Loving A Hidden God
THE FEAR OF DEATH
What is needed above all else (as the first step towards wisdom) is to be transformed by a "fear of God" through which we come to wish to know his will, to know what he wants us to pursue and what he wants us to avoid. Now such "fear" will necessarily upset us because it forces us to confront our own mortality and our eventual death. Thinking of our inevitable end quickly nails our present concerns for our flesh and its foolish pride to the wood of the cross.
Christian Doctrine, 2.9
Augustine firmly believed that one of the sources of darkness in our life is the sudden realization that someday we shall die. For those gifted with Christian faith there is added a further somber prospect, a final judgment which will perhaps determine that our life has been a failure.
Aided by the grace of God, it is within our power to avoid being an eternal failure, but be cannot avoid going through the door of death to reach eternity. As Augustine wrote, death is the common lot of all humans. (City of God, 1.11) We have no control over being born (that is in the hands of others) nor over our eventual death:
All of us share at least two experiences in this life: a beginning and an end. When we are born, we begin our troubles; when we die, we move on to a future that is uncertain.
Sermon 229E, 1.
Augustine uses the analogy of the lamp to show why death is inevitable. A lamp is filled with light only because it is constantly consuming its supply of oil. If it burns a long time, the light begins to flicker and die as its source of energy is used up. The light can be kept burning only by providing new oil. Sooner or later, however, the light goes out forever because the lamp's wick disintegrates. Even at its brightest moments this essential part of the lamp is slowly being eaten away by time and by use. We humans are like living lamps. We must take nourishment over a lifetime in order to maintain our vital activities. It might seem to the foolish that as long as we have enough to eat and drink our life can go on forever. But this cannot happen because the vessel in which the light of life shines is itself corroding, wearing down, and wearing out. The day will come when it can no longer support the flame of life no matter how much "oil" is poured into it. When that day comes, the body falls apart, the soul escapes, and the human being dies. (Sermon 362, 11)
It is thus in the very nature of human life that it be a "race towards death". We all run at the same speed, though for some death's darkness is closer than for others. Like it or not, each one of us is plummeting towards death from the first moment of our existence (City of God, 13.10) and our increasing feebleness is but the extension of our future death into our present moment. (Commentary on Psalm 84, 10) Indeed, looking at it from afar, Human history can be seen as nothing more than a moving play in which the dying give up their places on the stage to the newly born. (City of God, 15.1) The interval that is given to us to speak our lines (even if it extends from infancy to decrepit old age) is always a very short time. (Sermon 124, 4). Indeed, in a creature who thirsts for eternity, no life that has an end can be called a long time. (Sermon 335B, 2; Sermon 345, 2).
To ignore our coming death or to take every possible means to avoid it, is the height of foolishness. As Augustine wryly observes, although some humans make it their life's work to avoid hard work, when faced with death they will strive mightily to put it off as long possible:
Even those who do not believe in an afterlife of punishment, even those who mistakenly think that after death they will enjoy the height of carnal pleasures, even those who (because of the faith) hope for an afterlife of unimaginable peace and happiness ... all of these keep busy making sure that they do not die too quickly. Why otherwise are they so concerned about immoderately accumulating the so-called "necessities of life"? Only panic to avoid death explains why some will submit themselves again and again to so many supposedly therapeutic tortures, to so many medicines, which may indeed may make them better but can just as easily make them worse.
Sermon 280, 3.
Augustine considered such desperate efforts to stay alive terribly sad because, as he told his people, ...
When humans weep and moan and beg and curse at the prospect of their death, all they can ever achieve is to die a bit later. They cannot stop the process.
Sermon 161, 7.
It is thus unwise to fight too strenuously against death. It is even more unwise to ignore it. The truly wise human is one who recognizes the inevitability of death and makes plans accordingly. (Letter 10, 2) But many do not take that course. They do not take death seriously. Augustine describes how they act at funerals:
They think of the dead when they are carried out to be buried and say: "Poor fellow, only yesterday he was walking around!" (or) "I saw him less than a week ago and he spoke to me and now he is no more." This is what they say. But they think this way only as long as they weep for the dead and are busy about the funeral and prepare the procession and carry out the body and bury it. Once the body is buried they bury the thought of death with it. The thought of someday following their dead friend ceases and they return to their life of fraud, stealing, perjury, drunkenness, and the pleasures of the flesh.
