11-7-10: What about death?
Christopher Hitchens’ tussle with metastasized esophageal cancer has brought death back as a hot topic among those of us who are drawn to, or repelled by, organized religion.
Death is, after all, the Big Yikes, the ultimate Uncontrollable Event. We are so beyond clueless about what goes on after it happens, and we do hate being clueless. Not to mention that cluelessness scares us – particularly when it involves something as life-changing as our own death.
Reading Christopher Hitchens thoughts about dying, it occurred to me that accepting we don’t have a clue about what happens to us after death exemplifies life’s most formidable spiritual challenge: Facing reality as it actually is. And Mr. Hitchens appears, at least in public, to be doing a graceful job of doing this.
Organized religions, however, as I think Mr. Hitchens would agree, bet their considerable farms that humans are not up to the reality challenge, and so deliberately cultivate fear of death as a major recruiting tool.
It mystifies me whenever I realize that people have allowed themselves to be drawn into religions’ fold through the promise of some fantasy rescue from an imagined despair and/or torment. What makes them assume that death is something to fear in the first place? Most of us, after all, were afraid of first grade, and that worked out all right. Didn’t we learn anything from that experience about opting for curiosity over fear when facing the unknown?
Speaking of adventures, Mr. Hitchens has announced plans to die as he has lived, secure in his belief that there is no God, because organized religions have got God wrong. I agree completely with him that religions generally make a mess of God; but, to me, that’s a completely separate issue from whether God is or isn’t. If the great Whatever exists; It exists. Whether Mr. Hitchens or I believe It exists is vastly, supremely, even quite comically beside the point.
I term myself a person of faith who is not religious. I believe Mystery is; but that is the end of my intellectual understanding of the great Whatever. Just because I can’t explain this Mystery, however, doesn’t mean to me I shouldn’t avail myself of what It has to offer.
There have been things in my own life that I can only explain by accepting that I somehow hooked up with Something in me, that isn’t of me – the aforementioned Mystery – that leads me to live a much more useful and happier life. I can’t explain God, the great Whatever, to Mr. Hitchens’ (or even my own) intellectual satisfaction, but so what? The human mind can’t grasp everything, and to make explaining God a criteria for hooking up with God to my mind is shooting yourself in your spiritual foot.
If you have a problem with “God” because of the word’s heavy association with organized religions, for heaven’s sake use another identifier for the great Whatever. (Personally, I used Alice for years). Just don’t let semantics, the shortcomings and fear mongering of organized religion, and the limited reach of the intellect, rob you of the chance to live in connection with the great Whatever.
My quarrel with Mr. Hitchens is that he appears to throw out the Mystery with the myths when he claims there is no God because he finds religions’ takes on God (and on death) so intellectually offensive. What, I would very much like to ask him, does organized religion really have to do with God’s existence?
Tags: Christopher Hitchens, death, death as Big Yikes, faith and death, faith without religion, God, God as mystery, organized religion and God's existence, religion, spirituality, unconventional faith, useful and happier life
Hitchens is correct in my view.
These post continue to challenge.
I come from an unusual place of having been involved with Hindu religion.
I did enjoy the colorful rituals, music, good food and community.
Maybe a big difference in the religion is that most don’t take the myths as literal truth and there even often seems to be even a sense of humor behind all the serious moralizing.
As far as death goes many Hindus believe in reincarnation, but not all. It is generally accepted that change happens and death is not something to be beaten.
Once again, to practice pluralism it think it might be good for some of us to go out and experience the religious practice that we have opinions about. I think we often confuse the beliefs with the practices and the community. Buddhist’s may have the oddest beliefs but many smart folks still find the practices of meditation and various mind trainings to be useful. Quakers can be fixated on living some imaginary simple life but you can’t beat those potluck meals they feed even an old bachelor like me. My friend hires Mormon kids in her business. They have even odder beliefs than the Buddhists and practice a unique brand of over-breeding (now I’m in trouble) But the kids show up, no hangovers, smile and treat folks well.
I don’t believe anymore religion will magically disappear being replaced by rational thought. So maybe we will do well to explore some and try to help bring out the best in each tradition without buying into the beliefs. Maybe the Great Whatever is Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tsu, Krishna, Christopher Hitchens, solar energy and the internet. To a good Hindu, the mystic version, all of that is Lord Shiva too, that which serves the greater good, dharma, and helps bring inevitable change and evolution.
