Dear whoever,
You are going to die.
Not by my hand and hopefully not by anyone elses. If your age is zero and your reading this, you have between approx. 0 to 100 years to live. The likelihood is your not zero, and thus have even less time to live. Thats all you get. What? You think you live this life as some sort of chore or test before you float up and live in ecstacy in the clouds. Yep, of course God created you so you could bum around for sometime before coming to live with him. No no, don’t question this at all - just accept it maybe counteracting any sort of contstructive criticism of this system with an enigmatic question like "He works in mysterious ways". Maybe you’ve read this far and am thinking "Whovever wrote this is some commie bastard asshole hippy who should get into the real world". If you did just think that, you should definitely keep reading.
So back to your death - what will it be like? Will life just cease instantly? Neurological functions shutdown completely - become nothing? I try to imagine nothing, but realise this is a contradiction - nothing is absolutely nothing. You can’t imagine nothing, as you have to imagine something. Nihilistic, gothic pretensions aside, all I can definitley say is that before I was born there was nothing. Everything that existed before me is an assumption or a record. I have to *have faith* that what I hear of history - no matter how many times I hear it - is true and happened. If someone wrote in *all* the history books and records of the world a false account of something - I’m afraid all of us would have to believe it, we have no other choice. How can I know any differently? How can you? Initially, I first found this very difficult to believe - as I’m sure you are finding now. Initally I became angry as I’m sure you are angry at me - maybe even angry at me for even daring to write this letter. This heresy. The only way I get close to experiencing nothing is to try and remember the way things were before I was born. Impossible. Again its very difficult for people to read this and listen with an open mind, much to my annoyance. I don’t know what happens when we die, all I know is that it *is* going to happen.
"No mate you should forget all this hippie bollocks and get in the real world. Get a high paid, high powered job. Get a car, get a mortgage, get a life. Religion is for nuts. Losers. Your in the west now mate, act like it." someone says to me. Yes, I agree you need money to survive. To provide a shelter, some food, some clothing. However, I address all those who constantly inform others to "Get into the real world" to consider their position in the world *very* carefully. Your wealth, your job, your power all rest upon a very abstract and very unstable system. The real world. Let me tell you, very few people in the west (including myself) will experience the ‘real world’. If you can’t afford to food - the state will support you. You can’t get shelter - there is some available for the homeless. In Africa, Russia, China, Asia, South America - you get sick - you die, you can’t find food - you die. It’s simple. It’s the true real world.
So back to your death? Should we be even considering it - its so far in the future. Its too morbid to even consider it. Nonsense. You don’t know when, how and why it will happen. It will happen, trust me. Again, I have no idea what will happen after death and this does not particularly bother me. Maybe we will meet God. I doubt it. In fact, my opinion is that God doesn’t like us. My other opinion is God likes us. My opinion is God doesn’t exist. My other opinion is God exists. What? They’re opinions based on nothing, something that is too difficult to comprehend in the first place. However, to quote from a book by Chuck Palahniuk, would it be better to be hated by God than be nothing to God? Do you reckon if God created something as large as the universe, he even knows about us. People ask time and time and time again if God likes us and knows about us, why is there suffering. Oh yeah, he moves in mysterious ways. I notice the people who say this are mainly the ones who have the fortune to have had nothing happen to them. To them, disease, war, famine, drought, genocide - they all happen on TV. The big, fat widescreen TV. Change the channel and its gone, time for canned laughter and hilarious situation comedy. Life is goood. Look I’m not saying I like the situation any more than you do, but I prefer to know The Truth, not believe in a fantasy world. Sorry. Yeah, I really am.
So constructively what can we do? I suggest become aware to begin with. Wake up from the dream of the quest of materials. Yeah you do need some stuff - a phone, a stereo, a table, a chair and the the other things. Maybe to begin with shed the snobbery - this stereo plays music just as well as my neighbor’s does - should I stop being jealous that his is ‘better’? Get a car that is friendly to the environment. It is a sure thing that if God does indeed know of us, love us and care for us and our "free will" - not believing in him is probably, in his eyes, insignificant compared to irreversible destruction of the environment. He created the universe, he’s not stupid. Don’t keep up with the Joneses. Maybe then, once this is realised, money, status and power are purely fictious abstractions that only distance and distract us from the fact that we are frail. We are easily damaged. We are going to die. No one is saying become a monk and live in the mountains. However: do something with your life. Help others who are less fortunate. Surely thats what religions are trying to preach.
It is not weakness all this above, it is a strength to realise and see that there is veil in front of our eyes. Your purpose in life, if there is a purpose, is not to amass wealth - when you die you can’t take anything with you. When I think about it, if we lost everything - our clothes, money and even our names , we’d be strangers to ourselves. By all means buy that stereo, that phone, that car, that house - but do not take it for granted and certainly don’t let whatever you own start to own you. I reckon be willing at all times to destroy anything you own if it means enlightenment. Spend more time doing what you enjoy with people you enjoy.
Lying in the sun watching the world go by is by no means a waste of time.
From James.
If you hated/loved this I wanna hear from you. If your angry at me then thats good, but question Why? If this isn’t appropriate for an open-source theology then leave it up anyways it is useful to stimulate discussion
Reply to Angry Letter
Your designation of this post as ‘angry’ wasn’t kidding! I’ve read and re-read your ‘letter’, trying to pin down one single line of thought, but distilling from it three basic points: 1. The certainty of our own death 2. The vanity of materialism in light of the above 3. That God may or may not exist, but if he does he’s probably not too keen on us. I concur with you on the first two. Wholeheartedly, without reservation. The centrality of our physical demise to the Christian message has been sidelined, so that this religion of ours has become bogged down on this world. By this I don’t mean that we shouldn’t be socially aware and responsible, being stewards even of the environment. But for Christ and His first followers, the reality of death and the punishment which followed for the unrepentant drove their ministries. Today, ministries seem driven by merely earth-bound blessings, and promises of the hundredfold received in THIS life, but not that to come. Which brings us to the vanity of materialism. Again, no argument from me on that one. ‘Naked we came into the world, and naked we shall leave it.’ In the light of eternity, damn the latest fashions and trends in technology, cars, clothing, and don’t concern yourself with the bank balance. Treasure in heaven, that’s the real investment.
