A priest who doesn’t believe in the afterlife

Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser is a priest of the Church of England, founder of Inclusive Church, and an outspoken advocate for inclusion of gays and lesbians in the church. He submitted the following article to BBC’s “Thought for the Day” on March 9, 2011.

One of the great privileges of being a priest is that I often get the opportunity to be with people when they die. It frequently astonishes me that, despite the ubiquity of death, this is something a great many people have never actually seen. Little wonder we’re so frightened of death. It used to be something public, but now it’s pushed out of life. Whereas we used to die at home surrounded by friends and family, we now die in hospitals, often alone and hidden behind expensive technology.

It’s commonly assumed that Christians don’t really believe in death at all, that we subscribe to the view that when we die we go on living in some other realm, or in some disembodied form. Just to be clear: I believe nothing of the sort. I don’t like the euphemistic language of “passing on” or “having gone to sleep”. Nor do I subscribe to Platonic ideas about the immortality of the soul. When you die, you die. As the first letter of St. Paul to Timothy puts it: “God alone is immortal”

Today is Ash Wednesday. Like millions of Christians around the world, I will be marked with ash and told that I am dust and to dust I shall return. There is nothing depressing or morbid about any of this – in fact, quite the reverse. Personally speaking, it leaves me with a more intense sense of the preciousness of human life, something that’s intimately bound up with its intrinsic limit and fragility.

Indeed, the problem with the modern lack of experience of death is precisely that it robs us of this very intensification. Life without death is “just one damned thing after another.” For death gives life its urgency: now is the opportunity to love and respond to love, to be different, to make a difference, to change the world. There is no time to waste.

This is why I have little enthusiasm for the idea that science might be able to keep us alive indefinitely, that through cryogenic suspension or uploading our DNA onto computers we might be able to achieve immortality. I’m not saying these extraordinary things will never be possible ” who can say? ” but rather, that the best these technologies can ever offer is a life that goes on and on and on. And if I can put it like this: more and more of me, extended over time, doesn’t really solve the problem of being me.

When theologians like Boethius and Augustine speak of entering eternity they mean something altogether different from this: for eternity is outside of time, unrelated to temporal sequence. Which is why eternity can be as much as quality of our present experience, more an expansion of our imagination, a call to reach beyond claustrophobic self-absorption and to see the world anew. As William Blake so memorably suggested:

“To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thought/documents/t20110309.shtml

Dear God,

I don’t talk to you much any more. I used to pray quite a bit, but now it just feels like there’s no one listening or I’m being incredibly selfish asking for anything when my life is so blessed. Typically, when I do come to you, it’s to offer a prayer of gratitude for something simple, since those are usually the things that make life so grand.

Still, there are times when I do ask for little favors. Like today when I requested protection for my partner – who had literally been up all night long writing a paper for school and had to drive 25 miles to class and back. I knew he was so tired and the roads were wet from rain, so I wanted to make sure that you realized how much his safety meant to both of us. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to him. The thought is almost more than I can bare.

I’ve lost alot of my belief in prayer over the years. I remember begging you to make me like everyone else when I was a teenager. It felt like you just ignored my requests, even though it seemed like you would have surely wanted me to change. I remember crying out to you when I was drowning in despair and feeling like you were a million miles away and my pleas were just bouncing off the ceiling.

I’ve been feeling like that quite a bit lately. Not really desperate, but certainly disconnected. It’s hard for me to separate you from all of the ways that the world tries to package you – in little despicable and distorted forms that we call “religion.” I wonder if you ever have a good laugh over the absurdity of it all.

A few weeks ago, a new friend told me a story that has me rethinking this whole prayer thing. Her story was one that might have made me roll my eyes a few years ago, but she told it in such a beautiful way that it just had to be true.

She said she died on the operating table and was clinically dead for fifteen minutes. She described going to heaven and what she saw and how she felt. She said she couldn’t even look at you because you were so bright, but that she felt the most intense love – so intense that when she was told that she needed to return to her still-living husband and daughter, she didn’t want to leave.

As she drifted slowly back down to earth, she noticed little beams of light passing her on their way up to heaven. Some of them were moving fast and some were slow, but they were all rising. She said she suddenly realized that they were prayers… and the fastest moving ones were the prayers of mothers. Despite all my cynicism and doubt about most things spiritual, I believed this story with all my heart.

So, I’m going to start praying more. And I’m going to imagine those prayers as little beams of light slowly rising to where you are. It’s okay if they don’t get there the fastest, because some of those other prayers are much more important, but I’m going to keep the faith that they’re going to arrive eventually, and that you’re going to know how grateful I am for every opportunity to communicate with you.

Until next time,
Brian

In loving memory

Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshiped, and said, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” – Job 1: 20-21

He called to tell me that he was considering asking my cousin to go out with him. His nervousness seemed out of character with the bravado that he normally exhibited, but I found it endearing. Having known both of them from the time they were born, I encouraged him to go for it, and it was only a few minutes later that he called back to tell me that she had accepted and that he wanted me to be their chaperone – something that her parents had apparently insisted on.

Their first date consisted of us riding to her house, taking her to church, and then taking her back home afterwards. I could tell that they hit it off immediately and it wasn’t long before they were married.

Yesterday, some twelve years later, she placed him in the cold, hard ground – the victim of a senseless and brutal crime, gunned down by a crazed neighbor in their driveway for no apparent reason. It was torturous to watch her weep and to realize that their precious three year old son will never know his father.

