"When I die and I discover there is nothing there and I cease to exist, it's okay."
in Purgatory
One priest mentor of mine told us during a retreat trying to explain why he believes that Christianity should dump a complete focus on the afterlife. He said that following Jesus should be done for its own sake and not for an eternal reward, and he admits the possibility that the images of the afterlife are nothing more than pious metaphor. Or to use theologian Rosemary Ruether's view, we only exist after death as memories in God's mind, and there is no actual literal afterlife.
Is that satisfactory from a Christian perspective, do you think, do we need a literal afterlife for the faith, or is resurrection simply a metaphor?
Is that satisfactory from a Christian perspective, do you think, do we need a literal afterlife for the faith, or is resurrection simply a metaphor?
Comments
Of course, we won’t know until the time comes, and the images we have built up in literature and art are limited to that which we can grasp in our imaginations, whether they are created out of them or ‘given’ to some people in dreams and visions.
Of course, in Genesis 1 all of creation is simply an idea in God's mind. The fact that God thinks it makes it real.
Where this falls down for me, though, is that no matter how hard I try, I can't make sense of the Christian faith if this life is all there is.
If the promises of ultimate restoration and healing, of a true Home, are no more than simply vain promises, we might piously feel good about our Christian selves now, but we are deluded, and, as Paul says, to be pitied most among all men.
Not so much that it's worth it, but it's your least dangerous risk.
If you believe in God, but there is no God, okay, you've wasted a bit of your time with religion, but nothing bad will happen to you after you die.
OTOH if you disbelieve in God, but there IS a God, you're gonna be in a shitload of trouble when you die.
So, best to believe in God, and if you're wrong, no huge loss. And if you're right, eternal reward.
Maybe it’s lack of imagination on my part, but I can’t envisage a heaven that works.
There is a temptation (I know, because I've often felt it. Not going to tell you if I acted on it!
But the fact remains that he did make these promises, these very LAVISH promises, and presumably he did it knowing full well what effect it would have on us. And judged it still worth making the promises.
So yeah, I think it's fine to look forward to heaven/the resurrection/the new heavens and new earth. And I don't think it does me any good to be high-minded (or pretend to be high-minded, as everyone on the Ship knows otherwise by this point). And I think altering historic Christianity to look high-minded is a major mistake, besides probably bugging the fuck out of God--who presumably knew what he was promising, and disapproves of editors.
I lack belief and imagination - I don’t lack the ability to enjoy life.
"Eternal viewing of repeats of MASH episodes"
And other sentences handed out like that.
That will be my reward. Watching that for being such a nice guy in this life.
If this is addressed to my previous post -
I don't try to live as though Jesus was a good moral teacher and did not say anything to that effect in my post. I try (to the best of my not-great ability) to follow Christianity - a trinitarian religion in which the Jesus Christ who was wandering round first century Palestine was and is the second person of the godhead and in which God confers his grace onto humankind via sacraments and yadda, yadda, yadda. The fact that I at some level believe this to be true and think it makes me live a better life than I otherwise would does not equate to me having great confidence in its scientific or historical accuracy. I would say I'm sorry that you don't think where I'm at is satisfactory from a Christian perspective, but actually I'm not sorry because I'm entirely unfussed. I think as much as I am following the Gospel, it's redemptive in my life. I just still got no clue or confidence regarding what will happen when I die but continue to think living the best life I can at the moment is preferable to wallowing in self-pity wasting all my time worrying if I'm going to a hell of eternal, conscious torment.
Actually, it was the words to “I’m Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table” that came into my mind:
“I’m gonna tell God how you treat me,
I’m gonna tell God how you treat me one of these days.”
I would agree that anyone who has a “complete focus” on the afterlife should dump it. But there’s a lot of space between focusing completely on the afterlife and seeing the resurrection as just a metaphor.
I aim to focus on this life and try (incompletely more often than not) to live as Jesus would have me live—loving God and loving neighbor. Beyond that, I trust Jesus with what’s next.
The Priest is in the wrong job.
In any case "When I die how would I discover there is nothing there and I cease to exist."
I've mentioned this before, but if you really want to get thinking about this kind of thing, I recommend Steven L. Peck's A Short Stay in Hell (reviews here and here).
