"It's a Matter of Life and Death"

By Rev. Gerald H. Slusser, Ph.D.

It was Ben Franklin who said, "in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes". Yet modern society, with its fixation on progress does everything possible to avoid the certainty of death from elaborate funeral rites to expensive and often useless health fads. Shakespeare, well aware that death is a "necessary end", wrote in Julius Caesar, "Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once". And T.S. Eliot wrote in Sweeney Agonistes that "Birth, and copulation, and death. That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks". Jean de La Bruyere observed that "There are but three events in a man’s life: birth, life and death. He is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain and he forgets to live." Perhaps some considerations like these led St. Paul to exclaim "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death?" (ROM. 7:24). St. Paul also told us in the previous chapter that death is the wage paid by sin. Probably the entire content of this paper could be written simply by selectively quoting insights captured in the aphorisms and adages of Western Civilization. Yet, a systematic treatment of this topic seems of more value.

Of first importance is to realize that it is the worldview of the modern western civilization, viz., scientistic materialism, that makes death such a problem because it has split life and death apart from their spiritual base. Most of our ancestors of the nineteenth century, now the century before last, went to their deaths with a devout faith and trust grounded in Christianity that there was to be a resurrected life to come in a spiritual world after this. That faith was gradually eroded by the acids of the modern worldview which rendered all notions of a spiritual realm, whether present or future, nonsense, because science could not fit them in its canons of evidence. If science could not prove it, it was untrue. Along with the general scientistic-materialism came faith in progress augmented by belief in evolution. Progress and evolution fueled the drive for a "better" world here and now. All too often that "better" world was located so far in the future that only one’s grandchildren might benefit from it, but millions gave their life work to the goal. This attitude, this faith, leaves humanity feeling futile about their own lives. This futility is reinforced by the scientific conviction that this world is doomed to end sooner or later with the death of our sun. So maybe it is a billion years or so, but does it not render the purpose of this life meaningless? The existentialists surely thought so. Sartre in Being and Nothingness said humanity is "useless passion" for his very existence is such as to make nonsense of his aspirations and potentialities. Finitude and negativity have triumphed. Thus, justly, T.S. Eliot can say that human life in this way ends not with a bang, but a whimper. And we must admit, says John MacQuarrie, that "wherever we look at actual human existing, we perceive a massive disorder in existence, a pathology that seems to extend all through existence, whether we consider the community or the individual."

Before we can proceed beyond this massive disorder, we shall need to understand it a bit better. MacQuarrie suggests that humanity is beset with two basic forms of imbalance that create distortions in our lives. These imbalances on the one hand are those of an individual or social nature such as pride, tyranny, utopianism and individualism. These arise from refusal to accept the actual facts, the finitude and limitations of human existence plus the desire to have a superhuman, godlike existence free from the usual human restraints. It is not uncommon to see this disorder among managers, CEO’s, professional people, or the very rich. On the other hand there are the disorders of sensual indulgence, insensitivity to others, despair and the irresponsibility known as collectivism. These arise from a retreat from possibility, decision-making, responsibility, individual liability, or even from rationality. They move one toward a subhuman form of existence like the animals. This disorder is found in all levels of humanity, but is more frequent among the masses.

These facts being true of the human condition, we would seem justified in being as pessimistic as Sartre. Is there any way out? As St. Paul exclaimed, "Who will deliver me from this body of death"? The optimism generated by the combination of evolutionary theory with the notion of progress through science and technology seemed to promise a solution. But surely the horrors of the Twentieth Century with its myriad of bloody wars, social injustice, continuing racial prejudice, huge discrepancies between the haves and the have-nots of world society, not to mention even in the U.S., have made it quite clear that progress through science and technology will not give an answer to the inherent problem of human existence. We must frankly acknowledge with St. Paul that we have to look for a solution from beyond humanity itself. We are in the position of the alcoholic who has at last realized his/her impotence to cease drinking. We cannot immediately say what the solution is, but it is quite realistic to say that there may be some power beyond ourselves that can indeed overcome our frustration with our existence.

