Living to Die

I am, to the best of my ability, attempting to explain our view of death and how it affects the way we think and behave. To the absolutists (which I consider rare) death is the end, period. I have speculated that such a belief robs life of any meaning other than mere existence. With such an outlook anything goes because you experience life while you have it and before you lose it. Regardless of what many say outwardly, I’m of the opinion that this point of view is widely held and serves to explain both amoral and immoral behavior.

There is, of course, a second version of absolutism which focuses its certainty upon the life to come after death. Empirically speaking, such belief is subjective and extremely vulnerable to fabrication by those who seek power. For how many centuries have Christians been urged to contemplate their reward in heaven or their punishment in hell? Both are fictitious constructs which have no scientific validity which perhaps explains in part the supposed enmity between science and religion.

Then there are those who, like myself, do not know. I do not know what happens when I die. All I know for sure is that I will. Anxiety is the product of fear of the unknown. That’s why absolutism—or fundamentalism—offers such a powerful antidote by providing concrete explanations of what happens when we die. From my study of Scripture, particularly the New Testament, I do not find that Jesus ever explained what happens when we die. I have suggested my own opinion that what Jesus did proclaim was analogous to the law of conversation of energy with an eye to the transformation that occurs when energy changes state.

Jesus never promised that we won’t die. Jesus never promised that good people would go to heaven and bad people would go to hell. What Jesus did promise was that we are going to die, and that death is a new beginning. Paramount to his teachings, however, was that we should not fear death anymore than we fear life. They are both part of the same process. When fear is replaced by faith, death is to be welcomed to the same degree as life. This, for me, is the revelation of the Christ: I am living to die, and the quality of both experiences will be governed either by my fear or my faith.