HIGH SPIRITS: Let's Talk About Death
Aitken, Jonathan
N A RECENT SATURDAY MORNING in Washington, D.C., I was strolling along Pennsylvania Avenue in glorious autumnal sunshine when a...
...My hirsute interlocutor declared himself an atheist and too young to start worrying about what might happen to him at the end of his life...
...John Newton, author of "Amazing Grace," faced his own demise with these words: What is death to a believer in Jesus...
...Yet the general taboo on speaking or writing about death needs to be broken in the interest of diminishing the fear that our secularsocietyevidentlyfeelstowardsthistopic.The mostpeacefuldeathsIhaveeverknownfrompersonal contact or from reading about them have all been the deaths of Christian believers...
...Jonathan Aitken, The American Spectator's High Spirits columnist, is most recently author of John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace (Crossway Books...
...These are deep waters and perhaps it is unwise for a columnist to enter them...
...The nature of that trail has implications that go beyond the boundaries of conventional religious faith...
...One of the most contented of these departures was that of my earlier mentioned hero and biographical subject, John Newton...
...If we personify it we may welcome it as a messenger to open to us the gate of everlastinglife.Theharbingersofdeath,sickness, painandconflict,arefrequentlyformidabletothe flesh but death itself is nothing else but a deliverance from them all...
...J O N A T H A NA I T K E N Beingcreaturesoftime,wemortalshave considerabledifficultyingettingour headsaroundtheconceptofeternity...
...Aftermakingmyexcusesandleavingtheprotester IwentforawalkthroughWestPotomacParkandConstitutionGardens,stoppingatfiveofAmerica'sgreatest memorials--theLincoln,theKoreanWarVeterans,the NationalWorldWarII,theThreeServicemen,andthe VietnamVeterans.Howstrange,Ireflected,thatwhile death is virtually unmentionable in most settings, on H I G HS P I R I T S 6 0 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 Let'sTalkAboutDeath by Jonathan Aitken O N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 6 1 thisparticularsunnymorningIhaddiscusseditinthe middle of a demonstration and visited a succession of spectacular edifices honoring the war dead...
...He quoted a Woody Allen line: "It's not that I fear death, I just don't want to be there when it happens...
...He lowered both his voice and his antiwar placard...
...Thismaynothavebeenmyfinesthourofforensic brilliance as a cross-examiner, but at least it had the result of getting the microphone switched off as the demonstratorpausedtodeclarethatImustbecrazy.Injustification of my soundness of mind I pointed out thatintheconversationsofar,bothofushadindicated abeliefinlifeafterdeath.OurdisagreementwasthatI took a more optimistic view of the 43rd President's celestialchancesonthedayofjudgment...
...Bejus, I'd rather be dead than think about it...
...It is simply a ceasing to breathe...
...Suchsentiments,andthereweremanyofthemin pastcenturieswhenlifewasonthewhole "nasty,brutish, and short," i.e., free from most of today's medical blessings such as dentistry, anaesthetics, painkillers, and pharmacology, do not always strike a resonant chord in our 21st-century world of healthy longevity...
...Practically no one I know seems to be as sanguine about dying as John Newton or as positive as John Keats, who claimed to be "half in love with easeful death...
...but Christ is a great savior...
...I want him to die and burn in hell...
...His biographies include Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed (Doubleday) and Nixon: A Life, now available in a new paperback edition (Regnery...
...Without those promises, confirmed by the Resurrection, there would be no scope for resolving the meaningless injustice and senselessness that are such inexplicable features oflife on earth...
...ALLRELIGIONSSUGGESTSOLUTIONStotheproblem of death--reincarnation, immortality, peacefuloblivion,orevenhedonisticparadiseinthe company of a thousand virgins, to name a few...
...The promise of Christ is not that all human suffering will be relieved but that "I am with you always, totheendoftime"(Matthew28:20).EvenJesusathis death experienced anguish and alienation from his Father, despite prior confidence in divine love and faithfulness...
...Being creaturesoftime,wemortalshaveconsiderabledifficulty getting our heads around the concept of eternity...
...Yet Christ's Resurrection demonstrated that his Father was with him after all, not as one uniquely privileged but as the first to blaze the trail that all Christians can now follow...
...His last words before meeting his maker were: "I am a great sinner...
...Yes I do...
...For thenext20minutesorso,wehadanentirelycivildiscourse on the subject of death and what, if anything, comes after it...
...Behan shouted...
...Beat that as an exit line from this mortal coil...
...The classic Christian stance on death can sometimes seem artificially optimistic...
...But the promises of Jesus are the basis for the claimofSt.Paulthat,throughChrist,deathhaslostits sting (I Corinthians 15:55...
...This observation flummoxed the protester...
...But supposing he died and went to heaven instead...
...Yet I was not perhaps as confident as I had sounded about my own spiritual conclusions on this inevitable butmuchavoidedsubject...
...Escaping from my tormentor was not easy because when I turned away from him I found myself facing a phalanxoffurtherandworseprotesterscomingatme from the opposite direction of Pennsylvania Avenue, determined to occupy the pedestrianized area in front of the White House...
...Predictably enough, we did not agree...
...But only the Judeo-Christian God is presented throughout the Bible as the Creator who is committed to an ongoingrelationshipwithhiscreation.Thepossibilityofeternallifehastraditionallyhadadefininginfluence on a Christian's approach to death...
...Nor would there be any compensating gain in relief from fear and uncertainty about death...
...Apparentlyirritatedbymyrefusalofhisoffering, the bearded one produced from his pocket a small battery-poweredmicrophoneandbeganchantingthe oral version of his jihadist message at full volume...
...But closing our contemporary minds to this inescapablesubjectforaslongaspossibleisnotasensibleoption.Forthewaywethinkaboutdeathcanhelp us to reach the answers to the most important questionslifeputstous...
...In response I recalled the story of the Irish playwright Brendan Behanbeingaskedduringhisterminalboutofcirrhosis of the liver if he ever thought about death...
...Think about death...
...Perhaps that was why Jesus occasionally made curiouslyinclusivestatementssuchas"OthersheephaveI who are not of this fold" or (a great favorite at funeral services)"InmyFather'shousearemanymansions...
...N A RECENT SATURDAY MORNING in Washington, D.C., I was strolling along Pennsylvania Avenue in glorious autumnal sunshine when a bearded antiwarprotesteraccostedme.Hetriedtothrust intomyhandaposterfeaturingaskullandcrossbones above the slogan: "Death to Bush...
...Trapped between the mob and the man with the microphone, I decided to open a dialogue with the latter along these lines: "Surely you don't really want the death of the President...
...Inthissamespiritofinclusiveness,alargenumber ofpeoplewhohavenoexplicitChristianfaithstillhave an intuitive belief that death, although shrouded in mystery,isnotnecessarilytheend.Thereisalsoawidely held hope that the God who has been inadequately prayedtoandworshippedinmostofourliveswillneverthelessbesufficientlyforgivingtocomealongsideus atthehourofourdeath,sharinginourfinalsufferings andtransformingtherealityofourearthlyendings...
Vol. 40 • November 2007 • No. 9
