FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 766 29 March 18 O DEATH, WHERE IS THY STING?

A DYING CHILD ASKS ABOUT LIFE AFTER DEATH. THE EASTER STORY IS THE ANSWER.
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‘What shall I be when I am no more?’ The heart-rending question a child dying of terminal cancer put to a carer at Helen House, Oxford. How to answer it? Children are very perceptive, not easily fooled, the carer knew. ‘Dealing with death is part of my job. I am used to it but that little girl’s direct question floored me’, she confessed.

‘What will you be when you are no more?’ A question not just for dying kids but for all human beings. Because, as Seneca said, ‘Cotidie morimur’ – we die a little bit every day. Every day after you are born, death gets a day nearer. Life is a race towards a finish line, an end whose name is death. A statement whose certitude cannot be gainsaid. But, unlike the little girl who knew her days were numbered, most people do not think about death. Or they think about it in abstract, non-personal ways. Like the example of impeccable reasoning in the old logic books: ‘All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal’. A cold, universal truth. But people refuse to draw its concrete implications. Like dying Ivan, the sad hero of Tolstoy’s haunting story, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilych’, they find the truth of their own finitude unbearable. They fool themselves and behave as if they were immortal. The old syllogism is there to remind each person of their mortality. Death is
the destiny of every mortal, i.e. you and I.

‘What will you be after your death?’ Atheists of all ilk, from atomist materialists like Roman Lucretius to Scotch sceptic David Hume to contemporary Richard ‘Deluded’ Dawkins, scoff at the question. Death is an absolute end. There is no soul, no self. With the dissolution of the body you cease to exist, period. And they claim that non-existence is no problem. Do you worry about not having existed after you were born? Hardly. Why then fear your post-mortem non-existence? Irrational, eh? Unbelieving philosopher Thomas Nagel exposes the fallacy in Lucretius’ claim. His asymmetrical argument doesn’t work. Not being born is not a misfortune – the time before your birth is not something your non-existent self is deprived of – but your death robs you of a time in which you could have been alive. Life makes us appreciate the many goods of which death deprives us. That is why people struggle to continue their life, while being indifferent to their pre-birth status. QED.

Philosophical arguments only exercise a few oddballs, however. The majority of mankind hide from the little girl’s pressing question through multifarious stratagems, the most common quoted by St Paul: ‘Eat, drink and be merry, because tomorrow we die’. (I Corinthians, 15:32) Hedonism, in fact. The pleasure pursuit, to forget death’s impending maws. Hypocritical to pretend that earthly pleasures do not matter. They do. Every time you eat your dinner or kiss your beloved’s lips, you instantiate the relevance of pleasures. Yet, they still do not suffice answer that gnawing existential question: ‘What will I be after I am no more?’ Even the Qur’an, though opposing Christian asceticism, attacks hedonism as a distraction from the real issue: ‘And the life of this world is nothing but play and amusement.’ (Sura 6:32)

The whole of Western culture is predicated upon ignoring the child’s demand for an answer. Call me a conspiracy theorist, this IS a huge, monstrous conspiracy, if there was ever one. Governments, legislators, economists, and the filthy media – they all conspire to make you forget the most urgent, decisive matter pertaining to your future. Immortality. Churchmen too shy away from it. Eternal life embarrasses them. It’s too countercultural, isn’t it? Safer to drone on about racism, antisemitism, migrants, Putin, Harry & Meghan, football, the Royals and similar edifying hobbyhorses. Anything but life after death. They occasionally mouth Bible passages but never dwell on them or affirm their importance. From Canterbury’s Welby to the ineffable Pope Francis, they keep irreligiously mum. Evangelical Christians and Muslims seem to be the only people who dare break this shameful conspiracy of silence.

Easter is the right time to break the conspiracy. To show up its wicked, anti-human nature. Because Easter celebrates the victory of life over death. The sempiternal hope of all human beings. A supernatural rebuff to atheists, secularists, doubters, the pseudo-Christians, the squalid enemies of humanity. The resurrection was a divinely decreed event, testifying to the reality of immortality: ‘If the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised…your faith is futile and you are still in your sins…but in fact Christ has been raised from the dead…Death is swallowed up in victory. O death where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?’ the Apostle exults. At Easter Christ broke the bonds of mortality and rose triumphantly from the grave, in power and majesty. ‘Behold, I was dead and now I am alive for ever and I hold the keys of death and death’s domain’, proclaims the risen Lord in the Book of Revelation. Amen, amen, amen!

And the little girl’s question? A passage in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov tackles that. After a youth I cared for died in a car accident years ago I conveyed the story to his family. A schoolboy, Ilusha, has tragically died. His friends, their eager, shining faces demand answers. So they gather around teacher Alyosha Karamazov. Little Kolya asks: ‘Can it be true what they teach us in church, that we shall all rise again from the dead and shall live and see each other again, all of us, Ilusha, too?’
Alyosha does not hesitate: ‘Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!’

A very Happy Easter to you all.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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