“What I Know About the Afterlife”

“What I Know About the Afterlife”     Dec. 10, 2017   Roger Ray, pastor

note to viewers: I was unable to get back to Springfield in time to deliver this message in person but it was read in my absence by David Ketchum:  click here to see the video

Isaiah 40:1-2, 6-8

40Comfort, O comfort my people,
   says your God.
² Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
   and cry to her
that she has served her term,
   that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
   double for all her sins. 

⁶ A voice says, ‘Cry out!’
   And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’
All people are grass,
   their constancy is like the flower of the field.
⁷ The grass withers, the flower fades,
   when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
   surely the people are grass.
⁸ The grass withers, the flower fades;
   but the word of our God will stand for ever. 

As you know, I spend several hours a day consuming both commercial and alternative news. My “shtick,” to call it that, is a spiritual and ethical commentary on current events. But I try to mix up my daily consumption of news with some samples of science and history.

A basic understanding of the sciences changes your relationship with the world. Sitting by the ocean this week, I become as hypnotized by staring at the vastness of the ocean as were my cave dwelling ancestors. But I know a bit more about it. I know that the waves are caused by wind, transferring kinetic energy into the surface of the water.

I know that the rise and fall of the tide is because the gravitational pull of the moon causes a bulge in the oceans that causes the sea level to rise and fall at any given spot on the coast. Further, due to careful measurement and observation, astrophysicists can prove that because the earth rotates faster than the moon orbits the earth, the bulge in the ocean does not line up perfectly with the moon. The earth’s rotation is always pulling the bulge a bit ahead of the moon, which, in turn, pulls the moon along a bit faster. The faster the moon goes, the farther away from the earth it moves. Currently, this gravitational affect is pushing the moon away from the earth at a rate of five inches every year, while simultaneously draining the earth’s rotational energy.

If this continues unaffected by other solar system events indefinitely, eventually the earth and the moon will arrive at a geosynchronous orbit in which the moon will be visible only to one side of the earth, as the earth is now visible only from one side of the moon. And there will be no more rising and falling of tides.

None of this is visible to the naked eye and none of it will affect any of us nor will the human race live long enough to observe it, but these are the thoughts that come to a theologian sitting on a sea wall in the Atlantic. But, regardless of the fact that it is not readily observable to us, it is none the less true because these are things that can be observed with the right equipment.

You cannot learn these things from the scriptures of any religion, nor can it be revealed through dreams, palm readings, tea leaves, Ouija boards, or Tarot cards. These facts about astrophysics do not require a belief system, a faith, nor do they change based on opinions or personal preferences.

All of this business about waves, tides, and the changes in orbits of planets and moons started out in someone’s imagination. All of these apparent facts were, at some time, just a theory in need of evidence but once evidence is found, these are no longer simply beliefs or ideas, they are reliable descriptions of the world in which we live.

Now, everything cannot be either proven or tested. Gravity, the force that basically created and manages the universe, is, though more observably present than any other invisible force, is shrouded in mystery. We know that the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate and the only way to account for that is that there must be some great mass that we cannot see that is pulling the universe apart. Scientists call it “dark matter” and dark matter exercises dark energy but we know nothing about it except for the fact that, measuring its gravitational strength, dark matter must account for about 80% of the universe… even though we can’t see it and have no idea what it is.

We can’t see it, touch it, measure it, and we know virtually nothing about it, but there is this one thing: we have a compelling reason to believe that it exists because it must exist, otherwise, the universe wouldn’t be flying apart at an increasing rate of speed. That is, we have a perfectly good reason to believe that it exists… not just because we want to believe it but because reason, logic, evidence, observation, make it necessary to accept that dark matter or something of the sort does exist.

A couple of centuries ago, that dark matter might have been called “God.” Our ancestors tended to ascribe anything that we did not understand to God. In ancient times, God caused the wind and the waves, the rising and falling of the tide, and God held the planets in their place. I’m just more comfortable with accepting not knowing than I am in making up a supernatural entity to take care of what I can’t figure out.

