I have been examining the following question and a residual question that are consuming much of my thought lately.
1. What comes next for humans? I mean once we die, what happens then.
2. What difference does the answer to that question make for now? What about this world?
Now that I've started reading and studying it seems like many of my everyday conversations illustrate the need for this discussion. Yesterday a friend was in the office and his particular question was in regard to hell. He was particularly bothered by the frightening thought (for him) that Gandhi might be in hell while George W. Bush might be in heaven. So next matters in many different ways.
If you haven't checked out the first post or second post in this series as introduction you might want to in order to have some context. I am using Bishop N.T. Wright's book Surprised By Hope as an introductory guide to my thinking on this topic and continue by looking at the remainder of chapter one. (I wrote about the first part of chapter one here.)
Bishop Wright continues to make the point that how we think about life after death (or "life after life after death" in his words), makes all the difference in how we live now. Although there is a lot of confusion inside the church as well (the topic of chapter two), in the wider world, outside the church there is the confused thought that has emerged that all religions are basically the same on the topic. Wright is quick to point out that this not the case as he writes, "there is a world of difference between the Muslim who believes that a Palestinian boy killed by Israeli soldiers goes straight to heaven and the Hindu for who the rigourous outworking of karma means that one must return in a different body to pursue the next stage of one's destiny." This seems to be right...Orthodox Jews believe that all the righteous will be raised to bodily life in "the resurrection" and Buddhists greatest hope is that they may lose their identity completely like a drop in the ocean in the great nameless and formless Beyond. So instead of us all basically feeling the same way about how things end up, really we have very divergent and non-compatible hopes for our afterlives.
Some of us like to avoid the topic as much as possible. Kind of more comfortable with pretending it will never happen to us, we try not to talk about death and the eternity that may or may not be attached to it, in hopes that it will just go away. Belief in hell came under attack in the 19th century by theologians who were very helpfully questioning everything and then it suffered its death as a result of the immense amount of death experienced as a result of the first World War. In Wright's words "there was so much hell on earth (as a result of WW1) that people couldn't believe that God would create such a place in the hereafter as well." As a result whole generations were raised with the modus operandi being "don't talk about it." Many parents didn't let their children attend funerals and there was a culture of silence about death and what comes next.
But there has been a shift...this silence has not been pervasive in my generation, instead there's lots of talk of it in today's films and death is once again in the air. We are talking about death again and Wright ends chapter one by listing the main beliefs that have emerged today...none of which "correspond to Christian orthodoxy" (which we may start to get to in one of the next few posts). These views are alternatives Wright adds, because the mood seems to be that more traditional views on judgement, hell, heaven and resurrection are "offensive to modern sensibilities."
1. Some believe in complete annihilation. This was the view of one of my formerly-Christian turned somewhat radically atheist professors at school. He took great comfort in knowing that after this...there is nothing. We die and cease to be. Wright points out that this is especially "clean and tidy" (I would add especially for some personality types) but an "...unsatisfying account of human destiny."
2. For those who can't deny any future life whatsoever, reincarnation becomes a nice option. I am always amazed at how completely saturated the religion sections of almost any bookstores are on this topic. This belief if not limited to practicing Hindus but all those who participate in it are practicing some kind of Hinduism. The ideal here is to learn (through the cycle of birth and death, followed by more birth and death) to achieve focused thought to replace the distracted mind or soul...that's how one escapes the wheel that never stops turning of birth followed by death. Wright points out that this continuing trend has become a growth industry for psychoanalysts who no longer have to confine their "what did your parents do to you" questions to this life alone.
3. Then there is the sort of nature/Buddhism view. At death one is absorbed into the wider-world, into the wind and trees. This person would instruct those standing at their graveside not to cry because all they have to do to see them again is to look to the trees and the wind and the snow and rain. I often hear Christians speaking in ways like this by the way, so it will be helpful fairly soon to get to the traditional Christian view.
So we are confused...we say things like "don't worry about your body...it's gonna' just burn up anyway" and we leave little items in our loved ones coffins so that they will have them "later" and as far as I can tell (which is why I began this journey) most people don't know what Orthodox Christian belief is. Most people recognize that Christian's at least don't believe in complete annihilation, instead preferring some sort of life after death, but what does that look like. So that's where I'm headed (guided by the good doctor), in particular (you'll remember from the first two posts) with an emphasis on resurrection and what that word actually means to and for us. Now that there has been a very basic examination of confusion outside of the church, part four will look at how we are many times equally puzzled inside the church.
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