Death, loss, and the afterlife

Thomas Nagel argues that death is a bad thing, even if death is the end for us. While it might seem like death wouldn't be a bad thing—after all, we wouldn’t be around to experience it!—he argues that it is bad because of what we lose, not what will happen to us. Death results in a genuine loss of experiences, and it is in this loss that a person is harmed. But what is a Christian to think of this? Does death result in a genuine loss?

I’m inclined to think that we do genuinely lose something when we die. Christians do hope for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, but this is still only hope, not certainty. And by most convincing accounts, that life is not necessarily a direct continuation of the life we have now. When we die, our experience is more or less over. It may be that a heavenly afterlife is better in quality than our lives now, but it might be hard to say that we will really be the ones experiencing it. Perhaps the change in quality precludes a strictly continuous existence. So even if we experience some sort of resurrection life, this life is lost in some meaningful way. 

I would argue that losing this life—even if we go on to experience some other sort of life after death—is a genuine loss. The afterlife isn’t going to be a place where we can go on living this life. It isn’t a place where we can accomplish all of the things we wish we could have done the first time around. Relationships will be genuinely lost. If my father were to die tonight, the experiences he could have with my mother would be lost not just to her, but to him as well. With an afterlife, he may go on to experience different things, but some genuinely good experiences would be rendered impossible. So I would agree with Nagel that death is bad because of what we lose when we die—regardless of the existence of an afterlife. 

What do you think? Does death involve genuine loss, or does the afterlife negate this concern?