One of my fears for our culture is that we cannot appear to easily tell the difference between what is true and what we want to be true. We cannot tell the difference between news and propaganda. We cannot tell the difference between science and wishing.

Religion can be a choice to fall headlong into a belief system for which there is little or no evidence but a lot of wishing, or it can be a passionate search for truth, a search that is fearless in its examination of beliefs:  always ready to dismiss beliefs for which there is no evidence, and to change beliefs in light of new information.

If you have not read the chapter entitled “Evidence Based Faith” in my 2014 book, Progressive Faith and Practice, then please let me give that book my very egotistical endorsement. There may be dark matter filling up the universe and there may be unicorns, the difference is that I have a reason to believe in dark matter and I do not have a reason to believe in unicorns. Now, both dark matter and unicorns were, at some point in time, produced by someone’s imagination… imagination is important, helpful, crucial even, but if you can find no evidence to go on believing in something for which there is no reason to believe it beyond what you wish, then, folks, that’s not religion, that’s just nuts.

You may want to believe that taking Emergen-C will help you to avoid getting a cold but, folks, there is no evidence that it is true. None. Zip. Nada. Not after 40 years of testing. The existence of products like Emergen-C are proof of one thing and that is that our public-school science classes are seriously lacking.

Now, we are not here today to talk about waves, tides, the moon, or fake cures. I do want to talk about something that is very important, but I felt the need to set the stage for this conversation. I have been asked to talk about life after death.

Specifically, I have been asked what I know about an afterlife and the answer to that is that I know nothing at all. Similarly, I have been asked what I believe about an afterlife and my answer is similarly disarming, I don’t believe anything about it because I have no evidence to suggest that there is an afterlife.

I believe that when humans became, not just conscious, but self-conscious, that their awareness of their personal morality was simply unbearable, and this fear and dread of personal extinction drove them to add to their religious beliefs,

certain reassurances that they would continue to exist in some form. However, it is important to note, that many refuse to fully embrace the belief that we somehow go on as we are for eternity.

I am fascinated by the voice of the ancient Israelite prophet, Isaiah, who says simultaneously, “Comfort, comfort, my people” and “all people will wither and die like the grass in the field.” The earliest strata of Hebrew writing offers no assurances of life after death, in fact, quite the contrary, the Hebrew Bible assures us that we are mortal and our lives are relatively short. For them, life was not simply resident in the individual but in the tribe, in the community, in the family.

Genesis 25:8 says of Abraham:  Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.

Which meant, simply, that his bones were added to the bones of his ancestors, peacefully, lovingly, realistically. And here, my dear friends, I fear that I am going to have to wade into the weeds a bit and I can only implore you to stick with me:

The Jewish and Christian religions form something of a bridge between eastern and western thought. Eastern philosophies and religions are much more comfortable with the notion that we are all connected, and that existence is not limited to any one individual. A single daisy may die but not all daisies and in the rebirth of daisies in general every spring, all daisies continue to exist.

In the west, we are much more focused on the individual and the personal and so, if I am a daisy, the fact that other daisies will grow in the spring hardly compensates for the fact that I will not. And so, as our religions became more westernized, we developed a belief in “daisy heaven.”

In their enslavement in Babylon in the fifth century BCE, Jews were exposed to Zoroastrian beliefs in an afterlife and that became a fringe belief in parts of Judaism thereafter, but it became a central belief for the Christian and Muslim faiths that grew westward from those Jewish roots.

Persian slaves, unhappy with their lot in life, developed a belief in a life after death in which their slave owners would burn in a lake of fire while they enjoyed the kind of luxury that their labor had provided for their masters. You can see how that is a comforting thought but it is a thought that has more in common with unicorns than it does with dark matter. You can see why they would want to believe it but you cannot find a reason to believe it beyond personal preference.

