Born to Die, part sixteen

My study of the Bible leads me to understand it as a theological communication of the integral relationship between cause and effect in the context of assessment, evaluation, and, yes, judgment. The operative term is relationship. Black contrasted to white. Good to evil. Life as opposed to death (perhaps juxtaposed is more accurate). It can generally be said of Hebrew and Christian scripture that it regards death as a phenomenon composed of assessment or evaluation with particular emphasis upon an evaluator or judge which figures prominently in its fundamental worldview. Thus, the process of life becomes meaningful—significant—in its function of determining and establishing the relationship that is going to successfully pass—for lack of a better way to put it—the final exam.

Born to Die, part fifteen

My personal survey of scripture, of sacred literature (which, I’ve admitted, is for me primarily the Bible), brings me to the conclusion that it deals with three basic questions. Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is the reason I’m here? At one extreme is the fatalistic response that it doesn’t matter. There’s no way of knowing for certain where I came from or where I am going; neither does this explain why I’m here. I am. That’s the long and the short of it, and I waste my time first by asking such absurd questions and further by trying to answer them. At the other extreme is an equally fatalistic response that all is preordained by an omniscient, omnipotent higher power that negates any reason for my asking the questions or seeking answers to them. God put me here, so to speak, and that is all I need to know. The Judeo-Christian approach, however, that humans have been created just a little lower than the angels, presents an invitation to ask and attempt to answer. Adam and Eve died. Why? Moses died. Why? Jesus the Christ was “crucified, dead and buried.” Why? It is the “why” of which the human mind is capable of asking that becomes the very crux of the matter. Why was I born? Why am I going to die? Why am I even able to ask the questions? These, in my opinion, are the issues with which scripture deals.

Born to Die, part fourteen

I am mortal. I am going to die. This truth is the foundation of Hebrew and Christian scripture. Following on the heels of Genesis’ two creation stories, the Garden of Eden account offers an explanation for why humans are not immortal but goes into no detail about what happens when they die. The Bible is not a history book per se. The Bible is not (contrary to what I’ve heard some fundamentalists preach) an operator’s manual. The Bible is a collection of sacred thought regarding the relationship between Creator and creature, and this inevitably involves the issue of death. Given that death is the common human destiny, scripture attempts to take this truth and use it to determine whether there is any purpose or meaning to the process of human life. Do we just appear and then disappear, or is there more significance to our existence than that? It is indeed foolhardy of me to attempt to summarize the whole of Judeo-Christian scripture in one paragraph, but the bottom line is that the Bible acknowledges human mortality and then proceeds to explain what that may mean.

Born to Die, part thirteen

I am not a biblical scholar. My course of study for ordination may have given me an above average exposure to scripture, but I am well aware of many who possess a much greater understanding of the Bible than I. My education has made me aware that the regard I have for scripture—the hermeneutic—is all important to my interpretation of it. I am neither a literalist nor a fundamentalist. I lean toward the more liberal school of sympathetic interpretation, which means that I understand scripture to be the product of human beings rather than a divine dictation. The Bible (the scripture with which I am most familiar because of my Judeo-Christian heritage) has far too many inconsistencies and contradictions for me to believe that it stands precisely as God “wrote”, and that leads me in the direction of a more contextual criticism that attempts to take into account the setting and worldview of the author(s). It is important that I make my hermeneutic clear before I proceed to answer the question of whether or not the Bible tells me what happens when I die.

Born to Die, part twelve

Thus far my attempt to answer the question of what happens when I die empirically has yielded little, with the exception of the Law of Thermodynamics which states that energy is neither created nor destroyed but only changes state. This might be applied metaphysically to a belief that the energy I am composed of therefore remains after my death--here being physiologically defined as the absence of vital signs--but is transformed, but I concede that this is a stretch. When attempting to be as objective as is humanly possible, such an understanding explains little and consequently offers a less than satisfactory answer to the question.

My religious upbringing is Methodist, and although I am no longer active in the denomination I nonetheless still find merit in the methodical approach prescribed by John Wesley, the shining example of this being the quadrilateral of Scripture, Tradition, Experience and Reason. Although they have certainly not been exhausted, the quest for an answer to my question has so far consisted primarily of an examination of experience and reason. This leaves me with scripture and tradition, and since tradition is arguably based upon scripture, that would be the logical direction in which to proceed. Does the Bible tell me what happens when I die?

