The Fear of Death Paralyzes Us

First published on Open Salon, MARCH 8, 2010 9:04PM

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

The Cross: How Low Must God Go?

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NOTE TO READERS: This Lenten essay was originally published on Open Salon, FEBRUARY 15, 2009. It is part of my Christian Calendar Series. It is intended to set a tone for thinking about the season of Lent. I have edited it for 2010, clarifying certain points and improving the flow of the text.

Christian liturgy, ritual and most of Christian theology change little from year to year. The reason for the Christian Calendar is to encourage Christians to rehearse, ponder and reflect on, year after year, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ, so that His life becomes part and parcel of our family history.

The story of Christ changes little, but we, His disciple, change and grow, become ill, or face death, our own or a loved one's, and in so doing we come each year to view the events of Christ and the traditions of His Church through different eyes.

Hopefully, what I write in this series will have a certain timelessness, updated slightly each year to improve clarity and thereby open more deeply our understanding of aspects of the events celebrated during the Christian Year.

This opening Lenten essay for 2010 lays out some basic parameters of orthodox Christian belief. However, even within Christianity there is no unanimity on what are essential beliefs and what are not essential. I will not argue any of that here.

What is laid out here are my own beliefs, which are widely shared by Christians in most mainline Protestant denominations and in the Roman and Orthodox Catholic denominations in the United States as being fundamental to Christian faith.

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We begin this reflection at the foot of the Cross upon which Christ is crucified. Most Christians have been here many times before, but we come back now to explore an aspect of this poignant scene that is crucial to understanding why there is a season of Lent at all.

St. Luke tells us:

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" But the other one rebuked him, saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?" [23:39-40]

Before this scene at the Cross, Jesus, in utter agony, has been driven with whips, carrying the instrument of his own death on his back, struggling up the dirty hill outside Jerusalem which serves as the city garbage dump. He has been nailed to a Cross which has been raised as a barren tree on which he hangs.

There is something utterly, painfully earthly and totally unnerving about Luke's description of the crucifixion because, however some Christians might want to pretty it up, it is nothing less than the painful picture of the death of God's own Son, hanging from a tree like a common criminal!

If you contrast this scene with later descriptions of who Jesus is, the difference is startling in its clarity. As Christianity moved further and further from the recording of eye witness accounts of Jesus' death, a "higher," more theological, description of who Jesus is began to emerge.

For example, St. Paul, in his Letter to the Colossians (Col 1:15-19) says of Jesus:

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers -- all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together."... "For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his Cross."

Paul's picture of Jesus is one of the highest, most holy images of Christ as the powerful ruler of all creation that one can imagine. Christians like me believe that it is true.

Compare this with Luke’s gut wrenching picture of a bruised and battered man hanging on a Cross between two convicted criminals. Can there be a more stark contrast? Yet, as a Christian, I say that this picture is also true.

Can you begin to sense the paradox, the stark contrast between the very human Jesus in Luke's Gospel and the gloriously and powerfully divine Jesus portrayed by Paul? Can you feel the painful, bewildering irony of the crucifixion when one comes to believe that both descriptions are true?

Both writers are talking about God. Paul calls Jesus the very "image of the invisible God." The Jesus Paul is talking about is the One hanging there on the Cross, being ridiculed by hypocrites, power mongers and thieves.

All the power, the might, the majesty, and the glory of God is hanging there: being spit upon, a sword thrust into his side, humiliated, left to die.

And what is the response of the One in whom Paul says all things in the universe are held together? Of the one whom St. John says was there before the beginning of time, before the cosmos was created, from whom all things came into being; the one John says literally gave us life?

Since he has all this power, does he unleash the fury of Michael, the archangel, and his host of heavenly warriors? No. Rather, he says, "Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." (Luke 23:34)

And what is their response to that? They shout more insults! What does it take to get through to them?

To paraphrase William Barclay, How low must God go to prove that God loves you? That is the question this text poses to us. God went as low as the Cross, and only one person on earth understood it that day, a simple thief hanging on a cross beside Jesus.

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We need to get a clear mental picture of that scene: There was not just one cross. There were three. Three crosses, Jesus in the middle, a thief on either side. When we have that mental picture before us, can we see the symbolism that would spring from the cross? Can we see God saying, with outstretched arms, “I love you this much!”? Can we see that there are no depths to which God will not sink to offer us the gift of divine love and grace?

