“Imagining Immortality”
By Reverend James Kubal-Komoto
Saltwater Unitarian Universalist Church
Des Moines, Washington
March 12, 2006
This morning I want to talk about immortality, and I want to talk about what immortality might mean from a liberal religious perspective.
Most of the time when people talk about immortality, people mean “something like heaven.” I’ve always been curious about where our society’s ideas and images about heaven come from. It’s something I’ve known a little bit about, but not a lot, and so I recently read a book titled Heaven: A History by religious scholars Colleen McDannell and Berhard Lang.
I want to start off this morning sharing with you a little of what I learned from reading this book.
The biggest thing I learned was that throughout Western history - - and this book limits itself to Western history - - there has been a lot of imaginative speculation about what happens to us after we die, and ideas and images about heaven have varied tremendously from one century to the next, often reflecting the social situation of the time and people’s ideas about what’s best and worst in human life.
One of the reasons there has been so much speculation is that the Bible, the book to which so many people throughout Western history have turned for authoritative answers to all of life’s questions, actually says very little about the afterlife. The Bible, by which I mean both Hebrew and Christian scriptures, is not quite as clear and specific on this matter as many people think. It does seem to suggest that there is some kind of afterlife, but mostly speaks of it in only very broad and vague generalities.
An interesting fact about the emergence of the idea of heaven is that it didn’t come from ancient Judaism. While Christianity emerged from Judaism, the idea of heaven as a place where good people go after they die wasn’t originally a part of ancient Judaism, and only slowly became a part of some strands of the Jewish tradition as ancient Israel came into contact with other cultures. For example, during the Babylonian exile in 586 BCE, the ancient Israelites came into the contact with the teachings of the Persian prophet Zoroaster, who taught that at the end of history, all souls would be judged, and those judged as living righteously would be rewarded with a heavenly paradise on earth, an idea that got recycled in the Book of Revelation in the Christian scripture. As diaspora Jews met Greek intellectuals, the idea of an immortal soul also was more fully incorporated into Jewish beliefs.
It’s also important to note that Jesus didn’t say too much about the afterlife. Many biblical scholars, especially the more liberal ones, make the argument that while Jesus mostly likely believed in an afterlife, when Jesus preached about the “Kingdom of God,” he was not talking about “heaven,” but rather was talking about the possibility of a utopian society here on earth.
So, as I said, throughout Western history, there has been a lot of imaginative speculation by philosophers, theologians, artists and others.
For more than 2,000 years, people have wondered, do people go immediately to heaven or hell after death or is there a waiting period? A big question has been, in heaven, are people incorporeal spirits or do they have bodies? Is there food and drink in heaven? If so, are there other bodily functions? One question that seems to have inordinately pre-occupied theologians for centuries is whether there is sex in heaven.
If there is a heaven, people have also wondered through the centuries, who do you meet there? Is it only God, or do you meet all your relatives again? Do you have to? Are there only people in heaven, or are animals there too? Is there marriage? If there is - - and this is another big question people have struggled with - - if you were married to more than one person during this life time, to whom are you married in heaven?
People have also wondered about what heaven itself looks like. Is it like a garden or like a city or like a lot of ethereal spirits bathed in radiant light?
People have also speculated about what exactly people do in heaven. Is heaven simply eternal rest? Is it singing praises to God for eternity? Or is there work to do? Do people even have jobs in heaven?
For more than 2,000 years, people’s answers to these questions have widely varied.
While imaginative descriptions of what heaven might be liked peaked in popularity in 19th century America, something just as interesting happened in the 20th century.
While the many branches of Christianity continued to affirm the existence of life after death for their adherents, they also adopted a kind of “Don’t Ask, don’t tell,” policy about heaven.
For example, the Roman Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the part of the church headed by Cardinal Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict XVI), issued a statement in 1979 saying, “When dealing with the human situation after death, one must especially beware of arbitrary imaginative representations: excess of this kind is a major cause of the difficulties that Christian faith often encounters.”
Several religious scholars have noted that these days it is rare to hear sermons about heaven in mainline Protestant congregations or even evangelical Protestant congregations.
One of the only faith traditions in the U.S. that continues to talk about heaven with a lot of specificity is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Nevertheless, for most Americans, heaven remains a popular idea.
In an August 2005 Newsweek/Beliefnet poll, 67 percent of Americans, about two out of three professed a belief in heaven and hell. Another 13 percent professed the belief that the individual soul lives on in a “spiritual realm.” Only 5 percent professed a belief in reincarnation. Nine percent said they didn’t know. And 6 percent believe that, “it’s all over.”
The very interesting thing about this poll for me is that it also showed that 79 percent of the American population, almost four in five people, agreed with the statement that a good person can go to heaven regardless of his or her religious beliefs. To make things even more confusing, 68 percent of evangelical Protestants believed this.
