Priorities and Fear of Death

 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth

-- Revelation 3:16 (KJV)

Giant skeletons displayed at the 2018  Dia de Los Muertos festival in Corpus Christi TX

I may have a slightly exaggerated fascination with death lately. 

Blame Lent (you are dust and to dust you shall return and all that), blame all those sugar skulls I saw last November, or blame the fact that sooner or later it's coming for me, but lately I've been interested in researching the process of dying and the various procedures that go into preparing a body for burial. 

(By-the-by, if I kick the bucket prematurely: no embalming, cheap as possible coffin, instead of flowers give money to these people. And pray for me. Trust me, I'm going to need it). 

There's a YouTube channel I enjoy watching called 'Ask a Mortician' that's been an excellent research source for my strange new interest. The lady who runs the channel works as a mortician in LA running a 'death positive' funeral home with a more hippie, naturalistic bent to burial. She talks about everything from what colors dead bodies turn as they decompose to iconic corpses throughout history. 

One of the videos she made was, "Why are You Afraid of Death?". Like most of her other videos, this one was, for the most part, very well made, honest, and informative. She divided the overwhelming subject "fear of death" into five or six subsets, including 'Fear of missing out on experiences' and 'fear of being forgotten' among others, and asked viewers to identify which ones they most identified with. She then gave her advice for addressing, or at least learning to live with, each one. 

When it came to 'fears relating to the after life', her response stuck out to me. "If you're afraid of Hell, find a priest, an imam, or a leader who will find you a kinder version of the afterlife. This is my personal opinion, but I don''t think anyone should be deeply terrified of the afterlife, especially given how many liberal, loving interpretations there now are in all religions". (Around the 5:30 mark in the original video, if you want to hear her thoughts on this for yourself). 

In other words, her advice was basically, "change your religious beliefs so that, according to them, you won't go to hell anymore." 

I understand that this particular person isn't religious, and so doesn't necessarily have a dog in this fight,  but this rather pat answer got more and more under my skin the more I thought about it. It just seemed so patronizing towards those who take religious belief seriously. 

Life Sized Statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe, 2018 Dia de Los Muertos Festival, Corpus Christi TX.

Now, on one hand, I think that there's a valid point buried in there. I've written before about my struggles with scruples  and about how life when your entire relationship to your religion is fear can be nearly unbearable. There are people for whom their relationship with their religious beliefs is an uptight, terrified, constrained mess, and yes, they should probably revisit their core theology and receive help to form a more humanistic view of God and their relationship to Him (or it, or they, or she, or whatever flavor your understanding of the deity takes). 

But there's a difference between examining your relationship with your religion to see if you're manifesting signs of a mental illness in how you relate to its expectations, and wantonly tossing out parts of that religion's moral framework so that it will justify your lifestyle. I do agree with her that conferring with a religious authority to aid in the process of figuring out what your proper relationship with your religion ought to look like is important, but I disagree that the answer for everyone is "just change your beliefs so they're gentler on you". 

For a lot of people, the answer will be "embrace your current beliefs more fully." The whole point of having a moral system of any type, whether it happens to correspond with a religion or not, is to help you become a better person. If you've arrived at a moral system you believe is true in how it treats other people, you need to live out that system in order to become the person you want to be. This is true whether you're a militant feminist or a peaceful contemplative nun, whether you have a family or you're a bachelor, or whether you're an agnostic or religious. 

Your relationship with these things ought to be based on how true you think they are, not how easy they are to live. Otherwise, what's the point? You won't change the world that way, and you definitely won't change yourself either. 

The relationship between fear of death and how we live our lives morally is, I think, rightly and meaningfully connected. It keeps our lives in focus. Whether you're afraid of going to hell, or just of living a poor life, it's a powerful motivator to find out what you believe makes a good life and to live it. Death understood properly puts life in context. It's a funny fact, but we tend to work better and more productively when we're conscious of a deadline. 

The fear of death can be a call for change, for setting priorities, and for clarifying who we are and who we ought to be. It seems a shame to waste it, even if it is so easy to come by. 

Altar for artists at the 2018 Dia de Los Muertos Festival, Corpus Christi TX

Note the awesome painting of Bob Ross. 

Quick side note: I've been sitting on these pictures for awhile now. Really, really happy I finally got to use them. If you're ever in Corpus Christi in late October, I really recommend attending the festival.

 Go early though, it gets crowded.