Death

I just today stumbled upon this beautiful piece by Stravinsky.



The lyrics of the first movement are from Psalms 39: 13 and 14. At Wikipedia they're translated as:

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with Thine ears consider my calling: hold not Thy peace at my tears.
For I am a stranger with Thee: and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.
O spare me a little that I may recover my strength: before I go hence and be no more.

This translation grabbed my attention, because like several other passages of the Old Testament, this passage seems to present an image of death as the complete end of the individual's existence - which is very different from the contemporary view of death being just a temporarily painful transition to a better world.

My mind then wandered on to contemporary compassionate views of God. According to moderate and liberal theists, God couldn't have commanded genocide, punished whole nations with disease, disasters, or conquest, or set up all humanity to fail - He's too good for that. I think this view cuts away at least 50% of what the idea of God is supposed to be.

Religion is a reaction to death and suffering. That's why so many people turn to it - it helps them deal with suffering, and especially to make their peace with death. The Old Testament idea of God was a very useful innovation. "God", as something that's bigger than you, that holds the puppet strings to the conditions of your existence, and against which you as a mere human are totally powerless, instills a comforting dose of resignedness. Old-fashioned monotheism was an open and frank acceptance of those evils that we cannot control.

Monotheism began loosing its edge more and more, especially in recent amplifications of God's attributes of Mercy and Love, to the detriment of other traditional attributes. This blunting process accelerated 2 centuries ago, but I think it got underway more than 2 millenia ago, when monotheism started making explicit assertions of belief in an afterlife.

Belief in an afterlife is problematic for two reasons. For one, life after death is probably untrue. The idea of an immortal soul goes against the contemporary understanding of the interrelation between the soul, or psyche, and the physical body. You may as well believe that wiping yourself with fiberglass insulation won't irritate your skin. Heck, you may as well believe in pink winged unicorns. Placing your hopes on something that no one can venture even an educated guess about, and which all the evidence we have actually weighs against, is something the Epicureans call a "vain and empty" desire.

The other reason belief in the afterlife is problematic, is that it's inadequate for religious purposes. Your religious beliefs are supposed to help you make peace with death. Unfortunately, most people view death as a nap, or as a trip to another world. If you accept death as a benign transition to another world, then you haven't made your peace with death. You've made your peace with a coma, but you haven't made your peace with death.

Belief in the afterlife whitewashes what is most inherently evil about the world - the permanent end of one's existence as an experiencing being. Yes, death is evil. It is the elimination of all capacity to enjoy - it is the erasure of everything good. And yes, it is natural. This awareness of death being both essential to our world and evil is necessary for a full acceptance of death, and of this world in general.

Granted, some people just like to play religious make believe. It's as if the only thing that can help them make peace with someone's "homegoing" is to make things up about their loved one playing a gold harp in the sky and watching out for them. The Baptist version is a little different. In that version Heaven is a non-stop church service in a cube. Everyone stands around the throne and sings praises to Jesus without end while throwing their hard-earned crowns at his feet. If that's really what's needed to give them peace about it, then so be it, I guess.