I believe in Santa Claus.
Stay with me, I’m going to try to make a point. My point is NOT that Santa and God are in the same category and therefore belief in one is the equivalent of believing in the other. My point is that the process of believing is similar.
When I was a little kid, I was a Santa Claus literalist. The little fat guy in the red suit really did live at the North Pole with flying reindeer and so on. Not a doubt in the world. Then, around the 1st or 2nd grade, an eight year-old Christopher Hitchens wannabe began telling everyone there was no Santa Claus. Most kids gradually bought into his logic. Not me. I became a Santa Claus fundamentalist. I not only insisted on the old guy’s reality but threatened the certain hell of no presents on Christmas for unbelievers.
But growing up is inevitable. Of course there is no actual, factual Santa Claus, but Christmas still happens and Santa’s image is ubiquitous. So, Santa became a character like Mickey Mouse for me. But he became more than a fictional character. I began to see him as a symbol for all the good things in the Season. In my teens, I became bored with the whole thing yet noticed my parents — whom I knew to be terminally clueless — still retained a joy in celebrating the holiday. In a strange way, I recognized that their Christmas spirit was the embodiment of Santa. And then, as life would have it, I went on to get married, have kids of my own, and I became Santa. So, I believe in Santa Claus.
Yes, I know this is silly. Santa Claus is just a bit of playful sentimental fluff. Don’t read too much into it. But for me, this illustrates a process of what seems to be externally experienced reality gradually becoming a more complex and subtle internally experienced reality. I think something like this occurs in our spiritual evolution. There will always be literalists. There will always be fundamentalists (who are fighting doubt). There will always be the know-it-all Christopher Hitchens types. And there are some who have somehow pushed past all of this. This is what I’m enjoying about Faith Unboxed and the thoughtful comments shared here. None of us are getting God wrong within our own level of awareness — even if where we are is about questioning, even rejecting the definitions of God we know. (On the other hand, all of us are wrong when we attempt to shrink others to our level.) I see everyone — Christopher Hitchens and all — as part of the universal process of becoming. Once we see there are stages of development, as it were, we become aware that there are levels upon levels beyond us. The Mystery.
I’ve purposely chosen to stay with my religious tradition (Christianity) and ride through various levels toward the Great Whatever. I’m really just a beginner. So, to the question at hand: What does my tradition tell me about death and the possibility of life hereafter?
What it most definitely does NOT tell me at this stage is that heaven is pie-in-the-sky-just-for-the-good-guys-by-and-by-when-I-die. It does, however, bring into question the ultimate reality of death itself. Yes, of course, we die physically. But if we have the experience (even vaguely) of a connection with something greater, then there’s the possibility of being part of something beyond our biological existence. Jesus said, “In my father’s house there are many rooms.” Death may be just passing from our biological room to another way of being. I don’t know. And I have no firm beliefs on the subject.
If Mr. Hitchens is right then I’m free to paint whatever pink fantasy I want about life after death. Or not. And if he’s wrong, then there’s something going on beyond the ability of my evolved simian brain to grasp. Either way, biological death seems to be a barrier. Yet if we are participants in a vast spiritual evolutionary process, then life and death as we do know it must be part of the process. We seem to be trapped between birth and death. Jesus also said, “The kingdom of heaven is here.” Death is not here in this moment for me, but someplace else. The more I peal back the layers of Christian mythology it seems it is not pointing me towards death or even life after death. It is reinforcing the experience I am already having in the here and now. Death is not an issue in this eternal moment when I am in relationship with Something Greater. Whether by design or happenstance, life is the focus of life.
Yes, biological death is certain. But on another level it may be death is nothing at all.
First, with regard to your post: I , fully agree that organized religion has got God wrong, but I can’t use that to justify not believing in God. Something, some force, or some sort of Being must be responsible for this beautiful planet earth and all the other heavenly bodies that are part of our universe. As I have argued, if all of this has come from “nothing”, then “nothing” would have to be “something” to have produced all this. I. also do not suscribe to the thought that organized religions cultivate fear of death as a “recruiting tool”; instead I see organization religion utililizing “guilt” of not being more like Christ, and not serving the Christian cause to keep their congregations in line and respectful of their contributions and responsibilities to organized religion.
