Death and Your Worldview

I was brought up to believe that, for Christians, death is an escape hatch from this dark, terrible place of disease, poverty, and every manner of suffering imaginable. Eternal life with God is what matters. Life here on earth, at best, is an Intensive Care Unit where we wait for God to pull the plug on our life-support system. 

To those people who believe this way, there is our pre-death life on earth that is relatively meaningless, other than to prepare for death and the after life, and then there is their after-death existence, where they will find true meaning and eternal life with God.

These Christians strike out into the world advocating the reality of everlasting life with God, yet at the same time surrenders to the meaningless of this life and this world. All we can expect in our pre-death life is suffering and evil. Their fundamental message, then, is to worship the Creator of this world but reject His creation.

The unbeliever, however, defends this world, scoffing at any notion of eternal life. However, by rejecting God, whether consciously or unconsciously, their defense leaves them asserting that we humans are an accident, an insignificant mist that is here today and gone tomorrow. No matter what else they might say about finding meaning in this life and only in this life, it is all undone by the presupposition that all of this—the world, life, and death—are accidents.

The meaning you give to death determines your ideas, ideals, perceptions, evaluations, and judgments regarding your view of this world. Your relationship to death creates a framework of beliefs, ideas, and attitudes through which you interpret and interact with the world and the people within it, as well as determine how you will order your life.  

If death is an escape from this world of evil and suffering into eternal life with God, then what is the only possible and logically consistent worldview available to you?  

If this world, your life, and your death are all accidents, then what is the only possible and logically consistent worldview available to you?

“Okay, Wilson, what is the meaning of death, to you?” To begin with, I agree with St Paul’s writings: Death is an enemy we humans brought into God’s creation, an enemy that Christ came into the world to defeat.

Next Post Death: The Last Enemy To Be Destroyed

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

A Meaninglessness Death: Mindlessness, Hedonism or Narcissism

He's a real nowhere man

Sitting in his nowhere land

Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

-John Lennon and Paul McCartney

If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus,

what is the gain to me, if the dead rise not?

let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.

St Paul, I Corinthians 15.2

We cannot control death. It is coming for us and there is nothing we can do about it. So what do we do? Some of us just flip the switch of consciousness to the off position. Some look at death, decide it is the annihilation of self, that life and death are nothing more than accidents of nature, and then go about creating a life of fun and games, dancing on the deck of a sinking Titanic. Others, who have also decided death is meaningless, refuse to embrace the fact that this means that life is also without any meaning. These are the people who seek to prove that they matter, that life can still be meaningful. While their counterparts are on the deck of the Titanic dancing and shooting champagne, these people are below decks, attending a seminar on how to develop self-esteem.  

Some of those who avoid thinking about the reality of their death and its meaning have placed their lives on automatic pilot. Life is lived mindlessly, without purpose or intention. These are the people who often turn themselves over to others. “Life and death terrify me. I don’t want to think of the meaning of it all, so, here: you think your thoughts through my mind, live your life through mine. It’s your responsibility.” Avoiding seeking to face the question of the meaning of their deaths and, therefore, their lives, they are choosing to allow others to do it for them. This, of course, makes their lives a redundancy, a waste of oxygen, as they have taken on the role of “mini-me” to some other guy’s “me.” Okaaay. I suppose willful ignorance and abdication are one option. Unless there really is a point to it all and then their life is all about missing the point, isn’t it.  

Many people take a quick glance at death and are hit with a despair that they then allow to choke out any further questioning and seeking of answers. “If it’s meaningless, I don’t want to know.” These people seek to numb their senses with food, or substance abuse, or fun and games, or work, or with one thousand trivial pursuits that bring momentary pleasure and serve to keep the despair at bay. “If I don’t feel it, it isn’t there. If I don’t dig deeper into the meaning of death, then I don’t run the risk of my despair increasing exponentially, if I discover that it’s meaningless. If I close my eyes and whistle while I walk through a graveyard, then…” Then what? Have death grab you by your neck and slap you in the face with the reality that there is – or was – a meaning to it all? And then? At that point, there are no more questions to answer and no answers to live by.