One of the best explanations of the meaning of the Cross comes from William Barclay, the great writer of Bible commentaries for ordinary people. Barclay seldom spoke of the Cross in the traditional legalistic terms of atonement, or of ransom, or even of sacrifice for our sins. He knew those were traditional and accepted explanations of the theology of the Cross.

But, for Barclay atonement was not enough. For Barclay, even Jesus' sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins was not the essence of what Jesus was saying to us from the Cross.

For him, and for me, the Cross was the ultimate sign of God's complete and unequivocal love for us. Barclay said that God was saying to each of us, "Nothing you do can make me not love you. You can disappoint me, break my heart and grieve my Spirit, you can spit on me, scourge me, beat me, ridicule me, and even kill me -- but you can not make me stop loving you. See that Cross? I love you like that!"

In the 8th chapter of Mark, Jesus asks the disciples, "But what about you? Who do you say I am?" (v. 29) Each of the synoptic Gospels records this question.

The Cross can help us answer that question. And that question is vital to understanding Christian faith. In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter to you what anyone else's view of Jesus is. Whether it is the thief on the Cross who believed him or the other who did not; the Pharisee on the sidelines or the soldier at the foot of the Cross; your best friend or your worst enemy, your Sunday School teacher, the bartender down at the corner tavern, or even your pastor or priest.

All that matters in the end is how each individual answers the question that has echoed down through the centuries, asked by Christ to generation upon generation of seekers: "But what about you? Who do you say I am?"

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There is only one way for a Christian to answer that question. When a seeker comes to me and talks about becoming a Christian that is the only question that I ever ask her or him. I don't ask them about the Bible, or about where they live or where they work, or what they did before they got there. I don't care what church they came from or if they have never set foot in a church in their life. None of that really matters.

Often their honest answer to the question Jesus asks is "I don't know." And that is a good enough answer at that stage of their faith journey. Some never move beyond that stage, but most do. From my perspective an honest person who sincerely struggles with answering that question is in a far healthier spiritual place than one who gives the answer he or she is "supposed" to give but really doesn't believe.

So it is with us. If we think that we really aren't quite sure of the answer to that fundamental question, then we can learn a bit more about the answer by spending a little time with the two thieves on the Cross.

And, as we look at them keep in mind what we have already learned: that whatever else the Cross means, it means that God will do anything to prove to you that He loves you. He is saying to you, "See that Cross? I love you like that!"

The unrepentant thief asks Jesus, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!" (v.39)

Although the question was rhetorical and sarcastic, it’s still an important one. If Jesus is simply a great teacher who has met an unfortunate end, then the story of the Cross is touching, but not truly relevant to Christian faith. In fact, there would be no Christian faith. Christians believe that Jesus was, in fact, a great teacher. But that is hardly the basis for believing that he is the Son of God, God come down, Emmanuel, to save us from ourselves

The irony of the unrepentant thief's question to a Christian, is, of course, that Christians believe that Jesus was, indeed, the Messiah -- but that man could not see it.

Yet, if Jesus were not the Messiah, then how could he promise the other thief, "This day you will be with me in paradise?" Only the Messiah, a Messiah even greater than the one the Jews hoped for, or a deluded mad-man, would make such a rash promise.

And, in a very real sense that is the choice a Christian must make: is he God or is he mad? C. S. Lewis argued that is the only real choice humans have to make about Christianity.

There is no middle ground to be found here. Either Jesus is the Messiah, or he is not. And, if we decide that Jesus is, indeed, the Messiah, a Messiah capable of actually welcoming the repentant thief into paradise with him, what more might that tell us about a Messiah who is able to offer such a promise? Answering that question will get us to that next step in faith that has to be taken if we would claim to be a believing Christian.

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To help us get to that next step we need to explore the question asked by the good thief to the other thief who continued to mock Jesus: "Do you not fear God?"

In other words, if this man should truly be God's Messiah or more, have you no fear in continuing to hurl abuse at him? Luke records no response from the unrepentant thief, but leaves it that, even at the outer limits of his mortal existence, this man has no room for even the possibility of God working in the life of Jesus!