As I have written before, people who state their belief that there is no God are really stating tha they do not believe the Christian concept of God, which as is explained in Romans 1, has displeased God and caused him to incur forms of punishment on man for making God something akin to corruptible man. One of the most interesting statements I have read, recently (October 12, 2009) comes from Bishop John Shelby Spong’s book “Eternal Life: A New Vision”, in which he suggests that death motivates us to seek promise of an after life, but religion’s goal is a “call to live now”. Spong believes that the goal of religion is not to prepare us for the next life, “it is a call to live now, to love now, to be now and in a way to taste what it means to be part of life that is eternal…It is the presence of death that actually makes my life precious.” I agree, totally, with Dr. Spong’s ideas.
However, last night, as I lay in bed thinking of this topic “death”, it dawned on me that life is not the opposite of death, as I have assumed in my concept of the ONE God, as a duality, because of things like: man/woman; night/day; sun/moon; land/sea; right/wrong; love/hate; etc., etc. It suddenly hit me that life is the intervening time period between birth and death, which in my concept of God would make birth the opposite of death.
Organized religion promotes the understanding that leads and encourages belief in eventual everlasting life with Jesus in heaven, after death. However, I agree with Pope John Paul 11, in his statements at the general Audience of 21 July 1999, in which he states that Heaven “is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is the meeting with the Father which takes place in the risen Christ through communion of the Holy Spirit”. The Pope also said of “hell” that; “it is the ultimate consequence of sin itself…Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitely seprate themselves from God, the source of all life and Joy”.
I have considered the reality of death, and I have searched the Scriptures for references that would provide a philosophical view that would justify death, even though, in a realistic manner, I could not concieve of the world in which no one ever died, and perhaps nothing ever died, There would have been too many people and not enough resources to provide for all of us, so, in a way death of some provides that others survive. My search of the Bible produced one reference that aids me in a philosophical approach to death. I found it in Isaiah 57: 1-2, which reads as follows: “The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his righteiusness.” (The approved King James Version)
Last night, too, I recalled the words I spoke at the funeral service for my sister-in-law, Sally, when I was required to deliver the “Words of Consolation”. I recalled hearing myself say: “There is but one certainty in life. It is that one day we shall die. It is not important how or when we die; what is important is how we conduct ourselves during that time that we are able to influence our existence.”
I have written before, and may have mentioned it on this site, that everlasting life may not refer to individual life, but to human life in general that would continue after this earth can no longer support useful human life. Life of humans (not as earthlings) should continue on the promised new heavens and new earth of another stellar body as an achievement oh humans through science that permits space exploration and colonization. I believe that, as Stephen Hawking has stated, recently, that man must colonize space if human life is to continue. I am also one who believes that Nature knows no destruction, only transformation; therfore, even though I have no clue about whether or not I will experience an after life, personally, I am convinced of some form of transformed existence after human death for mankind, wherever, however, and whatever that may be.
I can’t find within myself a fear of death for a number of reasons..
If there is no herafter, the game is over and we return to the pre life state. Nothing gained, nothing lost.
If there is a hereafter, my personal belief system, (which has no allowance for retribution), Will simply be a return to the peace of a spiritial home.
Is there a connection with he great whatever?? I don’t know.
More than that I am not able to comprehend.
As for organized religion, it is great as a business, but I see no evidence of God answers. But thats just my take on it.
We start dying the second we are conceived. Never have I heard it said at a funeral or celebration of someone’s life “He/She lived a good death.” Never have I heard someone say they are excited about dying. There are somethings one just accepts. Where we are in age, life determines when and how one accepts. As for mysteries, One experiences the wind but can you tell me from whence it comes or where it goes. I am clueless but I know that on a hot humid day in the South when I am working outside I enjoy it’s company. On a super Fall day I enjoy the scent of burning leaves it brings.
Thank you Martha. I loved this essay.
I don’t believe in a personal, creator god, or an intelligence that is separate from the created universe, but I don’t allow that disbelief to get in the way of my spirituality either. (I believe in a bend in the universe to support life… continual somethingness over continual nothingness.) Mystery, the Great Whatever, doesn’t require the existence of God for spirituality (for attempts to connect to the Mystery) as far as I have been able to discern. So religion no religion, God no God, having neither does not get in the way of being a spiritual being if that is how one is inclined.
