[Dialogue] {Spam?} 11/21/spong on G-O-D

[KroegerD at aol.com]

November 21, 2007  
Lecturing in Central Otago, New  Zealand  

"There were two ways that people seemed to relate to the death of my wife.  
Those who perceive death as the opposite of life tended to look at her death  ne
gatively, as a tragedy; while those who tended to look at death as the  
opposite of birth saw it as the completion of a process, the final act in an  
adventure called life." These words, spoken by an Australian television host  named 
Noel Cheer, initiated a rather amazing and fascinating dinner conversation  
that occurred in Noel's home in Titahi Bay, a Wellington suburb, while we were  
in New Zealand.  
I have known Noel Cheer for a number of years. I was lecturing in New Zealand 
 some time ago when his first wife was in the final stages of a terminal 
illness.  I wrote him a note of sympathy when her death occurred. I was delighted 
to learn  that he had recently remarried a childhood friend named Shirley. His 
analysis of  these two ways of relating to death set the tone for our dinner 
conversation  that night. With the issue posed this way I asked him if either 
group of his  friends tended to see life after death as something that 
affected or shaped  their attitudes. "I do not think so," he responded, and then he 
commented that  neither he nor his friends tended to think about life after 
death much anymore.  "My wife is gone," he insisted. "We remember her and I 
suppose people continue  to live after they die in some sense as long as they are 
remembered, but that  life is only in the minds of those remembering. It has no 
objective reality."  
There were eight people at this dinner party. It was hosted by the Cheer's,  
Noel and Shirley, and my wife, Christine, and I were the 'guests from abroad'. 
 The others included Margaret Mayman, the pastor at St. Andrew's on the 
Terrace  Presbyterian Church in downtown Wellington, and her partner Claire, also 
an  ordained Presbyterian Minister, who now works in a hospice program for the 
dying  and has become a frequent conductor of funerals for those who have no 
church  connection; and Jill and Ian Harris, she a recognized author of 
children's books  and he a syndicated columnist whose work appears in a number of New 
Zealand's  daily papers. Some years ago Jill and Ian lost their 13 year old 
son in an  airplane accident. Like all premature deaths this tragedy had an 
indelible, even  a life changing affect on these two people. Both Noel and Ian 
have an active  religious interest. Noel did some graduate study in theology at 
Victoria  University in Wellington following his career in IBM and prior to 
becoming a  radio and television personality. Ian began his professional career 
as a  missionary before turning to journalism. Today they are active in an  
organization known as "The Sea of Faith," the brainchild of Cambridge theologian 
 Don Cupitt. I mention these bits of biographical data so that my readers 
might  understand the various perspectives out of which our conversation flowed 
that  evening.  
As this conversation developed I believe it is fair to say that only my wife  
Christine and I seemed to feel that there was still merit in probing the 
mystery  present in the question posed by the biblical character Job: "If a man 
(or  woman) dies, will he (or she) live again?" That question simply was not on 
the  horizon. Shirley Cheer discussed the death of her first husband, which 
occurred  a few years ago. "He was a good person," she said. "We had a good 
life, but he  is no more. On his birthday I always do something to remember him. 
Noel and I  might drink a toast to his memory. I have no sense, however, that 
he still lives  anywhere. His life is simply over. I have no expectation that 
we will meet  again."  
Jill and Ian were perhaps even more emphatic. "There is no God watching over  
the world no matter how much some people seem to wish there were. Some  
theologians try to make that God idea more acceptable by redefining God as  
something other than a supernatural being, but that is little more than the  
lingering fantasy of yesterday's religious consciousness." Both were adamant in  their 
conviction that this life was the only life any of us will ever have or  
know. The two Presbyterian ministers were not quite as bold in their rejection  of 
life after death. They noted, however, that even in mainline churches, the  
focus of funeral services has shifted dramatically over the last hundred years. 
 A century ago funerals were the great affirmations about God's power in the 
face  of death's apparent victory. The scriptural lessons read contained 
faith's  assurances: "death is swallowed up in victory. O death where is thy sting? 