How do we know this? Because of the words Luke uses. Luke’s account of the conversation between the criminals and Jesus is unique. The words in the New Revised Standard Version, in English, "kept deriding him" translate the word "blasphemeo" in Greek. The NRSV translation is a weak translation. The intensity of feeling in that word is immensely strong and is not captured by the tame, "kept deriding him". In koine Greek it means to speak evil, revile, defame or vilify GOD.

The man hanging on a Cross knows he’s going to die but, nevertheless, Luke tells us that he is blaspheming God. Even if Jesus is the Messiah, or if Jesus is not the Messiah, but is merely "of God" in some undisclosed way he is not someone this thief has time for. The thief is in deep pain and anger with a soul closed to the possibility of God, or of caring about one who serves God. Nor is he open even to the idea of his own possible redemption.

That’s a scary place to be. This poor, pitiful man is locked in a prison of absolute loneliness. There is no room in his heart even for even the fear of God. And there is no room for hope.

This thief rejects Jesus. To a Christian to reject the love Jesus displayed on the Cross is to reject the love of God.

The other thief chose not to reject that love. Hanging from his own cross that thief made his choice: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom." (Luke 23:42)

So how does Jesus respond to this thief? This man is a convicted felon, who was guilty of his crimes, but he has chosen to fear God in these final moments, and most importantly, he has chosen to believe that Jesus is indeed the Messiah of God. And the response of God to his deepest need is instantaneous. Jesus says, "Today, you will be with me in paradise."

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Luke's story shows us the very radically different decisions that two thieves made. It tells us that one rejects the Messiah, the Son of God, while the other asks to be remembered in Jesus' Kingdom. And Jesus promises that second thief that he would, that very day, be with him in paradise. Christians believe that only the Christ, the Son of God, could have made that offer.

That is how looking at the two thieves can help us to understand just who this Jesus is. He is the one who could offer to the thief who only asked to be "remembered" the gift of paradise. It can provide to those who, like the "good thief," are willing to make a leap of faith with insight about how they might answer Jesus' most important question to all of us.

When Jesus asks, "And you, who do you say that I am?" he is asking the ultimate question of Christian faith. The answer of the repentant thief is consistent with the clearest answer to that question found in the Gospels.

St. Peter, speaking for himself and all of the disciples in the 16th chapter of Matthew, says it clearly and succinctly: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God." (verse 16)

It is that belief that causes Christians to gather each Lent at the foot of the Cross, to strengthen and renew their faith in the One who offers peace, salvation and eternal life to those who believe that he is their Lord and Savior, God come down, Emmanuel. Jesus, the Christ, is the One who says, in Barclay's words, "Nothing you do can make me not love you. See that Cross? I love you like that!"

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May the Season of Lent bring to each Christian a clear sense of what the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross means, and may it also be a time of introspection, looking into our own lives and reflecting on what we might do that will help us turn ourselves away from worldly things and toward the greatest gift of God: God's everlasting love for all humankind.

I hope that those whose faith is not Christian but have joined in the reading of this essay have a better idea of one reason, I think the most important reason, why the Cross is so central in the lives of those who follow Christ. That reason is love.

And I ask all Christians who read this essay to remember that Christ did not die upon the Cross out of love for Christians alone, for there were no Christians then. He died that all might know the love of God. He died for all of us.

As we enter this season of Lent 2010 my prayer is that all may know the unequivocal, unconditional, everlasting love of God.

Monte

Bound by Death

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Death. Death is, of course, part of life on this blue sphere. Yet the existential reality of our own death is something most of us try to avoid thinking about. But sooner or later thinking about it cannot be avoided. Time does not allow that. At 70, believe me, you can't avoid thinking about the time you may have left on this earth. But long before now I thought about it, even as a child. And I imagine that many of you did too.

One thing I have learned over the decades God has given me to live is that throughout history humankind has been trapped in the inexorable march of time. Time becomes the ultimate thief as it carries its victims to meet their ultimate enemy: death. However much we try to ignore it or hide from it, cover it up or delay it, mock it or claim we don't think about it, death awaits.

Death awaits us because time truly waits for no one. We think about time as being the past, the present and the future. But when we think about time more deeply we realize that "the present" eludes us. While we march ever onward through time toward death, we live only in the fleeting present. Yet, "the present" is a most elusive concept to grasp. Even as you read these words they are past the moment you process them. The thought that you are having right now, having thought it, is past.