It seems that in most churches in the U.S. there is a gaping chasm between the pulpit and the pew. It seems like while most people still believe in hell, fewer and fewer are willing to say that those who believe differently than they do belong there, and for me, this is a hopeful sign.
Now as interesting as all of this maybe - - at least, I hope it’s been interesting - - some of you may be asking, what’s a liberal religious understanding of heaven or immortality?
Let me acknowledge that there are many different beliefs about what happens after we die among Unitarian Universalists, and that’s okay. However, speaking personally, as many of you probably already know, I’m skeptical about heaven.
Many of you probably already know this because I’ve said many times before from this pulpit that to the best of my knowledge, this is the only life that I or any of us have. I have a naturalistic worldview, and according to a naturalistic worldview, my consciousness, my mind, my personality - - everything that makes me uniquely who I am - - are a product of my body - - more specifically - - my brain, and I believe that once my physical body dies, my consciousness, my mind, and my personality - - to the degree that it ever existed - - will also cease to exist.
But as I have also said many times before from this pulpit, I also acknowledge how imperfect and finite human knowledge is. When I look back on history and consider how radically different our understanding of the world is today from the way people have understood the world in the past, it inspires in me humility regarding my own beliefs. A hundred or a thousand years from now, people may look back and consider beliefs like mine to be quaint.
Thus all I can say with any certainty is that death is ultimately a mystery, a far point on the horizon past which we cannot see.
Let me say a little more about this. I used to worry more about the possibility that this is the only life that I or any of the rest of us have. I don’t as much any more. The possibility that this life is the only one I have doesn’t fill me with dread or anxiety, though it used to. Like Mark Twain, I expect life after death to be no worse than life before birth.
If, after I die, I discover myself to be in some kind of heaven, I will be pleasantly surprised, though probably not quite as surprised as some more traditionally-minded folk to discover a Unitarian Universalist minister with them in heaven.
To be terribly truthful, however, while I hope to live for a long time, the thought of living for eternity doesn’t even sound as appealing to me as it once did.
Why would I say such a heretical thing? Don’t even those of us who are skeptical about heaven hope in our hearts that promises of heaven are true?
Not necessarily. You see, you know that fourth verse of “Amazing Grace”? You know, the one that says “When we’ve been here ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing Gods praise than when we’ve first begun”? That verse has always kind of scared me.
The truth of the matter is that no matter how wonderful any heaven that I can imagine might be, I can’t help but think that I would get bored with it after a while and what was heavenly soon would become hellish, especially the 74th billionth verse of “Amazing Grace.”
I believe that one of the things that makes meaning possible in my life is that it does have finitude. It does have limits. Without those limits, I wonder whether how much meaning would disappear.
I am terribly looking forward to the coming of spring this year, this year more than most, I think. It has been a long winter for me, both meteorologically and metaphorically. But would I enjoy spring as much if I knew I had an endless number of them left?
I have a book in my office titled Tuck Everlasting about a pioneer family that discovers a spring of water that gives them eternal life. The book was turned into a not very good movie a few years ago, but if you’ve never read this book, I recommend it. It’s juvenile fiction, but it makes the profound philosophical point that eternal life might not be as appealing as many of us think.
The one aspect of heaven that is very appealing to me is the possibility of reuniting with loved ones. I say this because while I don’t fear my own death, one of the things in life I do fear is losing those I love.
Ministry has taught me that this is perhaps the most difficult thing in life for many of us. If I have any regrets about my own skepticism, it is that it prevents me from saying more than I honestly can to those who are grieving.
The other night I was sitting on the couch with Hiromi and our two dogs watching something mindless on TV, and I experienced a feeling of contentment, of happiness, of momentary bliss while being together with those that I love that I wouldn’t have minded going on forever. If this is what heaven were like - - a giant couch with everyone I had ever loved sitting together on it - - I don’t think I would mind that.
On the other hand, I have also learned that death cannot truly separate us from those we truly love. Last week after Dana Reve, Christopher Reeve’s widow died, I heard an interview with her that occurred shortly after she herself was diagnosed with lung cancer in which she said, “I feel Chris with me now more than ever before,” and I believe hers is not a unique experience. Life has taught me that after those we have loved have died, we can continue to carry the love for us and our love for them within our hearts even though they are no longer a part of our lives as they once were.
All this is to say that for me, I have problems with the idea of heaven, both because of its plausibility and even its desirability.
However, I began this morning saying that I wanted to talk about what “immortality” might mean from a liberal religious perspective, and what I want to truly suggest for your consideration this morning is that “heaven” is only one way of imagining “immortality” for ourselves
What are the others?
I want to suggest there are at least three.