Born to Die, part eleven

Last Friday a fifteen-year-old freshman was murdered in a drive-by shooting as he walked home from Palo Verde High School, the very same from which Rachel and Rebecca both graduated. A sixteen-year-old who confessed to being the shooter is going to be tried as an adult, and the eighteen-year-old who was driving the car has been arrested as an accessory to murder. Of the estimated 155,000 people who died last Friday, this one understandably received more local attention. In this series I have been contemplating my own death; what it may be like and what it means. But that young man who died instantly on an upper-class suburban sidewalk didn’t have that opportunity. This begs the question, then, of whether or not the nature of one’s death is affected by its circumstances. I’ve heard that when a well-meaning friend asked Henry David Thoreau on his deathbed whether or not he had made peace with his Maker, the philosopher replied, “I didn’t know that we had quarreled.” Such contemplation can take place only in a “natural” context, something that is not afforded when death occurs suddenly and unexpectedly. But what difference does it make? Dead is dead, right? Again, I don’t know the answer, but I am increasingly convinced that it makes asking the question all the more urgent.

Born to Die, part ten

Roughly 155,000 people die each day. The human penchant for qualifying and categorizing deems some of these deaths more important or newsworthy than others. Those are the ones we hear about. The majority exit this plane of existence as anonymously as they entered it. Going back to an earlier contention that absolutely nothing is known about after-death, this selectivity on our part says far more about how we regard life. Thus, I think, is the tendency toward attributing reward or punishment to conceptualizations of an afterlife explained. So, I’m still left with the question, “What happens when I die?” I don’t know, and neither do you.

Born to Die, part nine

Without death, life has no meaning. Just think of how different your outlook would be if you were immortal. Any sense of urgency would be completely eliminated, but beyond that there would a general absence of motivation. “Why do today what can be done tomorrow” becomes a profound question when the guarantee is of infinite tomorrows. This still doesn’t offer any objective explanation of what death is or isn’t, but it does acknowledge that the context of what life is or isn’t lies deeply couched in the knowledge that death ultimately comes to us all.

I’ve just completed a holiday weekend which was delightful in every respect. I luxuriated in the company of my wife, my daughters and their significant others (whom, I must add, become significant to me by association). Every moment of the experience was enhanced by a conscious awareness that it could be the last; the only guarantee is that I am going to die. I understand that this has the potential for a morbid preoccupation with imminent death, but the human ability to transcend such neurotic obsession truly contributes to what Albert Schweitzer referred to as a reverence for life.

I am not going to live forever, at least in this body on this planet. The more I grow in my acceptance of this fact, the more I appreciate what a precious thing life truly is. And if my appreciation is genuine, it becomes inclusive of how precious all life is. This ultimately leads to an unqualified love of life—all life—that results from understanding that death is the common denominator.

Born to Die, part eight

Death penalty…capital punishment…execution…it all adds up to one thing: death as the ultimate punishment. From Paul’s “where is thy sting, where is thy victory?” Christians have been talking a good game for the last two thousand years that they apparently don’t really believe in. This is, of course, all presupposed by the concepts of heaven and hell, which (as I have already mentioned) is the intriguing human propensity to qualify death. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. If you die repentant and saved, you are rewarded. If you die sinfully unrepentant, you are punished. And so, quite ironically, the same phenomenon is both aspired to and avoided. If you haven’t already gone to the link Mary provided in her February 12 comments, I encourage you to do so simply because it gives a fascinating insight into one aspect of the human mythology (dare I call it fantasy?) that has grown up around the ultimate destiny of each and every one of us. So, if I have even the slightest reason to believe that death may be negative, painful, punishing, then it is to be feared as my enemy, and to be used as the ultimate weapon against my enemies.

Born to Die, part seven

Process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead argues that dynamic reality is composed of nexuses of actual occasions. If my contention that humans are specific and unique embodiments of universal energy has merit, then Whitehead’s concept could be applied to defining what the human experience actually is: concentrated, focused, and most incredibly, sentient energy. The First Law of Thermodynamics discussed in yesterday’s post would allow that this energy preexists its human form just as it will remain after. “What is man that Thou art mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4) becomes a much more profound question when asked in the context of eternal energy assuming—albeit temporally—human form. If nothing else, such regard for the human experience begs a genuine “why?” that ultimately leads to the issues of purpose and meaning. Maybe I am a fluke, an accidental manifestation of chaos that will disappear just as meaninglessly as I appeared, but such a view is not consistent with reality as we currently understand it. Martin Buber’s intuitive “I and Thou” comes closer (at least for me) to embracing the transcendent reality of the Creator—the Source—and clarifies how remarkably sacred human life really is.

