So, what is the deal with mortality?

I’m not even fit to tie the shoes of the great philosophers, theologians, and religious leaders of all faiths who have addressed this most fundamental of all questions. I’m just a student of history who knows one or two things about teaching and learning and of some of life’s major themes.

We give a nod to the axiom that there are only two known things: Death and taxes. Consequently, we pay our taxes and then await death in all sorts of ways.

Occasionally, I read of really rich people who invest in cryogenics. Of scientists who think we’re not that far from breaking through to the solution that will extend life indefinitely.

Our son, Lee, something of a philosopher himself, asked me not that long ago, “Dad, if you could, would you like to extend your life well into your hundreds?” No offense, Lee, but you remember that I replied, no.

This is completely natural but we should pause and think about its implications.

In times of deprivation or war, the fact of mortality is much more present in the forefront of our daily awareness. I imagine the thoughts of the Greatest Generation as they hit the beaches of Iwo Jima or Normandy or flew over the skies of Germany. Of Jews, trusting in their God, disembarking the trains only to strip and enter the concrete death chambers disguised as showers.

Or, of medieval times when plague took one in three humans from an entire continent.  Or, of the genocides of the 20th century precipitated by the monsters who killed tens, even hundreds, of millions in the name of utopia.

We all die. In the west, now, we work hard to postpone it, fight it, dismiss it as a real thing. Then, when it appears, we try to rationalize it, explain it, as if we knew all along what it really means. Do we?

There are really only two possibilities. I have not found a third, given that death is a fact.

Possibility A: We are random combinations of particles that somehow coalesced by chance but we possess no meaning beyond chemistry, biology or physics. We are a the sum of purely natural forces but nothing beyond that. Our existence is completely dependent upon the brief period of time between our birth and our last breath.

Possibility B: We are more than the sum of our parts. There is something in us that transcends the purely “natural” and that survives beyond the zone we call our earthly life.

This is an existential question. Some are convinced of the answer and some are not. Of those who are convinced, on what are we convinced? Of those who are not, what are we doing about it?

Carl Sagan, the eminent face of astronomy for quite awhile and an avowed atheist, was deeply moved by the cosmos but utterly convinced he was not relevant in any ultimate way. Dust to dust.  Disease took him way too early. Either he was right or wrong.

The vast majority of humans now, and throughout history, would disagree with Sagan. While entranced with things like the expanse of the universe, they somehow believe they will survive death. Is this pure fantasy? Wishful thinking? A sad distortion on reality

Some believe that we will ultimately transcend this physical realm and merge with an amorphous spiritual being of no physical property. We will do this by sloughing off the trappings of many, many lives that bind us to the arguably putrid nature of this place we know as real.

Some believe that if we are good, we are awarded a place in a heaven, not really defined, where we reunite with loved ones who’ve basically been good and that that we’ll all live eternally in some beautiful existence. In this scenario, really bad people probably won’t have such an option.

Some believe that all will be awarded that destiny, that God or some supreme being is so loving that it really doesn’t matter how we live our lives, none will miss out on this eternally pleasant future.

Some think this whole next life thing is tantamount to a moon being made of green cheese or a flat earth. It’s a crazy distortion of reality and we should all just realize this is all there is.

Which is it and does it make any difference what we think to how we live our lives? Is there any more important question or is it irrelevant? That’s something to ponder.

On the one hand, I think it matters a great deal and on the other, I think it matters not at all. On what grounds can it matter?

On this, there’s the full spectrum of disagreement. Which makes it easy for many people to just throw up their hands and say “I don’t have any control over it. What will be will be.” I was pretty much there for a long time, although I can’t say I was a classical atheist, believing strongly there was no supreme being or force. I’d seen the evidence and experienced certain things that made such a position illogical and untenable.

Getting back to Door A and Door B:  I use the word “door” as opposed to “possibility” above because a possibility does not invite a choice and a door does. And, as Yoda might say, Choice Does Action Require.

Inaction is as much an action as any other. Kicking the can down the road still leaves the can on the road. We never know the can.

If we are just particles made up of star dust, progressing through stages, then we have as much meaning as that star dust. We are chemistry that begat biology, governed by physics. Period. Love is biochemical only. Good and bad are purely social constructs and completely relative to whatever community or society chooses. Star dust does not have an overriding morality, therefore there can be no universal truth to anything beyond physical laws. Evil actually doesn’t exist. We are born, grow, survive, thrive and suffer, die and that’s that. There is actually no meaning in any of this, other than a fleeting value ascribed to our existence that quickly evaporates not that long after we die.