There is something inevitable, inexorable, and ultimately disconcerting, in that. The truth of the ever fleeting present is that we can't slow it down or speed it up and if we stop to think about it, it is already over. And, when we realize that truth, when we look at where we are "at present" in our individual life journeys, most of us have those times when we shudder and say, "My God, where has my life gone?" Or, "Is this all there is?"

In those dark moments of personal awareness of our own inevitable mortality, we can too often allow our present to be paralyzed by the remembrance of our frivolous use of time past, and of the inevitability of the death that awaits us in the future. In such times we are what I call "bound by death," paralyzed by the human condition itself.

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In his 1933 masterpiece "Man's Fate," (La Condition Humaine), French novelist, Andre Malraux, wrote about the human condition from the point of view of a protagonist who was paralyzed in just that way. At the end of the book, having seen his friends, his loves, and his noble humanistic causes all wiped out, Malraux' hero speaks the bitter lament of a man without hope, hope in humanity, or in God.

"You know the phrase, 'It takes nine months to make a man, and a single day to kill him.' Listen: it does not take nine months, it takes fifty years of sacrifice, of will, of, of...many things! And when this man is complete, when there is nothing left in him of childhood, nor of adolescence, when he is really a man -- he is good for nothing but to die...."

Here is a man who has given his life to a cause he believed in, an important human vision, only to see those he loves blown into what he can only assume to be oblivion. His present is frozen; frozen by a past made meaningless by the reality of the present. The only future he can see is one that leads to death. In him there is no hope, nothing to cling to, nothing to motivate him to create a future for himself. He tried that once, and it destroyed him.

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No one has written more profoundly about the reality of death and the relentless human desire to ignore, postpone, and deny death than the great Canadian cultural anthropologist and sociologist, Ernest Becker. He published his greatest book, "The Denial of Death" in 1973 when he, at age 49, was himself dying of cancer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for that work in 1974, two months after he died.

Becker argued that our entire outlook on life is tinted by our constant attempts to deny one inevitable fact of our existence: that we die. He came to believe that the human psyche needs a belief system in order to deal with the very idea of death. Otherwise, he argued, humans could not function in the world. However, he ultimately rejected the value of such belief systems because he said that reliance on a belief system makes it impossible to attain genuine self knowledge and awareness.

Having said that the reliance on belief systems to deal with death precludes true self awareness he strove to find meaning elsewhere. A strong ethical humanist, he felt that humanity must find the answer to the denial of death within the heroism of humans and thus free itself of the burden of the fear, and the denial, of death.

Yet, in the end, he could find nothing that even selfless heroism could do to alter the fear and denial of death other than to offer a final bow to the inevitable. He wrote, "The most that any one of us can seem to do is to fashion something, an object of ourselves, and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak, to the life force."

Many people then and now find that good enough. Some believe that we can pass the best of each of us, our knowledge, our writings, our ethics, our philosophies, our loves, on to our children, our wider families, and even the world. Some feel that, in doing that they have achieved true self knowledge. In other words, some variation of Becker's idea appeals to a lot of people.

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Becker's ideas reflect the views on death of one influential ethical humanist. However, the vast majority of people on the planet have belief systems that allow them to face death with greater optimism than did Becker.

And those believers do not feel that they have forsaken self knowledge or self awareness by having faith. In fact, they would argue that their belief system is part and parcel of their self knowledge, and that true self discovery requires belief.

The vast majority of faith systems in the world today deal with death not by denying it but by asserting that death is not final, that there is some form of afterlife, offered to us by God, or gods, a life force, a higher power, or an ultimate source of life.

The shape of that afterlife and the nature of that higher power varies widely among religions. But all those who believe in an afterlife believe that death is not the end, but is a portal through which we pass.

As a Christian theologian I am somewhat versed in how death is viewed in other faiths. However I am no expert in that and will not write about it here.

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What I can tell you is how orthodox Christianity views death and how that faith, my faith, deals with it. So what follows is a brief explanation of the Christian way of dealing with death.

If you are a Christian there are fundamental things that you believe about death and how it can be overcome, i.e., essential beliefs about life and death that distinguish a Christian faith perspective.