O  grave, where is thy victory?" "In my father's house there are many 
mansions. I  go to prepare a place for you." "Nothing, neither life nor death, can 
separate  us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus." Today, while some of 
these  lessons are still read, the major funeral content has become a 
memorial service  in which the pastor, family members or friends will reflect on the 
life of the  deceased. That shift has occurred in almost every religious 
tradition. One  recalls those national funerals we had in America during the 
violent sixties  with the deaths of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and 
Robert F.  Kennedy. Their funerals were memorial services to remember the dead 
and to allow  the nation to grieve its loss. The old ringing affirmations seem 
rather  incongruous today. One recalls the sermon given by Billy Graham at the 
9/11  memorial service in which he assured the gathered mourners that the 
victims of  that tragedy were all happy with God in heaven. It was not offensive 
because it  was familiar, but it was nonetheless a jolting, unreal note. The 
fact is that  even traditional clergy today say very little about life after 
death.  
The two Presbyterian ministers at this dinner party were not exceptions to  
this observation. Claire, out of her hospice experience talked about doing  
funerals for those who had no real religion affiliation. Her method of handling  
that was to be descriptive. "Some people believe this," she would say, "and 
some  people believe that." She then continued, "But whatever you believe we 
gather to  acknowledge this life, to remember the contribution he or she made and 
to give  thanks for this person's time on earth". Margaret, the Wellington 
pastor, used  the word "agnostic" to describe her point of view. "I simply do 
not know and so  I share my honesty in all my encounters with death." It was a 
straight forward  way of dealing with the issue without doing clergy 
doubletalk.  
I wondered later if this diner group was representative of our increasingly  
secular society. My sense is that most people in the western post-Christian  
world might well be in a similar place, but that they do not want to face that  
fact quite so openly. That is why I found this conversation so remarkable.  
People increasingly, I suspect, do not believe in life after death, but many of 
 them still believe in believing in life after death. People increasingly do 
not  believe in God, but they still believe in believing in God. Perhaps the 
reason  for this is that the age of faith has simply had its day and yet we 
still mourn  its passing. Perhaps it is that religion is too deeply part of the 
human coping  system that unless we see some real alternative to the belief 
system of  yesterday, we will not fully sever ourselves in a conscious way from 
that  system.  
My convictions, when I allow myself to be fully conscious of them, place me  
in a different camp. While I am deeply convinced of the reality of God, I do 
not  find that the way most people or even traditional churches speak about God 
to be  any longer credible. The miracle working deity above the sky has died 
a natural  death for me. This God was the victim of a revolution in human 
thought. Galileo  destroyed God's dwelling place. Isaac Newton rendered this God 
impotent. Darwin  ended our delusion that human beings are a special creation, 
just a little lower  than the angels and thus destined for eternity, and 
forced us to see that human  life is part of a natural evolutionary process, "a 
little higher than the ape,"  and presumably destined to share the fate of all 
the animals. Watching that  definition of God die, however, is not the same as 
watching God die. It rather  drives me to probe both God and the meaning of 
life more deeply.  
I discover at the heart of our humanity something that is not bound by  
mortality or terminated by death. I find it in the human capacity to embrace  both 
transcendence and timelessness, to share, if you will, in those qualities  
that relate us to the eternity of God. My problem is not a lack of belief; it is  
a lack of words through which to state that belief. It is much easier to 
state  what I do not believe about life after death. I do not believe in a 
behaviour  controlling system of reward and punishment connected with an afterlife. I 
see  that as little more than an attempt to create fairness in an unfair 
world. I  have no desire to continue a self perpetuated hoax derived from our  
self-centered survival-oriented humanity. I also do not believe in life after  
death because I have some sense that this life is incomplete without it. If this 
 life is all the life I have I am quite content. I have lived it long and I 
hope  well. I can, therefore, live without a belief in life after death, indeed 
my  conviction about that changes nothing about how I live now. Yet I still 
affirm  quite strongly that self-conscious human life has become something more 
than  molecules formed by chance, and born only to eat, grow, mate, reproduce 
and then  to die with no meaning beyond that. I believe we were made for 
something more.  
