Belief in an Afterlife a "Crutch?"

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Back in the day when I was a priest, I preferred funerals to weddings.

That may sound strange, but when asked to witness weddings, I often felt like I was being rented along with the wedding hall, tables and chairs. Often, I suspected, the bride and groom had a church wedding because their parents wanted it. The couple often had little interest in the religious aspect of the wedding. They seemed to be involved in a sort of mutual self-absorption, and many people attending seemed to be more interested in observing wedding clothes and other attendees than in any encounter with God.

It was much easier to get the attention of people at funerals. They were having to deal directly with death, a subject they had spent much of their lives trying to avoid. Believers had to deal with their doubts about the hereafter. Non-believers had to confront the expected oblivion. Unlike those at a wedding, most were eager for anything you could say to relieve their discomfort, and many, I believe, actually prayed.

Truth is, most of us experience a plethora of emotions when considering death (about which I wrote in a blog on Nov. 11 of last year). Oddly, we’re fascinated by it – as evidenced by the innumerable movies, TV shows and video games whose main ingredient is violent death – and feel fear and revulsion at the prospect.

Tomas Halik, the Czech psychotherapist, priest and professor of philosophy and sociology whom I’ve quoted often in these blogs, calls belief in an afterlife “a kind of touchstone for the authenticity of our belief in God.

“If we restrict ourselves to the playing field of this life then maybe all we need of Christianity is what remained of it after the post-Enlightenment selling off of transcendence – a smidgen of moral principles and humanitarian kindness, a slightly updated version of existentialism, and a poetic sense of the mysterious.”

Even the faith of staunch believers, however, can be severely tested when confronted by death. That’s because to imagine the afterlife is to imagine the unimaginable. If our “spirit” outlives our bodies, it will be in a form that is unlike any human experience.

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Halik quotes the First Letter to the Corinthians in the Christian Bible, which paraphrases Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible. Here’s The Message translation: “No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this, never so much as imagined anything quite like it – what God has arranged for those who love him.”

Jesus provides a few stories in the gospels about the afterlife, undoubtedly trying to help people overcome this lack of imagination. For example, he tells the famous story of Lazarus, the poor man “covered with sores,” and the unnamed rich man, who, according to The Message translation, was “wasting his days in conspicuous consumption.” They both died. The rich man was in torment in hell but Lazarus was “taken up by the angels to the lap of Abraham.” The rich man begged for Lazarus’ help, but Abraham explained that “in all these matters there is a huge chasm set between us so that no one can go from us to you even if he wanted to.”

The rich man wanted Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his five brothers so they don’t end up in the same place. “They have Moses and the Prophets to tell them the score,” said Abraham. “Let them listen to them. I know, Father Abraham,” the rich man said, “but they’re not listening. If someone came back to them from the dead, they would change their ways.” Abraham answered: “If they won’t listen to Moses and the Prophets, they’re not going to be convinced by someone who rises from the dead.”

This and similar stories may help, but they use images designed for people who lived nearly 2,000 years ago. An excerpt from another part of the gospel may provide better understanding and hope.  “Trust me,” Jesus says in the same translation of the Gospel of John, “There is plenty of room for you in my Father’s home.”

Belief in an afterlife is for many the acid test of belief in God. We want to believe it, but it seems too good to be true. And apart from those who say they have had “near-death experiences,” there is nothing in our daily temporal experience, or even our histories, that support that belief.

Still, many of us maintain hope, mustering all our faith to recite with fellow believers the part of the Nicene Creed that says, “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

Some militant atheists point to a belief in the afterlife as the ultimate “crutch” of religious belief. We just can’t accept the nothingness that awaits us, they say. What they forget, along with many Christians, is that life after death is a two-edged sword.     

“I have always found it odd and even comical,” writes Halik, “when the Christian vision of eternal life is described as “a crutch” or “cheap solace.” After all, according to Christian belief the first thing awaiting us beyond the gates of death is God’s judgment. On the contrary, isn't “cheap solace” precisely the notion that death is the end of everything and we don’t have to answer to anyone for our lives?”

Halik says he looks forward to it because it will reveal the truth. “…We’ll discover at last the entire and real truth about ourselves, about our lives and about everything that appertained to them. …That truth will have the last word has always struck me as very liberating.”

Ours is not to know, but to wait, he says – while we continue attending weddings and funerals.