God gives you the opportunity. That is fine, of course. But if it is the bucket list in the sense of, “I’m going to kick the bucket, and this is my only opportunity as a physical person to do things in a physical world”—that’s utterly and completely unbiblical, contradicted start to finish by 1 Corinthians 15 and every passage that speaks of the resurrection and eternal life.

Here’s a clip from the Linger Conference earlier this year, where I share why if you have a biblical view of Heaven, you don’t need a bucket list.

Read more about how the coming resurrection should impact our thinking, and about my and Nanci’s post-bucket lists, in the article Why the Reality of the Resurrection Means You Don’t Need a “Bucket List.”

Photo by Egzon Bytyqi on Unsplash