As for Point No.3, I can’t agree. The Christian is convinced of not only the existence of God as our Creator, but as Redeemer and Coming King. The love of God, the fact that he truly cares, is embodied in Christ and the sacrifice of Himself on that Old Rugged Cross. I don’t know what else to say here in reply, and I figure that I haven’t even begun to really address the issues you raised, but all I am sure of is that in Christ we have an answer and a route out of this fallen world.
cheers for your reply. Im
cheers for your reply. Im not christian, however everyones entitled to their opinion. I view the Bible, Jesus’ sacrifice all as an analogy of our own personal struggle to find The Answer. If this rule was appplied to all sacred texts, we would see that they are all similar in message - thus an open-source theology is a good idea - in my opinion. A question I would ask, which may be applicable to Jesus’ situation is : Is Self-Improvement the answer? Is Self-Destruction the way forward? Are the two synonymous ?
Happiness is the journey, not the destination
James, you have articulated
James, you have articulated some powerful thoughts. If you haven’t yet read the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, you should do so. I have a few haphazard thoughts in response.
If we can’t find God on the boundaries of reason, in that struggle to make sense of the world, where we rant and rave against complacency and injustice and hypocrisy, where we are confronted with the impenetrable darkness of our mortality, then he probably can’t be found anywhere. A lot of us are looking for a God who meets us at these dangerous (and mysterious) limits, not only in the safe routine centre of our lives.
You are certainly entitled to your opinion and you are at liberty to view Jesus’ sacrifice as an analogy for your personal struggle to find the answer. But isn’t it worth asking how he might have wanted it to be understood? I don’t think it is very helpful to regard the Bible as a ‘sacred text’, as a religious artifact in its own right. It is simply a text. If it doesn’t tell us something useful about what happened, what people thought and believed and why, it’s not much use. But because it has its particular context and point of reference, because it is the record of a particular community with a particular understanding of God, you can’t simply lump it together with other sacred texts and say that they’re all pretty much the same. The rules of cricket are formally similar to the rules of football but the games they describe are very different.
One of the differences in this case is that wherever we meet this God, that encounter is accompanied by a powerful invitation to follow, to become part of a community of followers, to bring into visibility through our behaviour the potential of a new creation from which injustice and death have been banished. Self-destruction, as a dying to the old, is part of this; self-improvement, as becoming Christlike, experiencing a renewal of life, is part of it. But it is driven by hope, not by desperation or cynicism. If you don’t hear that invitation to hope, to trust, to risk, then there is probably little point in following.
Qohelet returns!
I had never thought about Ecclesiastes being an ANGRY book. Qohelet always sounded to me like a tired or resigned old man. Perhaps I should go back and read it again, imagining him as incensed! Thanks!
A Monkey Once Dreamed He Was A Man
Thank you for expressing so eloquently what far too many people think is wrong and cant concede the possibility of, which in a word is Doubt.
It is so simple to run with the herd, to believe in the lies that are told but what separates us from the mindless drones of conformity is the state of being that is doubt.
My favorite writer Terry Pratchett wrote in The Last Continent “Creators aren’t Gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It’s men that make gods. This explains a lot.”
This is not something to take lightly or to dismiss out of hand because it doesn’t fit into your “beliefs”, for the natural state of reality within this universe not only is stranger than you think, it is stranger than you CAN think. But that does not eliminate the possibility that one day you will be able to. It is simpler to stay rooted to what you “know” than to have faith in what you can imagine, for another truth of this reality is that how you look at something changes that upon which you look. If anyone reading this doesn’t “believe” this then I suggest you do a little reading on the subject of quantum physics, there is this funny little quirk in the universe where certain things like photons ( light, for those who never read anything unless its approved of by the herd ) have the ability to be two entirely different things, a particle or a wave, depending on HOW you look at them. They are things that are fundamental to the existence to life on this planet, and perhaps to the universe itself, but so far they cannot be explained.
Ponder that for a minute…….reality itself may rely on something that we cannot understand…yet. I “believe” that it’s our purpose to understand that and much, much more. Doing anything less would make the questions you raised rather pointless and if I were God I’d be sorely disappointed in those that didn’t even try.
What happens to you after you die? Why does God allow such suffering in this world? Is there even a God?
I don’t know the answers to these questions……yet, but that doesn’t mean that I cant ask them. So until we have those answers, either from God or own imagination neither should you or anyone else for that matter. And no matter what anyone else tells you, no matter what holy scripture it may have or may not have come from, no matter how fervently they “believe” in it, there is a good chance that they don’t know either, because if God wanted us to know so badly everyone would have at least gotten a memo by now.
Knowledge is acquired through study on what works, wisdom is gained by pondering upon that which might work and divinity is given to those who make it work.
So cheers to you fellow Doubter for asking those questions and finding the answers you were given lacking, for there are many paths to Truth and they all lead from you.
Hated by God
Absolutely.
It’s always better to evoke a response than indifference.
do you want to know?
all I can say is…I couldn’t say that I knew anything about God, (except in my head), until I began to get to know Him, (through Jesus)
Just want to ask, James, have you ever tried to get to know God? That way, you could speak from experience of Him… and you would know if He hates us or likes us then. You can’t really speak, with knowledge, about a stranger, can you? :)