As a retired pastor one of the fears I have seen in the faithful that at first surprised me was the fear of death.
I think that the fear of death is more prevalent in church going people than they admit, but I do not believe it is a major issue in the lives of the majority of Christians. At the same time I also think that it would be impossible to find out how many practicing Christians fear death as a significant issue in their lives because they assume that if they believe that there is a "heaven" they think that they should never admit any fear of death. Further, people, myself included, change how we feel about death over time.
I wrote about this issue in a post entitled "Bound by Death" on September 24, 2009. If you have not read that essay I urge you to do so because it lays out the fear of death in terms of its theological and psychological hold upon us. It explores Ernest Becker's masterful discussion of this issue in his book, "The Denial of Death," from his non-believing point of view. And it also explores the Christian answer to the issue of death. This post is an extension of those ideas, as applied to my own life.
What that essay does not explore is how a believer can have a strong and hope filled faith and still have doubts, still think about death now and then, and still have those fears invade his thinking in weaker moments. I know that feeling is possible because believers are only human, and believers have doubts about the unknown, just like everyone else. Besides, I have had those feelings.
I am 71 now, with lots of debilitating medical issues that make each day very hard and painful. I am at that point where some days it could be very easy to let doubt ruin my life. So that is where I am in my life journey. But doubt does not hurt my faith like it did when I was younger, and even if I start to feel the chill that comes with thinking about my death I now can turn away from that obsession to something living and hopeful. Let me tell you a little about how I got to this place.
When I was young everybody told me that when I was 40 years old it would be the big slap in the face, but I ran right through 40 without a thought about it. But 50 became my big brick wall. I ran into that wall at full speed, and it knocked me silly. It left me doubting and fearful of death, not death in the abstract, but my own death.
Suddenly at 50 I realized how very mortal I was.. I spent time thinking about how there was no way I could any longer see my life as only half over. It was all downhill from there. And I obsessed about my death. It used to make me shudder and cringe.
This went on even when I was in seminary, and I would lie in bed thinking about it. But it got less and less as time went on. I still think about it from time to time but I am able now to turn my thoughts to other things. And that works now. At 50 it did not.
It would have worked sooner if I knew that I was the one God was expecting to change. I had to learn that for myself because I did not turn to anyone who had been through it. I did not even turn to God about it. It was my big, hidden, shameful secret. How could I really believe my faith was true and yet have those fears?
At 50 I did not really accept the way God made the world. I did not want to accept that death is part of the way God made it. I did not want to believe that I was going to die. Yet dying is part of life. We all do it. I could just not get my head wrapped around that.
Nor could I get my heart wrapped around the idea that God would love me if I had such doubts. Keep in mind that this was during full time seminary for three years. I kept asking myself: "Was I a hypocrite? Was I just one of those Christians who are not planted in solid soil but planted in the stones who would wither away at the first dry spell?" I worried that I was.
Yet if any faithful person is honest with him or her self they will admit that at some point in their lives they all go through fear and doubt. Doubt is part of the human condition. It is built into us. To be human is to doubt. Not just about the hereafter, but about almost every important thing in our lives.
We do not have to be faith based people to doubt. We all doubt ourselves and others, and faith minded people often doubt God. That is the truth that most faith based people fail to tell us, and often even refuse to admit to themselves. But that is the first thing we have to accept. We have to understand that to doubt is to be normal.
We also have to accept that we all will die. It is inevitable, built into the fabric of the cosmos. It will happen. We will die.
So the question is not that people of faith have the doubts that often include the fear of death. The questions are what will we do with those doubts and who will we turn to when we have them?
For a long time the questions I asked myself about my own death paralyzed me. I did not turn to God and ask that they be relieved. I was too embarrassed. Rather, I turned into my fears, wrapped myself in them and suffered. And they just got worse. I thought about death all the time.
I found that my obsession with death was stealing first nights, then whole days, then weeks and months from my life. The very life that I yearned to keep was being stolen from me, and I would lose to death days that could have been filled with life. And I would never get those days back. They were gone.
I was killing myself emotionally, submitting myself to death while my body was still alive. This was not conscious. I was too busy worrying to think about the why of what I was doing, let alone think about what I was doing. I just wanted the emotional pain and the bad thoughts to go away.
But I finally realized that we can't "make" bad thoughts go away. In fact, when we try we make it worse. We can't think about not thinking about something and do anything more than reinforce the very thoughts we want to get rid of.
The only way to make bad thoughts go away is to fill our heads with good thoughts, allowing the good to absorb and overwhelm the bad so there is simply no room in our lives for the bad thoughts. It works. It does not work instantly. But I found out that if we focus on God instead of focusing on ourselves, and if we focus on serving others it can happen.
When we obsess about death we are allowing death to win. I think that is why St. Paul called death the "last enemy" because death can steal our lives from us while we are still alive. I believe that Paul was not just talking about physical death.
He was also talking about the death we bring into our lives by not living them fully. Keep in mind that there was no reason for Paul to bring it up if it were not something that the people in the church he was addressing were concerned about. They were concerned with whether the promises of the resurrection of Christ were true.