I can just feel Jesus rolling his eyes now...
I'd ask whether there truly was anybody on earth who felt this way, but after four years of Trump, I'm uneasily aware that people are far more terrible than even I knew.
If I had been referring to you, I would have quoted you or tagged you.
That's not a very biblical view, but I find it motivating.
I thought that odd also. "And it turns out" makes more sense. Because if I cease to exist, I won't discover squat because there won't be no me to be discovering.
@quetzalcoatl raised the point in the third post.
I find it exciting. This is it.
Like hell I'm going to ignore a post starting with that!!!
That's where I am. Life, and life abundantly.
Easter makes no sense without a reality different to this one.
What I believe about my future. I personally wouldn't mind oblivion. But Jesus promised me eternal life! etc, etc, etc.
But that's not the way we approach death, really. We approach it as the great destroyer of relationships. Our children, our parents, our lovers, our friends. Taken from our sight. "I will never again hear my grandfather's stories, because he is dead." "I will never again hold my child's hand, for she is gone." This is death's sting.
No matter how stoic we might be, or pretend to be, death (like sin) tears at the ties which connect us all together.
First, and most importantly, his view is in direct conflict with what Jesus both said and did. He was very explicit that the Sadducees were wrong in their negative belief that there was no afterlife. He brought people back from the dead and he rose from the dead himself.
A church that chooses to abandon a core feature of what Jesus says, what he did and who he is, is on a hiding to nothing.
Second, everything that @Lamb Chopped has said about being nobler-than-thou and pretending to be more high-minded than God.
Third, I don't think trying to follow teaching is enough. It's my experience that at the core of Christian faith is that at least sometimes, we do enjoy a foretaste, even if only a smidgeon of a foretaste, of eternal life, the kingdom of heaven here, in the now.
I also agree with all those who have pointed out the obvious logical flaw that if there is no life after death, when we get there, we will none of us have a consciousness to know. 😛
In this respect, Christianity is, at minimum, insurance in the event of the resurrection of all humanity. The registration fee is zero, but the annual subscription is everything you’ve got, Luke 14:33.
Other belief systems are available. (Apparently there are more male-centric offers involving 72 virgins or angels or wives, depending on the translation - always read the small print). Feel free to compare the market.
No. They are all waiting for us at the table of the Heavenly Banquet, where they have saved a place for us. It's pot luck: my mother's homemade chicken soup, my grandmother's homemade lasagna (she rolled the dough herself -- no store bought noodles for her), my cousin's lemon meringue pie.
Or so we are comforted by thinking. In reality, I'm beginning to wonder more and more if Wordsworth had it backwards. Not "Out birth is but a sleep and a forgetting" but rather our death is.
It would trash a very large amount of his teaching - the rewards of those who practice their piety in secret eg, all the parables about the return of the Landowner to judge his servants and reward them accordingly, the sheep and the goats, the invitation of the most unlikely people to the heavenly marriage feast, the conversations with rabbis about the marriage relationship, the power structure of who sits where in heaven, the timing of the Second Coming - to name but a few. Even allowing that much (though probably not all) of that teaching could still be used as metaphor in other ways, Jesus was quite directly teaching these things as literally real, and these were to be taken as a whole package, giving authority to any separate moral teaching in terms of everyday living in the present life. If we disbelieve the Messianic identity of Christ which justified all that side of his life and work, then Jesus is, of course, just a good, but flawed teacher, with a fairly serious delusions of grandeur complex.
'Christ' is the title - job description - we give Jesus because we believe he is the Anointed of the Supernatural God who promises the new heaven and the new earth, judgement, afterlife etc. So if we don't believe in afterlife, there can be no Messiah, no Christ in our thinking - that part of the job description of Jesus of Nazareth doesn't work. While I feel it's possible for a Marxist to be a Marxist without believing essentially all that Marx taught, believed and claimed for himself, I think that probably doesn't work with Christ and calling oneself a Christian. I could be a Jesus follower. But if I'm a Christian, then logically it's because I believe in the Christ (Messiah) who sits at the right hand of God and whose coming again has been foretold, and who taught the things recorded of him etc.
Of course, I know it's not as straightforward as that! If only!