The inability to find words big enough to convey this meaning still eludes  
me. I struggle to make sense of those experiences that I do not believe are  
delusional. I have had transcendent moments in which time seems to stand still  
and eternity is engaged. The theologian Paul Tillich alluded to such things, I 
 believe, when he coined the phrase: "The Eternal Now." Yet I have only human 
 language, bound as it is by both time and space, in which to make sense out 
of  that experience. I do not know what the time bound word "after" means when 
we  say "life after death". I do not know what words like "eternal" or  
"everlasting" mean for all of those are time words that make no sense beyond  this 
life. Space words like heaven and hell also lose their meaning in every  
effort to speak of that which is not bound by space. There are those who dismiss  
this problem as nothing more than a word game based on wishful thinking. That 
is  not a sufficient explanation for me. When life is lived deeply enough I 
believe  that eternity is experienced and when transcendence is engaged at the 
heart of  life that for which we have coined the word God becomes real. Can 
human beings  experience eternity, but not be able to describe it? Can we explore 
love so  deeply that all boundaries fade and transformation occurs? I think we 
can and I  do not think these things are either delusional or wish 
fulfilment. This topic  fascinates me. If ever I write another book it will be on this 
subject. For now,  however, put me down as a believer in God and a believer 
that somehow I will  share in God's eternity. If any of you have wisdom to share 
or a book that you  think I need to read on this subject please send them 
along. I want to move into  this arena.  
John Shelby Spong  
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Heather Satrom of Silver Springs, Maryland, writes:  
I am an avid reader of your books and was delighted that you have written yet 
 another one. Thank you for making scholarly research related to the Bible  
accessible to the general public. I have given copies of your books to dozens 
of  friends and relatives over the years in an effort to generate dialogue 
among  Christians and non-Christians alike. I think Jesus for the Non-Religious  
is particularly useful for humanists/agnostics who want to understand the  
historical Jesus. Thank you for this book!  
As a member of the "Church Alumni Association," I have been frustrated by  
many aspects of the church, for reasons that you describe so well in Why  
Christianity Must Change or Die. However, I was delighted to discover,  relatively 
recently, a spiritual path that works for me: Attending Quaker  meetings in the 
unprogrammed/silent tradition. It seems to me that the Quaker  concept (that 
of "God in everyone") relates to Paul Tillich's idea of God as  "the Ground of 
All Being," which you often discuss. Do you have any thoughts on  this? I 
have so much respect for your work, and I would be delighted to hear  your 
reflections on Quakerism, Quaker thinkers/activists, and your experience in  a 
Quaker meeting, if you've ever attended one.  
Dear Heather,  
I have always held the Quaker movement in high regard. Early in my career, I  
gained much from the writings of an Episcopal priest who had become a Quaker. 
 When I was a rector in Richmond, a member of my staff in her retirement 
joined a  Quaker meeting house with her husband and derived much strength from 
that  association. About two years ago, I led a National Conference for Quakers 
that  was held on the campus of Virginia Tech University. Every contact I have 
had  with them has been enriching.  
The witness of the Quakers is deep in American history. Ben Franklin both  
honored and was later deeply bothered by their presence in Pennsylvania in the  
18th century. They are peacemakers, deeply ethical people. I find that the  
Quaker movement has served as the conscience of our nation. It has always been  
small in numbers but powerful in making its message heard. Quakers always seem 
 to appeal to those turned off by traditional, organized religion.  
Two of our presidents had Quaker roots, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon. It  
would be interesting to find what the residual influence of Quakerism was on 
the  formation of their character.  
So, if you have found a home there, I rejoice for you and I commend it to  
others when traditional worship patterns begin to offend more than to enhance.  
John Shelby Spong 



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