The Christian hope for eternal life is grounded in the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, whom Christians confess as Lord and Savior. This belief is not based only upon the truth of his teachings or on his high ethical standards, as important as those are to other aspects of the faith. Rather it is based on the belief that Jesus is the Son of God, who, in total trust and obedience to the will of the Father, died upon the cross for the sins of all humanity.

And Christians believe that God raised him from the dead, in loving response to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Christians believe that in so doing God broke once and for all the bonds of death for all who believe in Jesus, the Christ.

Before Jesus was raised there was hope for a general resurrection of the dead. Martha reflected that hope after her brother, Lazarus, died. And Jesus told her "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" Martha replied, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God ...."

However, the raising of Lazarus was not a resurrection. It was a resuscitation. Lazarus was raised from his tomb, but he would one day die. Christians believe, therefore, that the raising of Jesus was the first resurrection. St. Paul confirms this by calling Jesus' resurrection the "first fruits" from the dead, and reiterates that those who believe in the Christ shall not die but shall be resurrected as he has been.

This is important to Christians because a lone resurrection would have little to no meaning for us. As Hans Kung has said, "An isolated resurrection in itself would have little point, unless it were a resurrection FOR US. Jesus' resurrection is the ground of hope in the resurrection for ALL who believe in him."

This, then, is what Christians call Resurrection Faith. It is this faith that we too shall be raised which grounds Christian hope.

Ultimately, belief that Jesus was raised is precisely that: Belief. And many good men and women, like Ernest Becker, do not make that "leap of faith" that defines a Christian.

Such a trust in God, cannot be found in books, in science, or in study. It comes from the heart. It is essentially intuitive. Once one has faith, of course, one can seek further understanding through study. As St. Anselm advised, religion is "Faith seeking Understanding."

One cannot study his or her way to faith in the Risen Christ. One can read about the Resurrection and decide whether one believes it to be true, but there will not be any "proof" of it.

The resurrection is not a "provable" event, notwithstanding the number of devout Christians who try, year after year, to "prove" the truth of the resurrection using various kinds of "arguments" which are not proofs at all, but are really only different ways of stating the faith.

Notwithstanding the lack of "scientific evidence," of which there is next to none about any event in ancient history which we nonetheless accept as "true," I, and other Christians, believe that the resurrection is true. I believe it because of the testimony of the Gospel writers, and of the other witnesses, such as St. Paul, who said that they saw the Risen Christ. In other words, I trust that testimony, that kerygma, (proclamation), of the faith.

Christians also believe it because we feel Christ is working in our lives today, and in the lives of those we trust and love. We believe it because the Church itself has been created as the Living Body of the Living Christ. And we continue to testify to the living presence of Christ in the Word and Sacraments of our worship, especially in the sharing of the bread and wine, the symbolic body and blood of our Savior.

We also believe that the resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate divine revelation of God to us. It is through this unique revelation of the power and glory of God that we are freed in the present to have the hope of eternal life, even in the face of the fact that we shall surely die, because we believe that death is not the end of our lives.

This hope is born out of our trust in God's righteousness, in God's goodness, and, most of all, in God's love for us. For believers death is but a narrow gate, a passageway through which we pass into the closer presence of Christ.

For those who trust that God raised Jesus, the fleeting present in which we all live can be a freeing moment. There is still the inevitability of death, but, as St. Paul says, "Death has lost its sting."

And, because of Christian hope, the present can take on new meaning, can become something more than a time for remembering the mistakes of the past, or living in paralyzing fear of the future. Instead it can become a time of worship, thanksgiving, praise and service in the name of the One who has overcome death for us.

When Thomas refused to believe that Christ was risen Jesus appeared before him and invited him to put out his hand and touch his wounded side, saying "Do not doubt, but believe." Thomas did not put his hand in Jesus' side. Instead Thomas believed and answered him saying simply, "My Lord and my God!"

More telling for Christians is what Jesus said next to Thomas, which is often overlooked, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

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There are many ways in which people deal with the inevitability of death. Each person must decide just how they will face the reality of their own death. I have found a way of dealing with death that gives me hope. For me faith is the best of the alternatives. Through my faith I find hope, and the promise of eternal life.

God bless you all,

Monte