Nothing's sure but death and taxes

I think most people are familiar with the old saying, "Nothing's sure but death and taxes." While it is the "tax" part that makes it humorous, it is the universal assent to the first part that makes it insightful. There is no way to think about spirituality, God, religion, faith, et cetera, without having death a central player in the discussion.

Most of us do not think about death very much, but our biological life is really mostly about doing things to avoid it. Eating, drinking, breathing, moving - those verbs that are essential to the very nature of biological life's continuance have as their converse death. If we do not eat, we die. If we do not drink, we die. If we do not breathe, we die. If we do not move or act to avoid physical threats, then we die. The more disturbing reality is, however, that no matter how much eating, drinking, breathing and moving we do, we still die.

We owe to Dr. Kubler-Ross a debt of gratitude for helping many of us better to understand the process of grief. Although we may grieve many losses, death and dying were the subject of her now universally famous work. It has been debated, however, that the "final stage" of the grieving process "acceptance," really happens very much. There are many who contend, and I worry that they are right, that the final stage of acceptance is simply a deeper retreat into denial. We may internalize the person whom we knew externally, perhaps, and come to be "at peace" therefore with the loss, but the reality of the loss may not be fully and completely accepted as it is just too painful, ultimately, to bear.

One of my "hobbies" that I pursue as my time allows is family genealogy. With patience and persistence, I have slowly been putting together a family tree that now includes literally thousands of individuals and extends back over centuries. Along with the "inevitable facts" of date and place of birth, date and place of death, date and place of burial, I try as much as possible to accumulate other facts and "relics" as it were of these people. In the loft room of my home, I and my partner have framed photos of many persons in our family trees who are dead. At times, I have the feeling that, as I look at their silent faces, usually in the more abstract black and white photos of past times, they are somehow still there, sitting, regarding, existing in "silence." But as I think about this more, I shake myself and remind myself that they are not "really" there with me. It does not take much experience with real death to make any pleasant/calm abstraction seem like the most transparent fiction. As a physician, I have seen people die on any number of occasions. It is almost never the "stage" death of the dying individual speaking those last loving words, closing their eyes and slipping into a peaceful and permanent slumber. It is often slow. The individual is rarely conscious to the end. The dead person does not look as if s/he has fallen asleep. The person looks and is dead. There is no waking up from that biological fact. Not to put a gratuitously gruesome face on it, the decomposition of the body after death, at least of human bodies, is something most of us have not seen. We all have seen skeletons, yes, but it is hard to imagine the skeleton as a once-living person. They all look relatively the same, don't they? It is quite another thing to see the flesh melting, putrifying, being consumed by insects, etc. As a medical student taking a rotation in forensic pathology, I had ample opportunity to see bodies burned alive, drowned and decomposed to various levels. It is far from a peaceful sleep.

Paul Tillich has written (forgive the non-inclusive language-his, not mine), "God is the answer to the question implied in man's finitude; he is the name for that which concerns man ultimately." If this is true, and propositionally let's accept it for the moment, then any discussion of faith, belief, philosophy, religion, God, enlightenment, et cetera, must have death pretty close to the center. If the answer to this question is bounded by a question about our finitude (meaning that we were born, live and will some day, sooner or later, die), then having a clear and realistic picture of death is absolutely essential to understanding any "answer" that we may find. In, certainly, overly-simplistic terms, the theist God is an answer to the question of death: There is a God. He existed before me from all eternity. He created the universe and everything in it, including me. As an infinite being, he is infinitely compassionate. Although I may not understand "Why" we must die, I must accept it as part of the plan of this infinite being. If he is truly infinitely compassionate and death is painful, and he has ordained it, then surely it is not a complete end to my being. He even proved it to us conclusively in the person of Jesus who embodied his essence in a fully human being. Jesus died and rose again "on the third day." We are promised that, we too, at the last day, will be raised with all those who have died at any time/place and will live again in perfect happiness for eternity with the direct vision and experience of this loving God whom we may call "Father."

If one can accept the parts and premises, then the conclusions are reasonable and comforting. When, however, I put the "real" world against the theist, all-powerful and "all-loving" God, it just becomes too much to bear. What gets left out is the massive suffering that humans, animals, all sentient beings experience. There is cruelty, hatred, pain, disease, despair....and we can go on and on. People pray every day for mercy, help, relief of suffering from the all-powerful theistic God and get no relief. The apologetic answers are many. Faith was not strong enough. God answers every prayer, but sometimes the answer is "no." God has a higher plan and purpose and is all-wise. He does not give us the relief we ask for because he knows that that it would not be good for us. His "special plan" for each of us will be revealed in time. Just bear it for now and all will be made well after we die and see him face to face. I can find a parallel to this picture in the human world. There are many persons who cannot, for psychological/emotional/situational reasons, leave the relationship of another cruel/abusive individual. Those who have had the opportunity to deal with the victims of spousal abuse are often astounded at how many times the abused spouse will "go back" to the abusing partner. If God is truly a theistic God and is truly all-powerful, then he has a lot to answer for. It will take a lot of explaining to justify as part of the "loving divine plan" the horrors of genocide, of cold-blooded murder, of torture, of natural disasters that snuff out the lives of thousands in horrible agony....I could go on, literally, forever.

It was this theistic God who, for me, had himself to die. The only answer for me to the problem "death" and the God of theism is an ultimate death - the death of that God. To my mind now, however, it was not the death of a "real" God, but only a "false God" after all, so although it was incredibly painful for me, it was a necessary death. The "aching and gaping hole" where this "God" once existed in my life is one that is clearly not fully healed and, like some severe wounds, may never really be made whole. But if I am to be true to myself and others, I could not refuse to accept this death.....

So, "God" is dead...but can there be a "Long live God" echo that comes out of the end of the old, false God? I think, ultimately, that this is possible. Once again, "God is the answer to the question implied in man's finitude." The question, however, is far from simple, and the "answer" will of necessity be far from simple. In the recent movie version of the novels of "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy," the inhabitants of a long ago and far away planet built an ultimate computer and asked it to compute the ultimate answer. As the story went, they returned millenia later to get the answer. Unfortunately, the answer that they got was incomprehensible. When they asked for an explanation, it was apparent that they had really not understood the question in the first place. The question of our finitude is really the question that is the entirety of our lives. The answer will also be one that is/encompasses/perfects the entirety of human and cosmological existence. It is the process of exploring that answer that is the substance, I think, of Faith. "God" perhaps then, is not an entity, but a process of understanding, becoming and evolving. God may not, therefore, even be fully perceivable by any one person, species or planet but may be the "understanding of finitude" of the entire cosmos. Unlike the small God of theism, that may be an "answer" worth all the seeking.

Jeffrey Shy,
"I'm not dead yet."
Mesa, Arizona