Denial of Death

Death is a key force in our lives - a force we ignore with almost unfailing regularity.

Many religions are focused around death, whether it is the Egyptian quest for immortality through the preservation of the physical self, or the Christian focus on the promise of eternal life.

J.K. Rowling brought this subject up vividly in the stunning conclusion of her Harry Potter series. Reading her inspired re-telling of the Christ story reminded me of something that always has rankled me about Christianity.

Christ in the gospels has one key reward, one key motivator, the promise of eternal life. Looking back at life around 0 A.D., I can imagine many more promises that would have been more appealing. A promise of freedom from war, a promise of good food, a promise that your children would survive. But instead the key message is always, and essentially, eternal life.

Understanding that promise is key. In the USA and many other places around the world, that understanding is literal. Heaven is a real place. Not on a map, not in the Universe, but none the less as real as any material substance [or digital signal] that I can hold in my hand.

My own faith is certainly a question for me. I believe in the God of Creation, i.e. that the miracle of the existence of Earth, amoebas, biological evolution, and large multi-celled organisms capable of communication inspires within me belief in the existence of a powerful deity. A deity that can take many shapes.

But the state of the body of Christ, the church, is troubling to me. My father devoted his life to God and serving the Church, the body of Christ on Earth. My experience is that the Church is flawed, like all human organizations, and does not seem to have acted in the past or the present as I would expect a divinely inspired organization to act.

For example, the Church has not maintained unity. The Christian Church has broken into hundreds of factions, all of which accept basically one common theological truth, that Christ was the son of God. But they accept very little else. I am certainly not a fan of dogma, or of Thomas Aquinas' contorted logic that supposes change should be avoided because it encourages further changes. But it does seem to me that a clear sign of divine presence would be the ability to work in harmony in the world and with other organizations that believe in Christ. I don't see that harmony in my life, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough.

The Church when mostly unified (as the Catholic Church) committed many egregious sins as a Church, including antisemitism, torture, selling indulgences, slavery, and sexual abuse. The Church has participated in the Jewish Holocaust, and while speaking out as been ineffectual against the force of genocide in th 19th and 20th centuries. Many acts of unspeakable horror were committed in the name of spreading the gospel of Christ to the new world. We have not done well, on the whole, as Christians.

So for me, my journey of faith has become how I answer the following questions about death. Can I believe in Christ, The Holy Spirit, and God even while I do not believe in eternal life for my soul? Can I be a Christian who does not deny death?