“Ocean Breathes Salty” was the the follow-up single to Modest Mouse’s surprise 2004 hit “Float On“–part of the front phalanx of major Indie-Rock crossover hits that came to mark the mid-2000s. Whereas “Float On” was a self-conscious attempt by frontman Isaac Brock to cheer himself up for once^[1]As Brock told the AV Club at the time, “It was a completely conscious thing. I was just kind of fed up with how bad sh*t had been going, and how dark everything was, with bad news coming from … Continue reading, “Ocean Breathes Salty” fit in more comfortably with the band’s normal M.O. of low-key existential dread and agnostic cynicism.^[2]Recall how “3rd Planet,” the opening track from their 2000 album The Moon and Antarctica, is openly and explicitly contemptuous of the idea that there is any sort of deity watching over … Continue reading

Singing to a recently departed friend, he starts off sentimental enough, singing, “Your body may be gone, I’m gonna carry you in/In my head, in my heart, in my soul,” before immediately undercutting it with a more sardonic, “And maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll both live again/Well, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, don’t think so,” and even featuring the earth itself telling his lost friend, “good luck, for your sake I hope heaven and hell/are really there/But I wouldn’t hold my breath…” It is a profoundly cynical, almost misanthropic set of lyrics.^[3]Perhaps that is why it never became the monster hit that “Float On” did. “God Be With You Till We Meet Again” this is not.

Yet even in his sarcasm and cynicism, Isaac Brock drops a couple lines that would be of interest to an LDS artist, viz: “You wasted life, why wouldn’t you waste death” just before the bridge, and “You wasted life, why wouldn’t you waste the afterlife?” as the final line and thought of the song. Now, Isaac Brock’s point here is obviously that it is pointless to yearn for an afterlife, because there’s zero evidence that we would do any better improving the time in Eternity than we did here on earth. Indeed, as many an atheist has argued, the dream of heaven must necessarily be an illusory one, because even if such a place existed, wouldn’t we eventually, at some point in the distant eons–hundred, thousands, millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions, Graham’s Number of years into an unceasing and unrelenting future–max out and exhaust everything that we can possible ever do, and so finally become tortured by boredom and tedium and the pointlessness and meaninglessness of existence anyways? The popular hymn “Amazing Grace” finishes by declaring, “When we’ve been here ten thousand years/Bright, shining as the sun/We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise/Than when we first begun,” but what of the next ten thousand years after that, and after that, and after that? Just what is it do we think we’ll be doing for all Eternity?

Of course, as Isaac Brock might here sardonically note, there remains zero evidence that we would even try to max out all the riches of Eternity, even if we did live forever. “You wasted life, why wouldn’t you waste the afterlife?” indeed.

Ironically, the Book of Mormon agrees with him: “the meaning of the word restoration is to bring back evil for evil, or carnal for carnal, or devilish for devilish–good for that which is good; righteous for that with is righteous; just for that which is just; merciful for that which is merciful” (Alma 41:13). In this context, the way we choose to spend this life is in fact how we will spend the afterlife. As the Doctrine and Covenants 130:18 adds, “Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection.” We are becoming what we will become now. Hence, as Moroni himself pleads, “Be wise in the days of your probation; strip yourselves of all uncleanliness; ask not that yet may consume it on your lusts”^[4]Mormon 9:28, because nothing could be a bigger waste than that. “Sin is waste,” declared Hugh Nibley in his famed essay Zeal Without Knowledge, “It is doing one thing when you should be doing other and better things for which you have the capacity. Hence, there are no innocent, idle thoughts. That is why even the righteous must repent, constantly and progressively, since all fall short of their capacity and calling.”

Or again, as Isaac Brock more succinctly puts it, “You wasted life, why wouldn’t you waste the afterlife?”

It is also in these moments when I am most inclined to give a generous reading of the King Follet Discourse–and the profound idea that we are children of God in the very literal sense that we will one distant day grow up to become Gods ourselves, creating whole universes and continuing the great cosmic cycle of life and redemption, becomes downright comforting, even encouraging. It answers the horrible question of just what it is we think we will spend eternity doing–so infinity and eternity aren’t exhaustible after all! We won’t ever stop progressing and learning and growing! These are exciting ideas.

And more importantly, it is literally the only way I can conceptualize that we won’t waste the afterlife as thoroughly as we did this life.