But what of those people who have come to the sure conclusion that death and, therefore, life are meaningless: who have completely embraced the belief that life and death are all an accident of nature? Many of them will live by the motto, “Let us, therefore, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we are food for the worms.” Others become angry and lash out at their own meaningless existence. (See Johnny Ringo in the movie, Tombstone.) They do not deny the meaninglessness they see and do not play the hypocrite by pretending this all means something.

Others, however, have a different response to what they believe to be the meaninglessness of death. These people refuse to see their selves as impotent, refuse to see that if their death is meaningless then so is their life. “I do count. I matter. I am valuable. And I will prove it. I will not ‘go gentle into that good night.’ I will not allow death to negate me, to tell me that my life doesn’t matter. I will make myself into a hero, the chief protagonist in a book that is all about …well, me, of course! One day, death will come but not before I justify my existence and spit in death’s face.” (See Ayn Rand)

No matter what you do, death and time will erase your memory from the earth and all your heroism, “meaningful” pursuits, and wars for The Right, The Noble, and The Ideal (as you define these terms) will ultimately be meaningless. Besides, your answer to the question is no less narcissistic than the hedonist who is over there eating and drinking and being merry. Life is all about you justifying your self, eh? You decide what is meaningful and what is not? You are the Final Arbiter, god of your universe? (See? You do believe in a god, after all!) In the end, death will spit in the face of your achievements, heroism, and self-justification. If death is meaningless, then your “meaningful” life is no more significant than an inedible piece of a 25 year-old fruitcake. Of so I believe. Just something you might want to consider … if death is actually meaningless, that is. 

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014 

Weddings v Funerals

Despite his afflictions, man wants to be happy, only wants to be happy, and cannot help wanting to be happy. But how shall he go about it? The best thing would be to make himself immortal; but as he cannot do that, he has decided to stop himself thinking about it. 
-- Pascal, Pensees

Death stalks us. We run but, in the end, cannot hide. Death is inevitable. We do anything and everything to not think about it, to not see that it is at the end of every path we take so as to avoid it. And each morning we wake, our avoidance mechanisms are strengthened and emboldened, and death disappears deeper into the mists until, poof, we think it is gone, or at least so far off in the future that we can safely tell ourselves we will think about it, later. Much later.

Solomon said that it was better to be in the house of mourning than in one where there is feasting: it is better to go to a funeral than a wedding. (Ecclesiastes 7.2) How so? Who thinks this way? Isn’t this morose? Isn’t it better to celebrate life than to stare into the abyss of death? “Carpe Diem!” Well, sure, but what if all of our Carpe-ing is actually a seizing of the meaningless?

At funerals we are faced with mortality: my mortality.  Death whispers to me: “Your dead body will also be in a casket or your ashes in an Urn. Your day is coming. Your time here will end.” And herein is why funerals are – or can be – better to attend than weddings, because it is here where we are most prone to asking ourselves,

What is the meaning of life?

Why am I here?

In the end, what really matters?

Of course, the answers to these questions depend upon the answer to The Question, “What is the meaning of death?” After all, if death is meaningless, then so is life. If death is the obliteration of my existence—my self—then tell me what was the point of my being here? Why was I even alive? And how does anything actually “matter”?

“Come on, Wilson, our existence is an accident by way of some freaky accidents millions of years ago that came about by accidents out in deep dark ‘space’ that occurred billions of years ago. These accidents set in motion a series of occurrences that led to our having these bodies that wear out after so many years.”

So, life is an accident? Your life, my life, their lives are an accident, and death is simply part of that accident? Then what does that mean about our lives here on earth?

Even in asking ourselves serious questions about the meaning of life, we often still seek to avoid death. Think about this: If I never ask questions regarding the meaning of life, I cannot help but have a very shallow existence. However, if I never seek out the answer to the question of the meaning of death, how do I know that my answers to the questions about the meaning of life have any relationship at all to Truth or Reality? 

