“According to most studies, people’s number one fear is of public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” (Jerry Seinfeld)
There are a lot of issues that I could work through when it comes to my fear of death that might ease my anxiety about. I could approach the issue from a very personal perspective and see how my own fears of worthlessness are manifested through my fear of death. (This one is probably true.) I could look at the issue from a generational perspective and reflect on how a fear of death was passed down to me through generations of fear of death. (I am not sure about this one.) Or I could look at it from a cultural perspective and reflect on how there is a general fear of death in the 21st century because families are less intergenerational and that people are typically not as familiar with death. (I believe this one is true.) But understanding why I am afraid of death no longer has much value to me. What I do know is that I am scared to death of death.
As a recovering Christian I have two possible positions from which to consider death: evangelical and postmodern. My evangelical upbringing put heaven at the core of my spiritual identity. Heaven was not only the reason to become a Christian, but is used to motivate all Christian behavior: from avoiding bad behavior to avoid hell or my rewards for good behavior which were stored in heaven. The hell talk eased off eventually, but heaven remained goal. Fear of death was seen as unreasonable since what is ahead of us after this life is bliss. You are reunited with your loves (assuming they were Christians too.) You live in a beautiful mansion (assuming you saved up your treasures.) You praised God all day (this is good assuming you like to sing praise music so you better learn to like it- or at least I was told.) Despite the fact that there is no real description of heaven in the bible, only metaphors, the evangelical church has created an elaborate reason why no one should fear death. The problem is that heaven as described by the evangelical church has largely been developed over the centuries by people wrestling with the same issues. In the Old Testament there is hardly any mention of the afterlife and no description of heaven. Evangelicals’ ideas about hell are made up of a few vague references to scripture, Dante’s Inferno, and Hollywood. In fact, at the time of Jesus, Judaism had four sects with only one believing in an afterlife. The rest believed that, like in the Old Testament, the Kingdom of God was only on earth and the only legacy we had after our death was in the children we left behind. And when Jesus does make the few references he makes toward heaven it is always done in private as if a mystery not yet to be understood. And the references that Paul made to heaven were more motivated by Greek philosophy and his attempt to align the two than by some divine understanding of the afterlife.
This brings me to the postmodern response. This is a response that I have found some value in, but for the most part appears to deal with questions about the afterlife by avoiding it. In order to align its own theological and philosophical ideas with the issues of death, most Christian-based postmodernism challenges us to suspend our fears of death in order to focus on the transformative power of Christ in this life. I whole-heartedly agree with this approach to a fear of death, but it is also a deliberate skirting of the issue. The reason why it is so hard to align postmodernism with the afterlife is because of the existential qualities of the philosophy. Because scripture is largely narrative, because each journey is unique, and because Christ’s ministry was largely social, a unified theology about heaven is unproductive and only hinders the Kingdom of God being revealed in this world the way Christ intends it to be and inhibits the individual from experiencing the mystery of God. Again, I agree completely. However, even though I agree with how the topic of the afterlife and Kingdom of God should be handled, the philosophical paradigm falls short when the topic of death emerges. In other words, even though I agree with the postmodern paradigm that heaven and the Kingdom of God are best experienced in the transformative experience of Christ and heaven is a mystery best experienced when it is time to experience it, death is awkwardly avoided.
I am jealous of those who don’t fear dying. I tend to believe that many of those people will fear it much more if it suddenly became a reality, but I do know that many people have a healthy perspective on the issue. I am also jealous of those who have comfort in a view of heaven that is story book in nature. Heck, they may be right. And I am jealous of those who can simply not think about death because they are too focused on this life. They are probably the best off. But there are those like me that struggle with a reasonable fear of death and have found little peace in theology or philosophy. Faith then becomes the topic. Not how should I view death or how can I describe the afterlife, but will I grow in faith despite not always knowing exactly why I should.
There are a lot of issues that I could work through when it comes to my fear of death that might ease my anxiety about. I could approach the issue from a very personal perspective and see how my own fears of worthlessness are manifested through my fear of death. (This one is probably true.) I could look at the issue from a generational perspective and reflect on how a fear of death was passed down to me through generations of fear of death. (I am not sure about this one.) Or I could look at it from a cultural perspective and reflect on how there is a general fear of death in the 21st century because families are less intergenerational and that people are typically not as familiar with death. (I believe this one is true.) But understanding why I am afraid of death no longer has much value to me. What I do know is that I am scared to death of death.
As a recovering Christian I have two possible positions from which to consider death: evangelical and postmodern. My evangelical upbringing put heaven at the core of my spiritual identity. Heaven was not only the reason to become a Christian, but is used to motivate all Christian behavior: from avoiding bad behavior to avoid hell or my rewards for good behavior which were stored in heaven. The hell talk eased off eventually, but heaven remained goal. Fear of death was seen as unreasonable since what is ahead of us after this life is bliss. You are reunited with your loves (assuming they were Christians too.) You live in a beautiful mansion (assuming you saved up your treasures.) You praised God all day (this is good assuming you like to sing praise music so you better learn to like it- or at least I was told.) Despite the fact that there is no real description of heaven in the bible, only metaphors, the evangelical church has created an elaborate reason why no one should fear death. The problem is that heaven as described by the evangelical church has largely been developed over the centuries by people wrestling with the same issues. In the Old Testament there is hardly any mention of the afterlife and no description of heaven. Evangelicals’ ideas about hell are made up of a few vague references to scripture, Dante’s Inferno, and Hollywood. In fact, at the time of Jesus, Judaism had four sects with only one believing in an afterlife. The rest believed that, like in the Old Testament, the Kingdom of God was only on earth and the only legacy we had after our death was in the children we left behind. And when Jesus does make the few references he makes toward heaven it is always done in private as if a mystery not yet to be understood. And the references that Paul made to heaven were more motivated by Greek philosophy and his attempt to align the two than by some divine understanding of the afterlife.
This brings me to the postmodern response. This is a response that I have found some value in, but for the most part appears to deal with questions about the afterlife by avoiding it. In order to align its own theological and philosophical ideas with the issues of death, most Christian-based postmodernism challenges us to suspend our fears of death in order to focus on the transformative power of Christ in this life. I whole-heartedly agree with this approach to a fear of death, but it is also a deliberate skirting of the issue. The reason why it is so hard to align postmodernism with the afterlife is because of the existential qualities of the philosophy. Because scripture is largely narrative, because each journey is unique, and because Christ’s ministry was largely social, a unified theology about heaven is unproductive and only hinders the Kingdom of God being revealed in this world the way Christ intends it to be and inhibits the individual from experiencing the mystery of God. Again, I agree completely. However, even though I agree with how the topic of the afterlife and Kingdom of God should be handled, the philosophical paradigm falls short when the topic of death emerges. In other words, even though I agree with the postmodern paradigm that heaven and the Kingdom of God are best experienced in the transformative experience of Christ and heaven is a mystery best experienced when it is time to experience it, death is awkwardly avoided.
I am jealous of those who don’t fear dying. I tend to believe that many of those people will fear it much more if it suddenly became a reality, but I do know that many people have a healthy perspective on the issue. I am also jealous of those who have comfort in a view of heaven that is story book in nature. Heck, they may be right. And I am jealous of those who can simply not think about death because they are too focused on this life. They are probably the best off. But there are those like me that struggle with a reasonable fear of death and have found little peace in theology or philosophy. Faith then becomes the topic. Not how should I view death or how can I describe the afterlife, but will I grow in faith despite not always knowing exactly why I should.
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