Sam Sacks, who writes the fiction reviews in the weekend Wall Street Journal, put his finger on what is the most interesting subject that has impressed me this past year. He writes:
“There is a hole in contemporary fiction that has been noticeable for some time but was especially conspicuous in this year. Novelists are obsessed with the apocalypse and have envisioned countless scenarios for the downfall of civilization. Equally, they are transfixed by grief and repeatably are drawn to produce meditations on loss and recovery. But they do not like to write about the subtext of these preoccupations, the thing they are hinting toward or circling around, cautiously evoking yet usually leaving off the page. They do not like to write about death…. [Death] scenes are the exception now, implied, but rarely confronted, and in this reticence, I think, literature is running downstream from culture at large. Western society, having insulated itself from the reality of death more successfully than any collection of people in human history, is uncomfortable with reminders of its inevitability. Death has become as we imagine sex was to the Victorians: a taboo, unsuitable for mixed company – one of the last unmentionable subjects.”
This is why our obsession for keeping safe and avoiding contagion from COVID-19 has dominated life this past year. We cannot deal with illness and death. We have elevated living longer and healthier to divine status. This life is all we know and want to know. There is no sense of the eternal. Longevity is our God. The medical scientists (and thank God for the gift of their knowledge and their dedication) are our priesthood. We want to be kept safe above all else. The role of the governing authorities is seen primarily to keep us safe from any harm. Yet there are painful side effects to this religion. We cannot handle our mortality and we punish anyone who is immune to this fear of death. We subject our children and other young people and business owners and workers to restrictions that are unnecessary in order to protect ourselves. We are willing to ruin our livelihoods and to bankrupt the government to prevent us from our natural mortality. Despite the declining mortality rate we find that the news is dominated by the latest figures and the hope of salvation by vaccination.
Every one of us is going to die. We need to be aware of it and prepare for it. This life is given us to learn how to die well. Sam Sacks quotes Montaigne:
“To philosophize is to learn how to die. To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness; let us frequent it; let us get used to it.”
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25)
This is the message of Christ to a secular culture that does not believe in God and to the pundits in the media that beat the drum of gloom and doom. This is the hope of the world that Christ came to bring. Death has been defeated in the resurrection of Christ. We need not fear death nor avoid it.
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Very well said, as usual. Thanks for your continued thought-provoking insights.
My response is to ask, in the COVID context, what kind of life are we saving? And for whom? I have been advocating a simple recognition of personal responsibility – give people the freedom to go out as they want and for businesses to operate as they wish, but realize that healthcare services are limited and may not be available to you if you get sick. But it is your life to live and lose.
In the Christian context, I would add: whoever wants to save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. I struggle with this one everyday, and certainly have not confronted it in my writing. My secession premise is not just to follow the rule of law, but to avoid war. I need to think it through further as I move forward the inevitable conflict, both in history and my own life.
You are still a troubler, as Stott would say.
As Kierkegaard said, faith is a risk. If you play safe you do not have faith. Too many are risk averse and lack faith to live fully. To have a life you have to be willing to commit yourself and act in accordance with your faith.
Well said Ted. I recently found your site and enjoy reading your insightful posts. Hope you and your family are well and are enjoying a blessed Christmas season.
Welcome and thank you for your wishes.
Ted
Your blog on Memento to Mori about dying was impressive to me. Let me give a couple of thoughts
Death is certainly part of our live. Growing up we may attend services in my instance for Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and friends of the family. We would go to the service and offer our condolences. What did we mean? Sorry for you, but glad it wasn’t me?
The more recent “Celebrations of Life” I find more meaningful and “consoling.”
Let me give two instances in my life.
In mid 2001 my brother called me and said he was dying and that I should come to see him in his house where he would be with Hospice. And encouraged me to have my sons and my wife come too. We did, and he gather us around his Hospice bed in the house and proceeded to give each one of us something meaningful or hilarious. It was a Happy time. While he argued with me and his son about God and Jesus saying they didn’t exist, he did describe a stairway to heaven and said, maybe I was wrong.
When Louise died, we were fortunate (and I think and thank God for having allowed it) to have me, our cat, and my sons with her for the last few days. We talked, she saying that she was going to die and us trying to say it was ok.
While I don’t look forward to dying, I am not afraid of it. I just pray and hope that it will be fairly painless and not prolonged.
Your blogs have become part of my weekly readings, and I for one really appreciate them.
Bert
Ted
Your blog on Memento to Mori about dying was impressive to me. Let me give a couple of thoughts
Death is certainly part of our live. Growing up we may attend services in my instance for Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and friends of the family. We would go to the service and offer our condolences. What did we mean? Sorry for you, but glad it wasn’t me?
The more recent “Celebrations of Life” I find more meaningful and “consoling.”
Let me give two instances in my life.
In mid 2001 my brother called me and said he was dying and that I should come to see him in his house where he would be with Hospice. And encouraged me to have my sons and my wife come too. We did, and he gather us around his Hospice bed in the house and proceeded to give each one of us something meaningful or hilarious. It was a Happy time. While he argued with me and his son about God and Jesus saying they didn’t exist, he did describe a stairway to heaven and said, maybe I was wrong.
When Louise died, we were fortunate (and I think and thank God for having allowed it) to have me, our cat, and my sons with her for the last few days. We talked, she saying that she was going to die and us trying to say it was ok.
While I don’t look forward to dying, I am not afraid of it. I just pray and hope that it will be fairly painless and not prolonged.
Your blogs have become part of my weekly readings, and I for one really appreciate them.
Bert