FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Ways to Die

Rant Number 457 20 September 2011

Disclaimer: this is not a euthanasia plug!
Could you be creative about the way you will die? Bit macabre but the Chinese scholar Li Zhi thought it a fine intellectual exercise. So he wrote an essay on death, ‘Five ways to Die’. Later, he slit his throat in prison. Slandered by a spiteful mandarin, facing disgrace and the destruction of his library, Li elected to die by his own hand, to teach his enemies a lesson. Huh! A brave man who was creative to the last...
Li’s five ways, ranked in order of importance, are: 1) death for a noble cause; 2) death fighting in war; 3) death in martyrdom; 4) death as a loyal official unjustly accused; 5) dying prematurely after completing some worthy work.
I cull Li’s egregious story from Jonathan Spence’s dazzling book, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, about the great Jesuit missionary of 16th century China. Evidently, Chinese classification criteria followed a peculiar logic. Death by martyrdom would rank above all others for Christians and Muslims, but our secular culture scorns that as fanaticism. Pacifists would shun a military death. Suicide is traditionally no licit way of dying in the West, although that taboo is being corroded by creeping, atheistic humanitarianism. And what exactly is a noble cause? Dying while relieving famine in Africa? Or while experimenting on a new, miraculous drug? Defending the rights of minorities, like Gipsies? Or what?
Before cutting his jugular, Li had penned some original reflections. You might assume that dying in your bed, assisted by spouse and kids, would be a desirable way to go. Li, a tad superciliously, disagreed. ‘This is hardly a way for a man to die.’ He argued that you are born for a cause, a reason - a good one - hence the right death must be for a similarly good reason and in condign rational manner. Fading away on a humdrum sickbed is not quite it. Although Li was no theist in the Western sense, his words echo those of a man who narrowly escaped death on a falling aircraft: ‘The good Lord saved me for a reason. Now I must found out what that reason is.’ Human life is not the result of a random concourse of atoms. It has an aim, a purpose, a rationale. Finding that out is man’s worthy, essential task.
Gloomy though it might appear, Li’s essay induces you to think. The austerity doldrums mean that many Europeans face declining pensions, longer ours of work, rising costs, falling lifestyles, uncertain futures. Old, young and middle-aged are all affected. Moreover, life in your wonderful ‘communities’ gets increasingly non-communitarian. Too often, behind the dubious consolations of TV, mobiles and Facebook lurk individualism, selfishness, loneliness, violence and squalor. Even the churches, once the last refuge of the desperate, are empty. The liberal God of the Church of England has being sucked into the fearful godless void. Ben gli sta!
Depressing, yes, but...blessings in disguise? It jolts you out of your complacent slouching in front of the box. Let us look at some options. The tombs of God called churches have pictures showing men and women holding a palm. The emblem of martyrdom. For believers that could certainly be an option. A wise pagan like Li Zhi showed the way. Of course, seeking martyrdom per se would be a sin. A Christian martyr chooses death to stay faithful to Christ, not to indulge in heroic fantasies. Yet, faithful to Christ, not just some progressive cause, like anti-racism or stop the war. As the British government enacts more and more anti-Christian legislation, the priest feels the point will soon come when martyrdom becomes Hobson’s choice. Devout Muslims too may well find themselves pushed in that direction. Got to watch what I say – I want God to choose the moment and manner of my martyrdom, not let Scotland Yard or MI5 do the job – still, the logic of the situation we are in...do you get my drift?
Further, there is death for glory. Traditionally linked with dying in battle. A soldier’s death. The Unknown Warrior’s grave in Westminster Abbey witnesses to that. When a fallen soldier’s body returns from Afghanistan, many Brits flock to pay homage. Right and proper. Glory still inspires. Glory is a suitable way to go. The martial races of India, like the Rajputs and the Sikhs, and like the Kshatriya castes of old, stood for the virtue of fighting, for the glory of war. Frown on old Prussia as much as you like, well, it helped Wellington to win at Waterloo, no? ‘He who for glory has died, has lived long and well’, a hymn has it. Glory is available to all. Just seize the right time for it.
Death as a protest against injustice. Hamlet’s soliloquised to the point: ‘...the oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, the pangs of disprized love, the law’s delay, the insolence of office...’ – how topical. Injustice summons the righteous to fight. Perhaps to die. Hamlet of course felt restrained for a while, owing to the dread of that ‘something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns’. Lao Tzu, the author of the Tao Te Ching, a quirky work Li Zhi would have revered, was more forthright. He claimed that one who prizes life will slide smoothly into the realm of death. ‘...He who is supreme in keeping safe does not meet rhinos or tigers on land. Weapons do not hurt him when he plunges into war. There is no place for the rhino to drive his horn, or for the tiger’s fangs to tear apart or for the sword to slash. Why? Because death has no meaning for such a person.’
The priest does not presume to understand Taoism. Whether the enigmatic Lao Tzu has something valid to teach the West is a moot point. But old Li Zhi appeals to me. Because he is refreshingly provocative. (A bit like that great, drunken Welshman, Dylan Thomas: ‘Go raging into the night’, that’s the idea.) You take it for granted that the best way to die is a safe, quiet, bourgeois one. Not so, the sage tells us.
And he may be right.
Revd Frank Julian Gelli