We have here an English translation of Xavier's ideas based already on a Latin and a Spanish poem.
My God, I love thee not because I hope for Heaven thereby
Nor because they who love thee not must burn eternally
The why, o blessed Jesus Christ, should I not love thee well
Not for the hope of winning Heaven nor of escaping Hell
E'en so I love thee and will love and in thy praise will sing
Solely because thou art my God and my eternal King.
Of course we can admire the human and moral qualities in the teachings of Jesus and yes, we can attempt to follow these without necessarily believing that Jesus is indeed the Son of God but without a belief in the promises of New Life given by Christ we are not really Christians, even though we may be numbered amongst those trying to apply the teachings of Christ in our daily life.
Anglican Brat's priest is right to say that we have to focus here on earth on our attempts to follow the teachings of love of God and love of neighbour, but if we leave the teachings of New and eternal Life aside, what is really the use of Anglican Brat's priest's priesthood ?
It would certainly mean that the various discussions here on these boards about the 'real Truth' of the Gospels are useless as indeed the value of any religious denomination whether it claims to be the one true Church or even just a part of the one true Church is only a vain and fondly imagined thing.
This is a really unjust caricature.
I agree with this, it's important. But - we must be matter-of-fact (as, thank God, my mother has always been, thinking right back to the earliest frightened memories I have as a small child of asking her about it) as it is coming, and has come, and many people better than me have faced it bravely and squarely. I am comforted by the thought that the Meaning I want to impute in all those lost relationships, comes for me with the acceptance of the framework of faith, which in turn comes with a promise of heaven which I do not understand and cannot witness to.
I'm being a little cautious, as I am afraid that for someone with no faith and perhaps no hope, any sense of smugness or bullshit from someone with such hope would be very unhelpful. I expect I am failing, but I am conscious of it.
Does someone without hope (in an afterlife) or faith have a distinct advantage? Many hopes are dashed and faith is always tested, sometimes to breaking point. The most common experience of prayer is that it goes unanswered. Believers face bereavement and loss, same as anyone. Even St Paul “despaired of life itself” 2 Corinthians 1:8
Yes, the loss of death needs to be acknowledged. I see the funeral service as an essential element of the grieving process for this reason.
A simple cremation ‘with no fuss or tears’ as is being encouraged by some will leave many, I think, with a feeling that there is something unfinished.
A Christian funeral needs to accept the tears of pain and also the tears of joy, not only for past joys but for the hope of future joys. It should help us to balance life relationships, living alongside each other, with acceptance of death: as shown to the disciples through friendship, the cross and the resurrection.
You've noticed those adverts, too?
Even for non-believers I would doubt, in most cases, the advisability of having no specific ceremony to properly and communally grieve and acknowledge the loss of a loved one. Not giving the next of kin a properly solemn moment of facing the harsh reality of the bereavement, in the context of supportive friends has surely been one of the most difficult aspects of the pandemic. And yet these ads seem to promote this as a good thing. I get that the ad shows a happy party on the beach, as if that is somehow the replacement of the funeral ceremony. But it seems like a very messy, mixed up, unhelpfully jolly approach to the reality of death.
And I always think the 'no tears' bit would be rather a slap in the face of the deceased! Or does the ghostly cartoon dead-Dad intend to go round haunting his loved ones if they have a cry at his departure? An implication of the advert is that he wasn't worth having a cry over. Otherwise, it just conflates the enjoyment of the wake or funeral 'do' with the equally necessary moment of a more solemn acknowledgement of saying goodbye to the remains, having permission to grieve publicly.
It isn't gospel, but it may be true that Jesus was a moral teacher and example, and nothing supernaturally more: that there is no resurrection, and no after life.
That at most, we live on through our children, or sans children, by those we've associated with during life. Or both.
That we should be living today, focussed on being good people and helping others.
The future will take care of itself, and if this includes afterlife, that will be another adventure. Doesn't matter presently. And it should not matter presently, because faith has been taken to such extremes such that people are okay with the suffering of others, exploiting the planet for gain and harming everything in the world. Because faith seems to trump works, and seems to have for a very long time.
Just realized I absent-mindedly used to the word "trump" in my response and for that I will burn in hell.