A few years ago, a neurosurgeon, Eben Alexander, had a vision of heaven while he was in a meningitis-induced coma. He published his account of being greeted by a beautiful, blue eyed, blond who loved him unconditionally as being proof of heaven. Yet, there is no proof in the book. He had an experience that seemed real at the moment but it was just a dream. I don’t know why I would have to explain this to him but many patients in near death circumstances or under heavy medication, have very real seeming visions.

We lost a church member several years ago because, when I visited him following serious back surgery, while he was in the throes of morphine delusions, he saw Jesus floating over his bed. I kept telling him that he was on morphine but even after he got out of the hospital he still believed that Jesus was floating above his bed and that I was just not spiritual enough to see it. The truth is that I was just too sober to see it but that truth never was persuasive to him.

I don’t understand why this is so hard for so many people. All of us who have had dogs have seen them chasing squirrels in their dreams… their paws move, they bark, they really are seeing the squirrel but the difference is, whey the dog wakes up, he immediately realizes that he was dreaming and there is not a squirrel running lose in the house. A human who is ostensibly a scientist, a trained neurosurgeon, has a dream and wakes up to write a book about his experience as if it proved something. This is not just stupid, it is embarrassing.

But beyond the easy stuff, dear friends, I really must wander a bit deeper into the weeds. Just as science cannot tell us what dark matter is, they are equally stymied by the question, “What is consciousness?” What makes you, you? Your hair can fall out and you are still you. I hope it never happens, but you could have several body parts removed and you are still you because what we mean by you is your consciousness, your thoughts, your self-awareness. If saying that you have a soul means anything at all, surely you are talking about your consciousness.

You are not your body because when you die all of your body is still here, but it has been transformed from being a person into being a thing, an object. We show deference to human remains out of respect for the person who was once associated with those remains but we all know that a body is not a person. It is hard to be a person without a body but a body without consciousness is something to be either buried or cremated.

In our computer age, science fiction has postulated about the ability to download a person’s thoughts into a computer program…. Could we exist digitally even when our body is worn out? It is an interesting question and though it is pure fiction at this time, it is a bit telling, isn’t it? If my mind can inhabit either another body or a computer, then I am still me, regardless of the disposition of my body.

Just for free: Christians basically invented the catacombs of Rome. Roman law required that the dead be cremated because there was no room for burying people in the city. But early Christians, in hope of a physical resurrection, felt that it was important to preserve the body by burying it. Rome did not allow burial within the city, but the catacombs developed on land outside of the city. The early Christians were not so much hiding in the Catacombs to worship in secret as many of us were taught in Sunday school. They were going there to make offerings and prayers for the departed saints with whom they were looking forward to the second coming of Christ.

For Pharisaic Judaism, early Christianity and Islam, whistling in the grave yard became a theological norm. All of the evidence points towards mortality, but theologians offered a promise of an unseen, untestable, and, I would say, non-existent balm for the fear of death. In that sense, “heaven” and “Emergen-C” have a lot in common.

My 19^th Century Theology professor assigned this book to us, Ludwig Feuerbach’s Thoughts on Death and Immortality. Since Professor Hodgson is no longer with us, I feel confident to confess to you that I never got around to reading it for class lo those 40 years ago, but I have read it since. If I had read my assignments when I was supposed to, it might have saved me a good deal of anguish as a young pastor having to work some of this stuff out on my own.

Feuerbach started out as a seminarian, but he was encouraged to reroute his studies into philosophy and from the vantage point of a young Hegelian, he wrote a searing criticism of the clergy and theologians of his day. He talked about consciousness and self-consciousness, and the fear of mortality that drove religious people to the inescapably narcissistic belief that they were somehow imbued with eternal life in a way that was personal and specific, a way not afforded to cattle, pigs, and chickens.