However, I use the word God when trying to communicate about my spiritual beliefs because it operates as a sort of spiritual short hand. I use it to describe the general characteristics/organizing principles I think Mystery–that which gives breath to life–may possess. I find my use of the word God compatible with the use of the word God by loving Christians, Muslims, Jews, and people of non-monotheistic beliefs when in discussion about what seems to matter most in life.
So if I don’t see what God’s existence has to do with spirituality, then like you, I don’t see what organized religion has to do with God’s existence.
In the end, it doesn’t matter what I believe, as you said, Mystery is what it is despite my beliefs, and if there is a God (that is, a separate intelligence, a personal, creator God), I’m not worried that there’s the slightest chance I’ll be punished for not believing in that God. If there is, and I am, so be it.
Personally, I find facing chaos and the unknown to be liberating when it comes to what it all means, and death in particular. (Now, I wish I could have taken that attitude into the life I have been living when it came to a career.) It’s in this life that I am living that I have issues with security and certainty, not what happens after.
My spiritual beliefs, which include reincarnation, have to do with how I act now and have little if nothing to do with what happens in an after life. In fact, I don’t get to escape hell and damnation and have life everlasting because I believe in a particular religion or consider myself spiritual. Instead, hell and damnation are in my own hands, and as far as I can tell, we experience it on earth by not only our choices but as a result (and sometimes only the result) of the choices of those around us.
I am assured, however, that although I believe in reincarnation, whatever is IS going to happen after I die. If that is nothing, so be it. I won’t know: I’ll be dead and a part of the nothingness. I can’t worry about something I have no control over.
Personally, I think you’re avoiding the point and trying to have it both ways at the same time. You’re really not avoiding Pascal’s wager at all.
Also, I’d like to insert, before I get ahead of myself, most of you have missed the entire point of why Hitch bothers to speak to the blind faithful, or curious faithful, at all. I’m not going to spend to explaining to you what you should, by now and as adults, have been able to figure out for yourselves.
One of the primary reasons Mr.Hitchens, or Mr.Dawkins, or the Amazing Randi are responded to is because, even believers, suspect that the need to believe in a ’start’, a point of origin, and affix an ‘uknnowing’ to it, has created an immense amount of suffering by and through the human species, it is a threat to any mind seeking true enlightenment and has been itself an enemy of The Englightenment, and demonstrates a particular vanity that, to date and with the science we have, proves us out as the most egotistical, self-absorbed of all species.
Because WE create, we assume any other life of our intelligence or higher must as well, or that there BE a higher intelligence than ourselves since we cannot actually create our own universes ( stars, planets, dark matter, meteors etc etc ) and are in fact at their mercy ( though, perhaps, not for very long if astrophysics and astroengineers can get some much needed funding – we may go on to populate other planets ).
What did you know or realize before birth? Anything? Any particular memory? No? Well, why not? You had creators in your mother and father didn’t you? Who, frankly at your inception, were a form of higher intelligence. Ah, so it is…so there must be ANOTHER higher intelligence. ( I’m inserting a joke for those of you with humor ).
The sickest, most vile thing on the planet is the believer. I don’t give a damn if you call it ‘whatever’, ‘alice’, Allah, Jesus etc. Not only do believers thrive in hypocrisy, they ‘quasi-believers’ turn and ignore, rather than protest against in a real, visible way and with the same gusto of any fudamentalist dunderhead, the crimes against humanity slathered on us over and over and over again. And since Mr.Hitchens has been mentioned: Go check out YouTube and witness for yourselves the religious ‘love’, that supposed higher, grandiose, gentler compassion and ‘grace’ of Whatever seething with glee at the sickness that has beset Mr.Hitchens. There in that sound you will find what religion really is. The abject love of stupidity and hate. The desperate need to quiet and vanquish science ( this religious movement still persists…), the demand that you do not ask, that you do not move forward in experimenting, testing, and trying to REALLY know a thing.
And the quasi-believers whisper to each other how awful the fundamentalists are, but they do nothing, absolutely NOTHING, to stop nor challenge them. Instead, they sip tea together and insist to each other that because they are not so loud and brash, they must be different than. No, you are not. And you fool yourselves in thinking otherwise.