How many of us set about to create meaningful lives, with our meaningful goals and meaningful experiences, without actually sitting before the reality of death and asking ourselves, What does it mean? If it’s meaningless then what’s up with seeking to create a meaningful life? If death is The End, if death is meaningless, then anything we do here on earth is, in the words of Solomon, only so much “vanity and the grasping of wind.”  

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

Wasting Yourself

Reading about Johnny Football hanging out with King James: “"When the opportunity was brought to me, I just told him (Manziel) if he's willing to listen to my advice, I was willing to give it," James said. "I was texting him weekly, before the games and after the games. I didn't know it would lead to us being together with business, but I was happy to help." If he is willing. Just. So.

How much energy and resources have we wasted on seeking to Be There for people who demonstrably don’t want us to do so? I say “demonstrably” because where we most often err are with those people who say they wanted our help to learn or change or grow but whose behaviors screamed: “I’m not really interested or willing.” But there we were pouring out whatever life and light we had … on a disinterested mind and heart. You’d think once we saw that all we had poured out for their sake wasn’t seeping in we’d get the hint, but, nooooo, we redouble our efforts! When we do this not only are we wasting the resources God has given us, we are robbing those who are willing and who actually want whatever it is we have to offer.  

Think of Jesus calling Peter to follow him, Peter saying, No Thank You, and Jesus still coming around every day seeking to teach him, and help him with his fishing business. Not going to happen. Christ gave himself to people who followed after him, to those who sought to be and do what he called them to. The “willing” people were the one’s who got his on-going attention.

Sometimes people start out all gung-ho and such but after realizing that learning and changing takes a great deal of sacrifice and work, they begin backing away. Imagine Peter saying, “Yes, I will follow you”, but then, a year later, saying, “Never mind. All that, ‘eat my flesh and drink my blood’ stuff, freaked me. I am out of here.” Maybe Jesus would have gone around a few times to check in with Peter, maybe had John do the same. What He wouldn’t do is give himself as much to Peter as he was to the disciples who remained with him. His mindset was, those who continue to hunger and thirst, get my life. Those who don’t, don’t.

Where this analogy breaks down is that—shock—none of us are Jesus, so we are not someone that all people need to heed. Your not wanting to learn from me or have my support in your quests is not necessarily an indictment against you. In fact, I make it a practice to never allow myself to think along those lines. If you don’t want me to Be There for you, then my thinking is, “I hope and pray you find people who can serve you on your quest,” and then watch out for those who want me to do so.

Of course, it took me years and years of wasting my resources to learn this. My thinking was that you could love people into changing and learning. Keep Being There, no-matter-what, and he or she will see the light. Maybe. Sometimes. Rarely. Usually, however, if they aren’t willing, if they don’t listen, if you are doing most all of the reaching-out, if they rarely take any of your advice and recommendations and run with them, then they don’t see you as someone from whom they can learn: no matter what they may be saying to you. Again, don’t think of this in terms of an indictment against either of you, just a sign telling you to pull back and move on to those who are willing.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2013

Messy v Clean

Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; but much increase comes by the strength of an ox.  

--Proverbs 14.4 

So the Fidel Castro mini-me (Raul) decided to “permit” a small amount of entrepreneurialism in Cuba but quickly jumped in to “restore order” because the guys were branching out and producing in ways and places they weren’t supposed to.  Statists just hate the messiness of free markets where people think that they know best regarding how to get what they want with what they’ve got. And it galls them, when it comes to the marketplace, that freedom loving people see the State pretty much as a cop walking a beat to keep force and fraud out of the neighborhood. Silly people.

The Statist’s idea of how the marketplace should operate is where everyone proceeds along at the proper pace, earning a proper wage, making the proper purchase from the proper vendor at the proper price. The problem with all of this properness, however, is that throughout history it inevitably has led to empty troughs.