I think he wrote in a fairly respectful though insistent tone, but he was not rewarded for being courteous. He was fired from his teaching post and his career ended very early in his life but, while there is a price to speaking the truth, the truth cannot long remain hidden. Long before Freud and Jung, Feuerbach assured his readers that even though there is no permanent consciousness that continues when the body has died, he encouraged us to be fully alive in the time that we are given and to, as the Hebrew prophet said, “take comfort in your mortality.” He hinted at the collective consciousness of Jung, as we are all a part of all others, connected to one another. No one daisy lives forever but daisies go on.

My friend, Bishop John Shelby Spong, late in his life, literally facing his own mortality head on, wrote a book about Eternal Life. Spong is, as you know, quite comprehensively well-read though, in this book, he does not specifically reference Feuerbach, he appears to reach the same conclusions.

Spong attributes belief in a literal heaven to the childish fears of primitive humans but he does not rudely dismiss the church and all of its traditional teachings. Though he specifically says that “religion has always been delusional, more about a search for security than a search for truth” (p. 206) he says that the beliefs of the church are not to be discarded as false and deserving our contempt but that we are to transcend them. The Christian faith has been our path and it is senseless to despise our path, but it is a path we need to pursue until we have outgrown the need for assurances that any one of us, as an individual consciousness will exist when our bodies are dead.

Though Spong rejects the self-centered notion that any one of us is just too darned precious for the universe to continue without us, he also affirms a belief that somehow, we continue to exist after death as a part of the larger consciousness of the universe, in much the same way that last year’s daisy participates in the daisies we will see in the spring.

Now, if you will allow me one step deeper into the weeds and then I promise that I will stop talking:  While there is certainly a connection between the gray matter of our brains and our thinking, our memory, even our dreams and self-awareness, you cannot say that consciousness is simply brain matter. When I remember my great-grandmother, sitting in her tiny Appalachian home, writing poetry, where is that image of her sitting in her rocking chair? If I can still see her in my mind, is she entirely dead these past 50 years?

Our community of faith is just less than a decade old, and yet, we have had to give many of our founding members back to the ocean of existence in which their individuality merges to become a part of both our history and our future.

We would not have this building without the sacrifices of Chuck and Ruth Snowden, Jim Price, and Nancy Pate. Whatever our church accomplishes in every meal we feed to domestic violence victims, or the homeless, every truck load of supplies we send to the poor in Nicaragua, and even as a new roof is built on a hurricane ravaged home in Houston, they are a part of that, as well as a part of every time that we gather.

I do not need to believe, as many of my peers in ministry seem to insist, that they are somehow still individually extant, looking down on us from above, because they continue to exist in the way that a stone thrown into a still lake sends ripples far away, long after the stone has sunk beneath the surface. That is not enough for those who still fear death, but it is enough for me.

I do not visit the graves of my ancestors because they are no longer there but they live on in my memories and in the traditions we keep. I cannot help seeing my mother’s twisted arthritic hands when I am shaping the little egg-shaped servings of dressing we cooked on Thanksgiving Day. When I cook country ham for my daughter, I remember the smoke house on the old Ray plantation in Kentucky where we aged our salt cured meats for nearly 200 years.

I am even keeping the family business alive in some ways… one of my forefathers was a black friar in London who was murdered by an assassin hired by his bishop. Another was a protestant reformer, burned at the stake under the order of Mary Queen of Scots. Fortunately, we deal with difficult clergy differently these days. . . Feuerbach and I were just fired for our preaching, but it is more difficult to have us removed by immolation.

Most of the religious world tries to invest themselves in what they wish was true though it does not appear to be either very convincing or very satisfying. Of course, we do not know much about consciousness, so it would be absurd to say what does not exist. I would not know have any reason to believe that the moon is five inches farther away this year than it was last year except that reliable sources in the sciences assure me that it is true.

I find no reason to believe in a heavenly existence but what I know is true is that the love does not die with the body, nor do people pass from memory, nor is their influence gone. We can remember, we can talk to and celebrate the lives of those whom we love. But, the apparent truth is that we give up individuality as we are assumed back into the ocean of existence and are reunited with the universe. I can see that. I feel that. I know that is true. And, in the end, the honest truth always feels best to me.