At this point it can be noted that it is the endemic imbalances of human existence which constitute what St. Paul termed "this body of death". What is the source of our imbalances? Why do we fall into these deathly patterns and create these horrible injustices? Let us consider just what a person is and how one lives, or why one lives as one does. To grasp the reason we need to understand how we are constituted so that we must live by faith. To the non-religious this statement will seem fatuous as well as wrong. They contend that they are constituted by their not having faith. But consider this definition of faith: it is the attitude or stance which one has toward that which is considered most important for one’s existence. Paul Tillich called this one’s ultimate concern. He observed that people are concerned about many things, health, wealth, sex, success and so on, but that, at least at any one moment, one or another of these is dominant. And that dominant factor is, at that time, the content of one’s ultimate concern, thus one’s faith. Faith points to that about which your life actually revolves. But, we ask, why must we live by faith, can we not just live by fact, by science? The short, but accurate, answer is that science is always grounded in faith; the major faith being that the universe is so constituted that it can be rationally understood. Secondly, it is part of the "faith" of science that only what can be measured, quantified, is factual. When the scientific stance becomes the basis of one’s life orientation, it is properly called scientism. Few, if any, people actually live their lives by pure scientism; it is usually tinged by humanism, or hedonism, or the common faith objects noted earlier.

But why, we ask again, is faith necessary? Why did God so create us? The answer is twofold: First, we are created in and with freedom. The continual action of God in bringing existence into being out of nothingness is an action of free creativity and that which is created is also imbued with freedom. Freedom is grounded in creativity, that creativity by which God calls existence into being out of nothingness. The second reason for freedom is that God, out of love, wants our loving response and a loving response must be freely chosen. Without this freedom our response would be that of automatons, robots. Because we are created by and with freedom and creativity, we are imbued with creativity. It is God’s desire that we be co-creators with Godself. Thus the roots of faith are in creative freedom. If we were not free to choose our ultimate concern, there would be no meaning to our loyalties, our love, or our creativity. Thus the human existence is grounded in what some have called tragic freedom. It is tragic because with our freedom we have chosen to have as ultimate concern those things that are not ultimate; this is properly called idolatry. The tragedy of idolatry is that ones ultimate trust and loyalty is vested in something that is itself finite, thus doomed to final destruction/death. All idols have clay feet, so to speak, and will sooner or later come crashing down carrying with them those who placed their ultimate concern in them.

Part and parcel of our tragic freedom and creativity is our habitual objectification of the world. In the story of Edenic paradise, Adam and Eve objectify their world by the process of naming. The study of linguistics reveals that the process of naming is, like the unique opposed thumb of humans, used to grasp objects and hold them away from ourselves for inspection, i.e., for objectification. Beginning with this simple process, the world is divided into the I and the not I, into subject and object, a tragic dualism. Developmental studies of infants have revealed that the onset of human life does not know this division, all is oneness. However, this is not the oneness to which the contemplative tradition points as the goal of human existence. Paul Tillich termed it "dreaming innocence" when speaking of Adam and Eve in paradise. Ken Wilber has accused certain modern psychologists of what he terms the "pre-trans fallacy" by which he means the confusing of the infantile lack of subjective-objective categorization with the contemplative paradise. It is the objectification of the world, the division into the subjective and objective which needs to be transcended in order to enter into paradise, but within the limits of space and time can this happen, or how can it happen?

Our lot within this life seems to be that of tragic freedom. We have within us a longing for paradise and hence a sense of paradise lost. The ancients usually projected this sense into the past and told stories of a once-upon-a-time golden age when all was right with the human and the world. Later in history, the sense of longing for paradise was projected into the future as utopia. And with the coming of science and technology is western history, the utopia was seen as one to be constructed by human intelligence and effort. Thereby even paradise was objectified as a this worldly state. The Kingdom of God, which for Jesus was certainly not of this world, was envisioned as a future state to be attainted if not totally by human ingenuity, then with a little cooperation from God, but it would be here and now, of this world. And is this way even the Kingdom of God was objectified. All this objectification is meaningless when one considers the inevitable end of this world as noted earlier. Of what meaning could any earthly state of affairs have if it were doomed to end with the collapse of the Solar system? The sci-fi answer is that we will escape to other worlds. But they too are doomed to final death as is the whole universe of space and time. Ultimate hope, faith, needs to be vested in something which is beyond this realm of doom. In earlier Christian thought trans-worldly hope was embodied in the concept of heaven. However, that concept too was objectified. In the more crass examples the streets of heaven was paved with gold, its walls set with jewels, and, there being nothing to do, to be attained, was clouded with boredom. The disease of objectification is part and parcel of the primary fall, a fall into consciousness and egohood.