Sermon 361, 5.
Being consumed by present pleasures and goals, is not an intelligent way to live. The human is a being of past, present, and future and all times must be kept in consciousness if one is to be truly wise. Recognizing our limited future in this life, we can come to a more reasonable love for the things we have and the friends we cherish, enjoying them here and now but realizing that they will not be forever. Recognition of the fact of death can make us more detached from perishable things and allow us to face our end in greater freedom and (perhaps) with lessened fear. But to do this we must have time for thinking seriously. As Augustine wrote to a friend:
Familiarity with the thought of death is hardly compatible with noisy and busy meetings or with endless running to and fro.
Letter 10, 2.
Augustine would be first to admit that even if trying to ignore death is foolish, it is understandable If I exist as "Me" only through the union of body and soul, it is only natural that I should shrink from the separation that comes at death. Death at very least (even assuming immortality of the soul) must cause a lessening of the "Me", a new diminished existence that I cannot understand and find it hard to love. In response to the Stoics who claimed that a truly wise person would never weep over or fear death, Augustine suggested that such indifference was probably a sign that the person was already dead. (Sermon 348, 3) It is indeed true that one who dies a noble death is a good person but the dying process itself is a good for no one. (City of God, 13.8) All things considered, it would have been much better if humans had not sinned and therefore had retained the great gift of being able not to die. (City of God, 13.11)
Even Jesus and Peter were not exempt from this natural aversion to their own deaths. Augustine sees Peter's reluctance implied in Christ's words "When you grow old, another will bind you and bear you where you do not wish to go." (John, 21.18) Of course Christ was speaking about Peter's eventual martyrdom but Augustine (himself experiencing the debility of the so-called "Golden Years") considered the words equally applicable to all who suffer the lessened powers of old age, remarking ruefully:
... and so it goes when you grow old.
Sermon 335b, 3.
We are carried to our deaths whether on the cross or in our beds by forces beyond our control. We are forced to die. Jesus, of course, chose to die; but this does not mean that he enjoyed the prospect. On the contrary, he asked that the chalice of his suffering be taken away, and it was not. According to Augustine, Jesus went through his death reluctantly to show that he understands our fear when we come to face our own death. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus not so much because he had lost a friend but rather because of the unhappy fact of death itself. In Augustine's words:
Why should he weep over a dead man that he was about to bring back from the grave by a simple command? The explanation is that he did not weep for the dead Lazarus whom he was to raise up. He wept about death itself, that punishment that humanity had earned for itself by its primordial rejection of God.
Sermon 173, 2.
However the darkness of death need not always be a terrifying experience. We are not afraid of the dark if we are accustomed to it and know that it will have a gentle effect on us. Thus, most of us are not afraid of going to sleep. It is a comforting part of our life from the very beginning and till the end of our life we seek its comfort regularly. True, it is dark (though sometimes illuminated by pleasant dreams), but the best part of sleep is that we know that we will awake to a new day, a day filled with brilliant light and unlimited new possibilities.
Perhaps that is the reason why Augustine (an insomniac who treasured a good night's rest) turned to the analogy of sleep when he tried to convince himself and others that death was not all that bad. Thus, he assured his church congregation:
In that life after resurrection where we will find the peace which we now seek, we shall never sleep just as then we shall never die. For what else is sleep but a daily death which does not completely remove man from life nor detain him too long? What else is death but a very long and a very deep sleep from which God will waken man? Therefore where there is no death there is likewise no sleep, the image of death. Rest does not belong to the angels because they are always alive and never refresh their health by sleep.
Sermon 221, 3.
Death holds out the prospect of a time of darkness, (indeed, the ultimate darkness) but so too does sleep. What frightens us is that we have had no experience of waking from our death-sleep. Others have told us that we will do just that, but we have not experienced it for ourselves and in a matter of such great importance we may appreciate this testimony of others but we are not comforted by it until we have ourselves gone through it.