The “Ox” of freedom produces a lot of caca. Whether it’s in markets, the Public Square, or relationships, freedom is always messy. The freedom to succeed brings with it the freedom to make a mess of things, to err in judgment, and to fail. The alternative to the messiness of a free market is State control … and empty troughs.

Freedom also weighs a ton. All the responsibility for filling your trough is on you. There is no unalienable right to success and happiness: only the right to pursue them, as you deem best.  With the weight of responsibility firmly in place, the individual quickly learns that filling his trough will require self-motivation and self-government. Some people, however, don’t like mixing it up in the messy marketplace, and definitely do not want a ton of responsibility placed on their shoulders, so find that their troughs remain fairly empty. Rather than allowing this to motivate and educate these people, the State is called in to do-something-about-this: which it gladly does, of course.

“I’ll clean up the mess and will slaughter other people’s oxen and feed you.”

What it is actually doing, however, is taking away much of our freedom and replacing the weight of self-responsibility with the restrictive burdens of State control. Now the only people with full troughs are those in the upper echelons of the State and those corporations that make unethical side deals with it: deals unavailable to the self-employed and to small businesses. The result: an ever-increasing amount of empty troughs.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

Believing in Your Vision

You can always tell who believes in his vision and who merely hopes it may take place one day by the nature of the risks the individual is willing to take.  It should be no shock to discover that when Bill Gates (the founder of Microsoft and one of the wealthiest people in the world) was a young boy, his favorite game was “Risk.”  Whether it is the risk of political stature and cachet in speaking the truth as you see it (Churchill) or the financial risk of leaving your cushy, prestigious career as a University professor, buying up a trunk load of your recently published book (the one that the publisher told you would only sell a few thousand copies) and going to scores of interviews in small town radio stations across the USA—and at the end of the year having a best seller and making more money in one year than you had in the previous thirty-six years (Wayne Dyer, Your Erroneous Zones), the belief in the vision is verified by the risks you are willing to take.

Visions are not realized by playing it safe.  Camelot would never have been built if Arthur was not willing to risk his life in battle.  Furthermore, he would never have engaged in those battles, if he did not believe in himself and his vision.

Abraham would never have arrived in the Promised Land if he had refused to leave his family and country for a far off destination, even though he did not know, at first, where he was going.  Without believing in his vision and his ability to attain that vision, of course, he would never have even considered the risks involved.

Joseph would never have become second-in-command of all Egypt had he not risked “being wrong” regarding the interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream.  He took the risk because he had a vision years earlier that had set him upon his quest.  His faith in the God of that vision gave him the courage to take the risk.

We not only see the legends’ beliefs born out in the leaps of faith that they take in pursuing the fulfillment of their vision, we also see it demonstrated in their laser-like focus on the vision.  Everything about their lives declares, This One Thing I Do.

Management guru Peter Drucker said, “Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission.”  A monomaniac is someone with a single idea.  In this context, the single idea is your vision.  Of course, this does not mean that you won’t have a multiplicity of concerns and avenues for fulfilling your vision, only that there is a unifying principle at the heart of most all of what you are doing.

You won’t find Legendary Leaders often reacting to circumstances or being led around by some Focus Group.  They also don’t waste a lot of time and energy on fighting and arguing with those who disagree with their vision.  I am not saying that they do not seek to persuade others, only that when they do, it is part of a proactive strategy rather than a mere distraction.

Early on, one of the major errors I made as I went on my quest was to spend so much time seeking to show others how “wrong” their quests were.  As I look back on this, it all looks so silly and childish. Part of this was youthful arrogance and another part of it was insecurity, as I foolishly believed that for my quest to be True, everyone else needed to agree with and adopt the path I had chosen. What a huge distraction and waste of energy that was, and it was all caused by the weakness of my belief in my vision and myself.