The concept of utopia has had still another set of effects. A major one has been the attempts to escape death, or more accurately, to prolong life. Endless amount of time, effort and money has gone into this project. From medical research to health fads and foods, even cryogenics, we search for the elixir that will prolong life without limit. We are like DeSoto searching for the fountain of youth, whether it be vitamins, viagra, or jogging. The percentage of the gross national product that goes into these various endeavors has been increasing at double the rate of inflation. But we must ask whether life without end would be desirable? Even supposing one could retain some semblance of health, would it be good to go on forever? We can answer decisively that it would not for reasons ranging from the need to make space for new life, to the simple fact that endless life would be endlessly boring. A woman of my acquaintance in generally good health was being feted on her ninetieth birthday; I asked her how she felt on being ninety. Her reply was quick and to the point, "I don’t recommend it". Not only boredom could be a problem, but could one endure the change that would be necessary to cope with the alterations of culture coming about over any long period of time. If Rip Van Winkle was confused to find himself out of date and very confused after only one generation, what would it be like after say ten or more? Still another effect of the fear of death, that leads to the hope of outwitting it, is the modern funeral practice. One needs only to think about the morticians art which leads the viewers of the dead to say "Oh, how lifelike she/he looks" to realize the deception which supports the process. Endless life is not merely an illusion, a vain hope, but would be undesirable even if attainable.

It is important at this juncture to ask what is the purpose human life anyway? Why did God choose to create us? What is our destiny? There is a statement often repeated in the contemplative literature that says, "God became man in order than man might become God". Further, the tradition says the human is created in the image and likeness of God. And Jesus says our goal is to "be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect". Clearly any such goals as these would require considerably more than a usual lifetime. It is pretty obvious that one lifetime is not enough for the perfection of human personality. It seems probable that considerations like these gave rise to the insistence in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions on reincarnation and within Christianity to the rise of the notion of purgatory. The traditional version of this life followed by immediate ascent to heaven will not do to cope with the problem of attaining perfection.

Nicholas Berdyaev, the great Eastern Orthodox theologian, argues that it is death which gives life meaning. "Life is noble only because it contains death, an end which testifies that man is destined to another and higher life." At the same time, death is a final horror and is evil, its depth and greatness shatter our everyday world. It is the fear of death which drives much of the emphasis on health and medical care which was mentioned earlier, because death seems to make life meaningless. Indeed, if everything is transitory and corruptible then life is meaningless. Paul Tillich, in his powerful and insightful work The Courage to Be, writes of the three types of anxiety which correspond to the three modes in which the threat of nonbeing confronts the human. "Nonbeing threatens man’s ontic self-affirmation, relatively in terms of fate, absolutely in terms of death. It threatens man’s spiritual self-affirmation, relatively in terms of emptiness, absolutely in terms of meaninglessness. It threatens man’s moral self-affirmation, relatively in terms of guilt, absolutely in terms of condemnation." Each of these, Tillich, affirms, belongs to life as such and is not due to an abnormal state of mind as in neurosis. Tillich further points out that each of these has been dominant at a particular period in the history of humanity. But of these three, the anxiety of fate and death is the most basic, most universal and inescapable. It is the anxiety of death that overshadows all concrete anxieties and gives them their ultimate importance. So we may say that death both gives life meaning and threatens it with meaninglessness. We look for that which transcends death and meaninglessness.

In the Christian tradition death is known in two senses. The first is ordinary death, that of the body. But it is the second, which is by far the most important, the death of the spirit. The death of the spirit occurs as one trusts, has as ultimate concern that which is not God. Thus in Scripture one reads of those who are dead in their sin. It is not the active idolatry that is the problem here; it is rather the ultimate and necessary disillusionment and consequent anxiety and despair which occur when the idol collapses, as all idols do. Following idolatry, one is always precipitated into the anxiety of fate and death. The typical response is quickly to turn to another idol, find another pseudo-source of meaning. But however we turn, again and again death will shatter every false meaning, because "the depth and greatness of it shatter our everyday world and exceed the powers accumulated by us in this life to meet this world’s requirements." Time and space are death dealing; we experience death repeatedly. For example, every parting from a loved one or even a loved place when we feel we may never be there again, is an experience of death, so we are often filled with sadness at such moments. And there is a still more profound meaning here. "Death not merely makes life senseless and corruptible: it is also a sign, coming from the depths, of there being a higher meaning in life. Not base fear but horror and anguish which death inspires in us prove that we belong not only to the surface but to the depths as well, not only to temporal life but also to eternity." Thus it is that death holds hope as well as horror for us, though not often recognized. Meaning is to be found only in eternity, not in time, but eternity is reached only by passing through death.