Born to Die, part six

The deductive approach to understanding my impending death has yielded little more than the harsh conclusion it will be the end, this being primarily based upon the fact that there is no objective, empirical data to indicate anything more. The process of inductive reasoning, however, might shed a ray of hope, although this should not be—in my opinion—confused with conjecture or speculation. The First Law of Thermodynamics (it would seem to me useful at this point for the reader to refresh her or his understanding of the distinction between law and theory in scientific terms) raises a possible metaphysical argument for death not being the mere extinction of life. A reasonable argument can be made—and is supported by a growing body of empirical evidence—that what we humans label “life” is a form of energy. And if the First Law of Thermodynamics is that energy can be neither created nor destroyed but only changes state (form) then it follows that the law can be applied to life as energy. The behavioral sciences (oh that they really were) long ago concluded that the human perception of “life after death” is virtually universal, and now we have a point of agreement with the physical sciences. This falls far short of pearly gates, avenues paved with gold, or twenty-something virgins, but at the same time it provides pause to contemplate that I am in the process of changing the manifestation of that which cannot be destroyed.

Born to Die, part five

I love life! At the existential level, it is all I know and I have no desire for it to end. To no longer know and experience the love of my wife, my daughters, my family and friends, is literally impossible for me to comprehend. And yet, I know that my ultimate destiny is death and I have no objective evidence to refute that it will be the end of my existence. Voltaire postulated that “if there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.” His position seems perfectly reasonable in the face of a common destiny about which absolutely nothing is known. Having the sentient ability to know this inevitable future almost requires the construction—or invention—of some sort of “answer” that will keep the human mind from almost surely going insane without it. It seems to me that this also serves to explain why, from the dawn of human consciousness some notion of an afterlife has been and continues to be almost universal. I, with my limited understanding, think that this might serve to a greater or lesser degree to illustrate the psychological concept of projection. Our human mind doesn’t well tolerate the ambiguity of not knowing, and so its natural tendency is to create answers to fill the void where none exist. I am finding it difficult to develop a rational explanation of death other than that it is genuinely the end.

Born to Die, part four

I am intrigued by the way we humans qualify death. This is primarily because it is the ultimate destiny of our species and yet no empirical body of knowledge about it exists. This might lead to the conclusion that knowledge is both temporal and mortal, which would then raise a subsequent question of whether or not knowledge transcends human experience or is the product of it. No discipline, including science, can tell us for certain what death is (other than the absence of life) much less what it is like. Philosophy and theology are the two human endeavors to investigate and explain death, this being possible only because they do not limit themselves to the empirical scientific method. Thus, science cannot address the single issue common to the human experience because death cannot be verifiably tested, and the human arts cannot speak to it objectively because they lack empiricism.

Born to Die, part three

The seventeenth-century philosopher René Descartes famously posited, “I think, therefore I am.” This leads me to ask, will I know when I am dead? Descartes’ assertion that the “self” is defined by consciousness inevitably leads to the question of the human body’s physical contribution to the thought process. Put another way, must I have a brain in order to think, or does that organ simply serve my human form to comprehend that which already is? I am intrigued by those who report recalling past lives, because I very honestly have no conscious memories of anything earlier than my second year of this life. Evidence of thought prior to entering this plane of existence would support the notion that “soul” or “spirit” exists independently, but I personally cannot produce such empirical proof. Being unable to do so puts me in the position of having to conclude that I am something from nothing, and that to nothing I shall return. Again, Occam’s Razor conjectures that this simplest explanation may prove to be the one that is true.