Mortality, then, is a REALLY big deal. We may scramble to extend our lives because this is all there is. We may try to accumulate a lot of possessions that make us happy because we realize the time draws near when no thing is the only thing. Or, as mentioned above, we may continue to live in the moment, appreciating the day and those around us, with the full knowledge that death permanently brings all of this to a close.

Or, we choose to walk through Door B, entering a pathway that says Life After Death.  Now, of course, The Door A people will say that that’s a nice fantasy and if that’s your choice you’ll still end up like me. Dead and gone. Door B people, though, persist with a wide variety of perspectives on where exactly this general pathway goes. And, unlike Door A people, whose choice is simple and stark: There’s just nothing on the other side, so I’ll make the best of it while I can, Door B people are left with all sorts of conundrums. And, these conundrums have tremendous implications for how we live our lives now and how we look at the whole deal with mortality.

One of the things Door B people need to think about is Justice. Perhaps that will be a topic for another reflection. But, for now, we Door B people have already accepted that there is some sort of universal value that transcends the natural ones that have always governed much of our lives.  We can use words like Good and Bad or Good and Evil with some confidence that they actually mean something and that some things are just plain bad, no matter what anyone else thinks.

Door B people have to wrestle with Justice. As in, do my actions have any impact on any part of ME that continues after this death?

Some Door B people don’t want to think about Justice. However, I believe that if Evil actually does exist, then Justice does too. One of my Door B beliefs is that evil and justice do exist and I’ve come to live within that framework as, try as I might, I can’t comprehend the alternative.

If there is such a thing as a universal (non relative) truth, then what’s in store for Door B people? Do we die, wake up and get surrounded by everyone who ever lived? Mother Theresa and Adolph Hitler, all happy and backslapping one another? We shake hands with Joseph Stalin who died believing he was justified in slaughtering tens of millions of innocent countrymen in the effort to centralize all power in the state and to destroy personal freedoms?

Or, do we live our lives with the belief that those really bad people don’t get to share the same happy state as we, who are basically good, get to do?  Well, then, that begs the question on what happens to those really bad people and, similarly, by what metric are we or anyone else, including loved ones, determined to be good?

Perhaps, by now, you’re rolling your eyes with this kind of stuff but I’m almost done.

I believe that our choices matter, that our lives have ultimate meaning. I believe that as much as I believe I’m actually typing on a laptop right now, with two loyal dogs at the feet of my den chair. I believe, like C.S. Lewis, that all of our choices are branches that take us in a certain direction and those directions persist as we travel through the mortal end and into the beyond.

In the seventh and final book of his Narnia series, The Last Battle, Lewis describes the children’s death in these terms:

“And as He spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Now, Lewis, one of the most gifted thinkers of the modern age, another avowed atheist who could no longer logically support that position and became a renowned follower of Jesus, does not believe that the Great Story is automatically available to all. The seven books leading up to that statement were full of all sorts of terrible and beautiful things, with choices at the center.

In one of his other books, The Great Divorce (that has nothing to do with how we read that word), Lewis, through allegory, describes the immediate hereafter. If you are a Door B person, perhaps it would be worth your time to consider its messages.

In conclusion, I think the thing we call death is just a simple step that will seem as natural as going from one room to the next. While we may struggle with our faith that speaks to that, or we may fear the pain and suffering that proceeds it, it’s still a compelling vision. I believe it may be something like blinking and that in hindsight, we’ll wonder what all the fuss was about. I also believe that whoever successfully passes through that portal will not be existing in some disembodied state of non-physical spirit. Nor, do I believe that, as corporal beings, we’ll be sitting around for eternity in a constant state of bliss or without work or adventure or even without further growth. I do believe it will be hardly like most of our experience on earth but definitely like some of our experience. I believe we will recognize the patterns that have formed us and that, with help, those patterns will blossom in beautiful ways. I also believe, without help and leaning upon our own sense of self worth, those patterns threaten to derail the wonderfully possible.

Paul has this to say in his letter to the church in Corinth:

“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”  1 Corinthians 15:55.

In this place, fear has a much more difficult time taking ahold and darkening our spirit. Diane and I are content in the knowledge that we are just living on the cover page and haven’t even opened Chapter One. A beautiful cover it is, surrounded by all of our blessings, chief among them, those of you who are reading this. Indeed, the chapters that are sure to follow will prove nothing less than glorious.