What lies beyond death? What is paradise? These questions have puzzled, plagued the mind of humans since we became self-conscious. According to the contemplative tradition, the cosmic process starts from paradise and is going on toward paradise. It is tempting also to discuss hell at this point, but the brevity of this paper precludes more than a note. It was the entry of the distinction between good and evil into the original paradise that brought hell into being along beside paradise. That distinction was possible due to the freedom that was part of creation. "The idea of hell as a final triumph of God’s truth and justice is untenable and cannot reassure those who are in heaven. Hell is bound to be a torment to heaven, and heaven cannot exist beside it." It is profoundly unchristian to conceive of hell as a place of just punishment for the evil people have done. Wanting the punishment of hell for others is in radical contrast to Jesus "love your enemy" and his teaching that God sends his rain on the just and the unjust. The essence of God is love, and love knows no boundaries. Thus Jesus goes to the cross and enters into hell for the sake of sinners.

In our pain and suffering we are perpetually plagued with the dream of recreating paradise, utopia, regaining the golden age. But there is a radical difference between our usual dreams and plans for utopia and the true Kingdom of god. In the original paradise there was no freedom and the paradise to come includes the knowledge of freedom. "The paradise at the end of the cosmic process comes after all the trials and with the knowledge of freedom." Jesus said "be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect", but this goal is not attainable in anyone’s lifetime. Perfection, fullness, completion imply eternity. Paradise in eternity is after hell, after the experience and a free rejection of hell. Our dreams of utopia are earthly as well as vain. Our destiny is divinization; something that we cannot even imagine it is so beyond our present. For example, to be divine is have inner knowledge, subjective experience, of all that is and more. But just try to imagine being conscious from the inside of atoms, stars, nebulae, and every creature. Sometimes in dreams of flying, we experience for a moment what it might be to soar like an eagle, or perhaps to swim joyously as a dolphin. For God nothing is objective, all is known better than we know ourselves; known beyond the criteria of good and evil, known with pure love. We come nearer to this concept when we think of beauty, absolute, breath taking, divine beauty.

Paradise comes not in time but beyond time, in eternity. Eternity is not in the future, coming as a climax to a movement within time. Nor is eternity a cessation of movement, a static achievement when creativity has ended. "It is creative life of a different order, it is movement which is not spatial and temporal but inward, symbolized not by a straight line, but by a circle, i.e., it is an inner mystery play, a mystery play of the spirit which embraces the whole tragedy of the cosmic life. We must think of paradise as containing not less but more life than our sinful world, not less but more movement—though it is movement of the spirit and not of nature and is not based upon the continuity of time." It is the paradox of experiencing infinity within time, but within time we cannot break through to the beyond in fullness. As Berdyaev notes, "A foretaste of paradise is given us in ecstasy, in which time, as we know it, is rent asunder, the distinction between good and evil disappears, all sense of heaviness is gone and there is a feeling of final liberation. The ecstasy of creative inspiration, of love, of contemplating the divine light, transfers us for a moment to heaven, and those moments are no longer in time. But after a moment of eternity we find ourselves in the continuing time once more; everything grows heavy, sinks down and falls prey to the cares and anxieties of everyday life."

What is behind the many millennial movements that have turned up in Christian history repeatedly? Is there to be some thousand year reign of Christ followed by the final judgment? As noted above, the notion of hell as God’s punishment for the evil is a sub-Christian idea, created by the "good" to revenge their feelings of neglect or pain at the hands of the "wicked". All millennial movements are forms of expecting eternity within time. These expectations are based on the idea that the Kingdom of god will come at the end of the cosmic process, divine righteousness will prevail and the saints will rule on earth. Oh, how this appeals to the egos of the "chosen". Certainly the quest for the Kingdom of God lies at the essence of Christianity, but "my kingdom is not of this world". The Kingdom of God pours into the now moment, the eternal now, as with ecstasy, but its fullness waits for us beyond the end of time. In a state of weakness, or inadequate faith vitiated by sin, heaven and hell are projected into the outer world as an objective sphere akin to nature.