The vision consumes the legend-in-the-making.  Living on the razor’s edge between disaster and miracle—which is where most visionaries reside--the visionary cannot afford to take his eyes off of the moment in which he is living.  Believing as he does provides him with blinders to anything and anyone who would distract from his quest.

An excerpt from my book, Legendary Leadership

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2009

Sometimes Healing is Not For Our Best

Captain Kirk: Dammit, Bones, you're a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are ... If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away. I need my pain. (Can’t you just hear Shatner saying this in his famous, over the top, staccato style?)  -- From, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Like most of you, I have had my share of titanic spiritual and psychological struggles. Some of these battles left scars, and some of them left me with open wounds that I feel to this day. I have begged God for healing, pleaded, and even tried bargaining, but I never had anything He needed. (Go figure.) Add my unwanted personality quirk/weakness of being extremely sensitive, say, to living with melancholy or depression, and … O my. “What’s up with this, Lord? Can I get a little relief, here?”

God: No.

Monte: Can you at least give me a, ‘Not yet’?

Along the way I have learned some things about living with internal battles, weaknesses, and wounds.

To start with, I discovered that many of my weaknesses and unwanted personality traits were part and parcel with my strengths so that if I seek to rid myself of them, I would end up restricting what I do best. Subsequently, I no longer see, say, melancholy as an enemy that must be defeated but, rather, as a sparing partner who is forcing me deeper into my soul, as well as to rely more completely upon the God of grace and love. And this led me to another realization.

Sometimes, healing is not for our best. Sometimes Jacob is going to live out his days with a limp and Paul is going to keep whatever that “thorn” was in his side. Sometimes the malady is our chief source of wisdom, humility, and many of our most valued strengths. Kirk was right. In some cases, if we lose the pain, we lose part of our selves.

If you came to me today and told me that you could make it so that all my wounds would be healed, cause my melancholy and depression to vanish forever, and free me from my unwanted personality traits, but that, in return for my deliverance, I had to give up all the good and all the graces that have come to me through these struggles, I would choose to retain these weaknesses and maladies. Through my struggles, my soul has grown with a greater awareness of and empathy for the pain and struggle of others, a keener understanding of my strengths and limitations, the value of sharing souls with a cherished friend, and the joy of serving and caring for others. So. No deal. No thank-you.

I am not advocating masochism. I am simply suggesting there are sometimes larger issues at stake, so I need to be careful about wanting to be delivered where God wants me to be transformed.

John Adams and Abraham Lincoln suffered with melancholy and depression, as did Winston Churchill: would they have been the men they were, achieved the heights of successes that they did, had they been “healed”? Would Psalm 42, or CS Lewis’ “A Grief Observed,” or the homilies and poetry of John Donne been written had these men not wrestled with despair? The great American Industrialist John D. Rockefeller suffered with depression: what about his accomplishments without the soul created by his suffering? My experience says, no, they would not have had the successes they achieved without having the internal battles they waged.

Something else I have learned about living with such battles:

Everybody has been shot.

Do you remember this scene from the movie Black Hawk Down, the story of the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 (the locals call it the Day of the Rangers), when our troops were ambushed while seeking to capture a Somali warlord? This exchange takes place in the middle of a firefight.

McKnight (Tom Sizemore): You, get up there and drive!

Othic (Kent Linville): But I’m shot Colonel!

McKnight: Everybody’s shot!

Most people have been shot at least once or twice. Wounds, issues, and struggles can easily make us self-centered. You’re not the only one dealing with such things, so watch out for the attitude my-pain-sets-me-apart as someone who warrants a pass on caring for others or treating people with dignity, grace, and love, or ceasing to be and do all that God has called you to.

While I am mindful of the reality that some people’s wounds require them to get off the firing line and into a hospital, most of us need to saddle up and do what is required. After all, that never ending internal battle, those wounds, and your “weaknesses” have actually given you strengths, wisdom, and graces that your fellow-knights desperately need for waging their battles. Anyway, it is amazing how much the pain often subsides when you are serving others and fighting for a cause greater than yourself.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2013