Children get accustomed to sleeping before they have a chance to fear its temporary darkness (though some still demand a night light lest they wake to darkness). Thus there is no difficulty on Christmas Eve in getting them to go to sleep in anticipation of the bright lights and good things that await them when they awake. They are sure that they will wake from the Christmas Eve sleep. I am not certain that any of us are ever completely sure that we will wake from our death sleep. Perhaps this the reason why Augustine concluded that death cannot be loved, only endured. (Sermon 299, 8).
For a person facing death (that is, all of us) there can be a great hope coming from a conviction that our destiny, good or bad as it may be in this life, is in the hands of a provident God. Such faith does not necessarily promise that our death will be a "good death", a "gentle falling asleep" surrounded by those who love us, but it does assure us that what waits us beyond the instant of death (and it is but an instant) is a life that is good beyond our wildest dreams. Faith tells us that such a great life is possible even for the least of us. All we need do is to do our best to be decent. God will take care of the rest. It is this conviction that led Augustine to declare:
Anyone who lives a good life is not able to have a bad death.
Sermon 249, 2.
But, as Augustine himself discovered through his thirty years of wandering, this was a task easier said than done. He also realized that the perception of the difficulty of this task can be the cause for an even greater fear in one who believes in immortality. If it is natural for us to fear the "first" death that is the temporary separation of soul and body, how much more should we fear that terrible "second" death that is the conscious and eternal separation of the whole person from God? The good souls who have such fear are the "poor in spirit" referred to in the beatitudes, those
... who are obedient to the will of God but are yet humbly fearful that, although they are blessed in this life, they will be punished in the next.
Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, 1.3.10.
Such fear of a "second" death is understandable. It is a death that is both total and eternal. Augustine calls this condition a "total death" because the soul receives no beatifying life from God and the body, while being given life by the soul, receives a life that could very well be called a living death since it is devoid of all pleasure and peace. One may say that a person's "first death" (as terrifying as the prospect may be) is good if it marks the end of life that has been mostly good; but "second death is truly good for no one. (City of God. 13.2) It is indeed the worst of all evils because, as Augustine observes:
Never is a man worse off in death than when death itself is deathless.
City of God, 13.11.
It is no wonder that fear of such an undying death should be our greatest fear. It is a "fear of a Lord" who comes not as a friend but as a judge because of a freely chosen wasted human life crying out for condemnation. The paradox is that many human beings will spend all their time and energy trying to put off their inevitable "first death" while not taking the steps to avoid that "second death" which need not happen at all. This is the point Augustine tried to make to the frightened people who were flocking into Hippo in an effort to escape the barbarian hordes laying waste to North Africa. Those who had been trapped in their country estates pleaded for their lives and freely gave up all their worldly goods as ransom. Now they stood before Augustine, penniless but relieved that they had found sanctuary in the church. The bishop sympathized with their fear of death but then went on to say:
Why, O Christians, should you fear your first death so much? It will force itself upon you even though try to reject it. You ransomed yourself from the barbarians so that they might not kill you, and yet you could have died the day after you were freed. Rather than spending all your energy in trying to put off your first death, you should concentrate on ransoming yourself from the devil who drags you down with himself to a second death where you will hear the words: "You are cursed! Go into that eternal fire that was prepared for the devil and the angels." (Matt 25.41) I tell you that you need the justice of a good life to ransom yourself from that second death. You gold ransomed you from the barbarians. Well, the blood of the Lord can ransom you from that second death. That blood has been shed for your benefit but it cannot be of benefit to you if you do not accept it.
Sermon 344, 4.
The possibility of not accepting the benefit of Christ's sacrifice can indeed be the cause of fear and even despair for frightened believers. But there are great good reasons for hope. We may not always be able to avoid pain and suffering and disappointment and failure and rejection by those to whom we offer our love in this life. But, with Christ, we hold in our hands the chance that our eternity will see none of these. Such hope-filled conviction can even make any fear of our inevitable "first death" slowly fade away.