The minister who officiated at the funeral service reminded us of Job in the Bible, who lost all of his children and his wealth, but fell to his knees and worshiped God anyway. He said that instead of mourning what has been taken from us, we should be thankful that we were allowed to know him for as long as we did. It is a difficult challenge, but I will try.

Dear Heavenly Father, I don’t know why this tragedy had to happen, but I trust that You see the bigger picture. I thank You for the good memories and for the outpouring of sympathy for this man’s family. I trust that Your love is boundless and beyond our comprehension, and that he is now resting in eternal peace with You. Amen.
________________________________________________

The personal website of my now-widowed cousin had the following poem on it well before this happened, and I found it to be both beautiful and uncannily appropriate given her current circumstances.

Comes The Dawn
By Veronica A. Shoffstall

After a while you learn
The subtle difference between
Holding a hand and chaining a soul
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t always mean security.

And you begin to learn
That kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes ahead
With the grace of a woman
Not the grief of a child

And you learn
To build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is
Too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way
Of falling down in mid flight

After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much
So you plant your own garden
And decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers

And you learn
That you really can endure
That you are really strong
And you really do have worth
And you learn and you learn
With every goodbye you learn.

‘If God is Love’ – Final Thoughts

I can feel myself changing. Karen warned that reading If God Is Love might do that, but I didn’t really expect it to alter my thinking to this degree.

It took me a little while to warm up to the book, mainly because I had such a strong reaction to the theology presented in the first few chapters. It forced me to reassess and analyze my own beliefs – something that made me quite uncomfortable. After reading the first chapter one night before going to bed, I awoke around 3:30 a.m. with my mind in a whirl, unable to calm it until I had gotten up and written down some of my feelings.

I soon figured out that if I was going to dispute the author’s view of salvation and the afterlife, then I needed to have something to back up my own beliefs about those same subjects. That turned out to be a little more difficult than expected, and once I realized that, I was able to take the book at its worth and allow the amazing truths contained in it to penetrate my mind. There are so many sentences that I have highlighted, many that caused me to say “Wow!” as I read them.

This book drastically changed my view of Jesus. I have so much more respect for him as a person who enacted social change through his activism and lifestyle. Most denominations stress salvation as a way of avoiding hell, instead of the joys of being a Christian – becoming more like Christ and following his actions and way of thinking. Jesus was radical enough to make the religious establishment uncomfortable, political enough to make the government despise him, yet so full of truth and love that people still want to follow him 2000 years later.

This book has also changed my view of salvation or being “born again”. I was taught from early childhood that being saved was a life-changing event at a specific moment in time. I no longer believe that, but feel that salvation is a process of choosing to follow Christ and becoming like him. After all, if we truly believe in Christ and follow his teachings, we don’t need a specific time and place to point to as our moment of renewal; our entire lives should be in a constant process of cleansing and rebirth.

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.” – The Usual Suspects

That’s the main thing that scares me about this book. The author constantly stresses the importance of following the teachings of Jesus, but only when those teachings apply to gracious behavior. He doesn’t mention the times that Jesus referred to Satan or eternal damnation for those who fail to repent. I don’t understand or enjoy a selective approach to the Bible (something that I’ve found in all branches of Christianity) and this way of thinking certainly doesn’t give me any comfort or faith that I will attain an afterlife in heaven.

Even if you don’t agree that all people will be saved or that Satan doesn’t exist, this book should be considered. That theology, while worthy of consideration, doesn’t have to be adopted in order for the reader to take away something important and powerful. You simply cannot walk away from this book without realizing that we all need to change the way we interact with others and how we treat those who are less fortunate.

I hope that I am able to implement some of the important lessons that I’ve learned from this book. I want to pray more. I want to start reading the Bible more. I don’t want to become one of those scary Bible-thumpers, but I do want my life to be an example that others might want to follow. I want to become more like Christ. I want to be a joyful person that people are drawn to because they want to know where my happiness stems from. I want to help those who have less than me.

I guess if I could sum up how this book has changed me in one sentence it might be something like this: I want to become a better person. Any book that causes that kind of sentiment must be getting something right!

Outspoken outcast

Have you ever voiced an opinion so unpopular that people didn’t even bother to respond?

This morning, a coworker shared a story of someone that he knew being on life-support after hanging himself. The conversation immediately turned to the fact that he had a wife and kids and “How could he do that?”

Anyone that has dealt with depression and suicidal thoughts knows that it is not something that you are “doing” to anyone. You are trying to end the pain that is constantly in your head and preventing you from living anyway. You are simply looking for an escape and death seems like it would be a relief.

So, I took the opportunity to tell the evangelicals in the room that he must have been in terrible pain and that I don’t believe that people who commit suicide go to hell, because God realizes the torment that they are in.

No one said a word. One got up and left the office and the other two just turned around and went back to work.

That caused me to wonder why it seems like I’m always coming down on the opposite side of an issue from most of the people that I live and work around. People look at me like I’m crazy because I support gay marriage, believe the Bible can’t always be taken literally, and find Rosie O’Donnell entertaining.

While most people are turned off by the controversial, I am attracted. I’m beginning to like it when someone challenges my beliefs and makes me think about something from a whole new perspective, which is why I can’t understand the reactions of others. Maybe I’m just strange; I don’t know.

I remember people reacting in a heated manner to my lack of support for the Iraq invasion, but time has proven me right. Perhaps time will be on my side on some of these other issues, too, but things might be a bit easier if I just kept my beliefs to myself.