So, in addition to asking God to help us push those thoughts of death away with good thoughts, we need to also be asking God to show us the things in our lives that we can do and feel that makes us happy, that give us pleasure. That pleasure can come in loving him and others.
But there is nothing wrong with seeking out things to do and think about that give us pleasure for their own sake. Some people think that if we do that God will think us selfish. And if that is all we do, I would agree. But doing things for our own enjoyment does not take from God. Actually, those things please God, because one of God's great hopes for us is that we will choose to be happy.
I have things that fill my life and still give me pleasure that are not directly connected to what I consciously think of as "pleasing God." Motorcycling has been my great passion all of my life and while I can do far less of it now I still can do some of it. And I look forward to the next ride no matter how short it might be.
When I got this illness and the loss of mobility that confines me to a Lazy Boy most of the time, with guaranteed pain for several hours every day I wake up, and often more than that, I had a crisis again. I was 69. I could not work. Forced retirement for medical reasons is no fun.
And I started thinking that my life was dirt. It happened so suddenly I had no idea what to do with my life. The medical issue consumed me for a while, and I was very worried that it was caused, as it can be, by life threatening diseases. That is still possible but I no longer dwell on that.
So, once again, I had to find things that I could do to help myself and help others. I had to believe that God was not done with me yet. I had to believe that I could still enjoy life and still make a difference in the lives of others.
So, after a few months, I found OS and started writing, researching and learning again. We are never too old to learn. The world is full of things we don't know, wonderful things. And a computer gives us access to so much of that world we never had before.
I became a political junkie as the election kicked into high gear and wrote about politics almost exclusively when I first came to OS. It was immediate and timely and fit my mind set at that point because I could not concentrate on any one thing very long.
And I love to read novels and learned to fill a lot of the winter with that. I upgraded my internet access to cable high speed and joined Netflix so I could watch on the computer movies or TV series that I missed. The streaming of movies is something I enjoy.
And I have learned to throw myself into whatever I am doing. I let them involve my consciousness so there is no room for bad thoughts. And if the bad thoughts try to take over, I concentrate on the good.
Now that it is over a year since my replacement has come to the last church I served I want to begin to reconnect with my friends from the church by phone, listening to their joys and troubles, and when I can, let them know that they are loved.
My medical issues won't let me go to church anymore but I can still care about them and pray for them. I missed doing that and now that our new pastor is firmly established in the position I look forward to doing that again.
All these things seem trivial. But they are not. I am determined to believe my faith and to practice it. It has gotten me through many rough years and through much pain and sadness. It is literally my salvation day to day. And it drives thoughts of death away.
But I have to be an active participant in that. I can't sit back and let my idle brain just fill up with all the fears and self pity I could so easily dwell on. I have to exercise my will power and focus on the good, on living this day the best I can. One day at a time; one hour at a time if necessary. That is how our lives come to us and we need to recognize that fact.
The older I get, and now with this illness, I am finally coming to realize why so many old people that I visited did not feel that panic I felt when I was 50, even as I sat by their bedsides when they were terminally ill and said prayers for them even as they died. They had come to terms with their lives, and, yes, with their death long before I did in my own life. They were looking forward to going home to be in the closer presence of God.
They were still human, still had some doubts. But their faith held and they were willing and ready to take the risk of faith: that what they believed was true. And I am increasingly willing to do that as well. Had anyone asked me 20 years ago if that would ever be possible I would have said "no."
But I know now that our doubts do not in any way affect God's ability to bring us to a beautiful home beyond the bounds of this mortal life, a home so beautiful we cannot even comprehend it. God's promises to us are not changed or even shaken by what we think or what we feel about death. It is what God thinks that counts. And he loves us in spite of our doubts. Paul says that "Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus...." I believe that. I did not always.
In the end, each one of us has to decide: are we willing to give these wonderful days we have now over to death? Is that what life should be about? Are we willing, as I was for a time, to let fear and death steal these days that God has given to us?
Few things in life are easy. Many are incredibly hard. Some, like fear, are literally paralyzing. We have to fight the fear. Fight it by doing things we enjoy. We need to spend time with others. even when we would rather just curl up in bed with our fears. We need to involve ourselves in helping others. Have we forgotten that there are dozens of things we have never done, places we have never seen, people we have neglected who would love to spend time with us?
We need to recognize that no matter how bad it seems, there are millions who have it far, far worse than we do.
The vast majority of old people who have faith fear death very infrequently. They are too busy living to dwell on something that they know is coming and can't do anything about. And those who are completely worn out physically have no desire to stick around in a failing, often pain wracked body when they know that God has something far better awaiting them beyond that portal to our eternal home.
Doubt and fear with always be with us. The key is not that we feel those things, but that we have the faith and hope to overcome them.
Fear of death can lead to paralysis, ruining us, killing us hour by hour, bringing death into our lives, stealing our life long before this physical life is over. I pray we shall resist that temptation with all that is in us. And with God's help we can.
Blessings and Peace,
Monte
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