Born to Die, part two

It was the movie Contact that introduced me to Occam’s Razor, the proposition that the simplest explanation for something is usually the best. When applied to the topic of death, I suppose this means that to acknowledge that it is simply “the end” is perhaps correct. No afterlife. No heaven. No nothing. What was is no longer, and that is the end of it. This is a rather sobering notion, and if accepted as true, hedonism’s “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die” makes good sense. With all due respect to my literalist friends, there is no empirical evidence to support anything other than the objective observation that when death occurs, life ends. Again, reports of near-death experiences don’t really count, because the reporter is not actually dead. It is depressing, at best, to contemplate such an unceremonious end to that which is held so dear, reminiscent of Kansas’ Dust in the Wind, but it is the simplest explanation.

Born to Die

I’m dying, have been since the day I was born. Admittedly, my leukemia has heightened awareness of my mortality, but I have long understood that mine is the same ultimate destiny as all living things. We humans credit ourselves with being the only species capable of contemplating our own death. I have no way of knowing whether or not that’s true, but I do know that it is an ability I share with the rest of humanity. Just because we know that we are going to die, however, does not mean that we know how to speak freely about what we know is true. I don’t think that I’m completely off base to say that death is still regarded by humans as the enemy to be either avoided or conquered. Regarding life as preparation for death is still considered by most as a morbid acknowledgment of a topic that is taboo. Nonetheless, I’m dying, and I can’t help but wonder what death is going to be like. The reports of near-death experiences are of little comfort to me because they are just that: almost but not quite. I’ve borrowed the title of what I somewhat presumptuously remember as one of my better sermons as I invite my readers to share in this Lenten quest for the meaning of my own death.

Let's Kill As Many As We Can Before Midnight

Hopefully there’s someone out there with the mental agility to answer my question; when, if ever, has Super Tuesday coincided with Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday)? Whatever the answer, it presents a certain kind of irony: participating in gluttony in anticipation of Lenten denial. As with so many things these days, I doubt that there’s a widespread understanding of how Mardi Gras came about, any more than it is understood that Halloween precedes All Saints Day. I would be, however, all for a moratorium from presidential politics between now and Easter, that we might have an opportunity to seriously reflect on where we have gone wrong in the past with an eye to correcting those mistakes in the future (the weight of my opinion was clearly demonstrated when the Super Bowl was not canceled last Sunday). We truly suffer from a lack of spiritual wisdom which causes us to get caught up in the hectic and frenetic pace of ignorance. How greatly we would benefit from taking the time to stop, to listen, to think, and to ponder the direction in which our country is headed. I daresay the candidates themselves would enjoy the same reward. And so, in the spirit of naïve idiocy that this author is known for, I suggest that we give up the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for Lent. Then, in the name of the Risen Christ, let bloodshed resume on March 23.

How Is It Done?

It’s been a while since I’ve stood on my legal/ethical/moral soapbox, but a couple of cases I’ve processed recently have brought the issue back to the forefront—at least in my mind. Two females (you’ll see in a minute why I refrain from calling them “girls” or “women”) under the age of eighteen have given birth and applied for child support—the sequence in our office is to first establish paternity if it already isn’t, then to establish an obligation which conforms to state law, and finally to enforce the order for support once it is obtained. The snag, however, is that these females are legally regarded as minors, and as such they cannot open a case in our office. They must instead find a parent or guardian who will apply for them.

Now this is where, at least in my mind, the snag in the system shows up. If a female/girl/woman has the ability to conceive and give birth to a child, why is she then not able to file her own child support case? The answer that this office gives is because it is illegal. But is such an answer ethical? Is it moral? My feeling is that the law is unethical because it places an additional hardship on a young female that already has her hands full with the responsibility of a new life. It might actually prove a risk to the young female’s welfare to have to involve an “adult” who might react immaturely, perhaps even violently, upon learning of the minor’s situation. This, to me, is a good example of how something can be unethical even when it is legal.

The morality issue is, at least in my mind, much more abstract. The question of morality was raised at the moment of coitus, and it is certainly couched in the complex context of whether or not the couple understood what they were doing and why. Referring back to one of my fundamental definitions of “sin” as “being without knowledge”, a couple who engages in sex without knowing what they are doing and why, including the possible consequence of creating a new life, is sinning and therefore engaging in immoral activity. This, to me, serves as an excellent example of how considering the morality of something in the first places makes moot the point of ethicality or legality.

Alas, I’m preaching to the choir and there will continue to be young females who have given birth—not knowing, in many instances, who the father even is—and will not be afforded the right to seek child support of their own accord. I welcome any input as to how we better communicate the rewarding necessity of moral living.