Finally, what can be said about God’s judgment? First that it is very real, inevitable, but second, that it is the judgment of love not divine retribution. We must realize that since God is God, the love of God will prevail so powerfully that nothing will ultimately be lost. Moreover, God’s judgment takes place in every moment, here and now, not something which comes only at the end of time. In each new moment we are given the grace-filled possibility to know who and what we are and what God requires of us. We are confronted with the possibility of insight into our reality, warts and all, but encompassed by love. However, that love is for the reality and not for the persona that we pretend to be. God loves us as we are, not as we purport to be. It is for this reason that getting confused about our identity, believing our own p.r., is so tragic. This confusion is very common among "successful" people, especially those who receive a lot of public approval, viz., politicians, CEOs, clergy, medical doctors, etc. But none are exempt. It was perhaps this confusion that led Jesus to have such a big problem with the "righteous" pharisees and others; they were like whitewashed sepulchres. Sartre in his play No Exit, gives a vivid picture of those who cannot accept themselves as they are. They are locked in by their own determination to maintain their persona mask. God’s love is the acceptance of the real person, but one must accept that acceptance of God and we are tragically free not to do so.

One final note on the nature of paradise; it transcends not only the categories of good and evil, but those of the subjective and objective. Ecstasy, bliss has been mentioned as a foretaste of paradise and it is a prominent characteristic of these experiences, momentary though they be, that the person feels identified with all things; the subjective and the objective are transcended in unity; there is wholeness. But if paradise transcends good and evil, what is to be done with evil? First, recognize the true source of evil, the consequence of the division of consciousness and the trial of freedom which began in the original paradise and ended it. For freedom to be real, for our decisions to be meaningful, there must be the possibility of evil, the entrance of non-being into the realm of being. Further, we must realize that our definition of good and evil is not God’s definition. "The Kingdom of God is not the kingdom of our good, but of the transcendent good, in which the results and the trials of freedom assume other forms than they do in this world." Note how this statement implies the continuation of the development and perfection of consciousness beyond death.

I will close this paper with a longer quote from Berdyaev whose insights have greatly supported and bolstered my own in these matters. In his further discussion of Christian consciousness, he wrote:

For Christian consciousness paradise is the Kingdom of Christ and is unthinkable apart from Christ. But this changes everything. The cross and the crucifixion enter into the bliss of paradise. The Son of God and the son of Man descends into hell to free those who suffer there. The mystery of the cross solves the chief contradiction of paradise and freedom. To conquer evil the Good must crucify itself. The Good appears in a new aspect; it does not condemn "the wicked" to eternal torments but suffers upon the cross. The "good" do not relegate the "wicked" to hell and enjoy their own triumph but descend with Christ into hell in order to free them. This liberation from hell cannot, however, be an act of violence toward the "wicked" who are there. This is the extraordinary difficulty of the problem. It cannot be solved by human and natural means; it can only be solved through the God-man and grace. Neither God nor man can do violence to the wicked and compel them to be good and happy in paradise. But the God-man in Whom grace and freedom are mysteriously combined knows the mystery of liberating the wicked. . . The wicked and those who are in hell can only be won by the transcendent good, i.e., brought to the kingdom of Heaven which lies beyond good and evil and is free both from our good and our evil. . . This implies quite a different morality in this life. . .The morality of the transcendent good does not by any means imply indifference to good and evil or toleration of evil. It demands more and not less. . . Salvation is the reunion of man with man and with the cosmos through reunion with god. Hence there can be no individual salvation or salvation of the elect. Crucifixion, pain and tragedy will go on in the world until all mankind and the whole world are saved, transfigured and regenerated. And if it cannot be attained in our world aeon, there will be other aeons in which the work of salvation and transfiguration will be continued. That work is not limited to our earthly life. My salvation is bound up with that not only of other men but also of animals, plants, minerals, of every blade of grass—all must be transfigured and brought into the Kingdom of god. And this depends upon my creative efforts.