First, I want to suggest that one way that we might imagine immortality for ourselves is by recognizing that as Rabindranath Tagore suggested in one of our readings this morning, we as human beings arise out of nature, and after death, we return to nature and become a part it again, becoming once again a part of what Tagore calls the “stream of life” on this planet and the swirling forces of the cosmos. Out of the stars we have come, and perhaps one day to the stars we will return.
Second, and more importantly, I want to suggest that we might imagine eternal life for ourselves by recognizing that we are part of a larger humanity. Not only do we embody, genetically and otherwise, the lives of every human being who has come before us, but our lives live on in all those lives we influence.
Now some may not take very much solace in this fact. Woody Allen once said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying.” But others do.
The scientist and writer Max Rudolf Lemberg, once said: “I believe that eternity does not begin after my death; it was before I came and will remain when I die. But above all it is during my life here on earth, and this is indeed the only time during which I am responsible for my contribution to it…It is , I believe, untrue that what I have done during my life, however insignificant in itself, will not count from the viewpoint of eternity. What I mean is not that it will be remembered. Nobody remembers the man who split the first flint or lit the first fire…Nobody remembers the woman who spun or planted seed. My individual unity may be remembered for a few years and that of the great man…for thousands of years. It is not important whether my name or any special deed of mine will be remembered; it will certainly not be remembered forever. However, what I have done, whatever it was, good or evil, has become eternal in the sense that it has become an indestructible, irremovable part and parcel of the tissue of the life of [humankind]… Not only books or discoveries or statements but even passing acts of generosity or lack of it - - anything which has included other persons, adult or child, belongs to the eternal realm, even a mere loving act, thought, or gesture. That I shall not survive my uniqueness of person may be a serious blow…but the contributions of myself and millions of other persons are not in vain…”
This passage came to mind after I spoke to my mother last week on the phone. My mother, who taught for several years in one of the worst inner-city neighborhoods in Chicago, got a call the other day from a student she had taught in kindergarten who is now a student at Xavier University in New Orleans. The young woman called to tell my mother of how much she remembered her and how much she continued to affect her life.
I think it’s important to remember how even our smallest contributions have the capacity to live on beyond us. Karl E. Peters, in his book Dancing with the Sacred, talks about the funeral for his Uncle Arthur, a man who had been crippled since birth with a cerebral palsy-like disease. Peters says he crawled around his home, pushed himself in a wagon around his small town, and talked in a guttural stammer that was barely understandable. He lived with his mother for most of his life, and after she died, he spent the rest of his life in a nursing home, dying when he was only sixty six. As Peters sat at his uncle’s funeral, he wondered, “What contribution did my uncle make to the world?” The minister who officiated the service answered that question saying that his uncle had one special talent: he always made people feel welcome, greeting everyone he met with a palsied handshake, a crooked smile, and slurred, “Hello, how are you?” No, wonder, Peters thought, the service was packed.
Each act of our lives, whether a monumental discovery, or a simple act of kindness, is like a pebble being thrown into a pond, and the consequences of each of our acts, like expanding ripples, extend beyond our own lives and our own lifetimes. As long as we think of ourselves as living a solitary, individual existence, our prospects for immortality may seem slim, but if we think of each of our lives as being part of a greater and interconnected part of humanity, it is much easier to affirm that we each do participate in eternity.
Finally, I want to suggest we may participate in eternity in a third way.
What do I mean?
Paul Tillich, the famous 20th century Protestant theologian, suggested that we should interpret the Christian Scriptures promise of eternal life only symbolically. “Eternal life,” Tillich ventured, “means that the joy of today has a dimension which gives it transtemporal meaning.”
Now Tillich is one of those theologians whose books, when I read them, sometimes seem as if they’re written in a foreign language, but in this particular case, I think I understand what he means.
There have been times in my life when it seems as if I have experienced eternity in the present moment, when it seems like time itself faded away and there was no past and no future but only the eternal present, or what some have called the eternal now. I suspect we have all had these moments, times when the timelines of our own lives seem to intersect with the timeline of the eternal, times when our own individual lives seem connected to the eternal ebb and flow of the universe itself and we seem to glimpse eternity in the present moment.
In my experience, these experiences happen when we are living most intensely, most passionately, when we feel most alive, when we are being truest to our deepest selves and values, when the creative spirit that animates the universe seems to burn most brightly in our own souls.
I said earlier that I do not fear death, and this is true, but I do have a deep down fear concerning death. It is not about whether I live after I die. It is whether I live before I die, whether I live as fully, richly, and deeply as possible before my days on this earth come to an end.
This I, believe, is the true challenge of our lives. Not to live in such a way that guarantees us eternal life after we die, but to live in such a way where we can participate in the eternal now, so that if this indeed is per chance the only life we have, when it ends, we will already have had our full share of participation in eternity.
So may it be. Amen.