Well, it seems that I'm getting rather ambitious in these little discussions. I hope that my head's not getting too big for my hat, but I found yet another text upon which I feel the need to voice my opinion. The interesting thing is that I actually have had, in my lifetime, two differing opinions about the gyst of this message, and it is these divergent views that I wish to share. Here, first of all, is the text in question.
“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every BTU of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.”
— Aaron Freeman, “You Want A Physicist To Speak at your Funeral”
If I had read this text about ten years ago, I would have positively reveled in its beauty. I would have found it to encapsulate a lot of my beliefs about death and dying as they were then, and as I was going through the loss of a loved one at that time, it would have comforted me very much. I recall when I first learned the rule that energy can never be created nor destroyed, but only changed. It was in a Grade Eight science class, and I found the concept utterly fascinating. However, even then, I was thinking about it in more of a metaphysical way than I'm sure my teacher meant me to. I remember thinking that this was proof that death is not the end. This, at last, was proof of what I longed to know more about: ESP, ghosts, spirits and the like. If energy could never be destroyed but only changed, I thought, then maybe our life-energy was something more coherent than mere electricity, and maybe we had something which many people liked to call a soul.
I think I expressed this differently at this young an age, but I did think about it. At this time, I would describe myself as little more than a glorified Pagan with vague monotheistic leanings. I said that I was a Christian, but I didn't have the first idea about what that really meant. However, here was this lovely concept about the perpetuation of energy which made me feel that something must be keeping the universe going.
Well, let's return to ten years ago. If the piece above had been around at that time, I would have found it wonderfully moving and comforting, because ten years ago, I was truly a Pagan and my notions of the immortality of the soul were, I think, platonist at best. I had some ideas about what happened after death, reincarnation being a part of the whole process, so to read this piece would have been exactly like that day in my Eighth Grade science class; it would have confirmed my thinking.
Now, what really happened in the order of events was this. I read this piece last week, and I found myself seeing it with a kind of double-vision. I do this a lot, actually, contrasting how I as a Pagan would have viewed a given thought process as compared to how I view it now. Now, I do not find that piece in question comforting, though as I stated before, I can understand how people of a more secular turn of mind could. It takes out all the nasty bits of death which many of us learned about at our mothers' knees. It not only reduces the idea of immortality of the soul down to atomic diffusion across the universe, but it creates a very comforting idea that death has a purpose. And what is that purpose? Why, death releases our energy to continue to fuel new life. We need no longer pray for anyone's soul or speculate on where people go when they die, because where they go is everywhere. The atoms of a given human are released and then smash into other atoms to create new thermodynamic reactions which create more living creatures, or stones, or pond-scum. Take your pick!
Again, we return to yesterday's idea of Atomism. This states that we are nothing more than collections of atoms which are cohesive in our current forms for a limited amount of time and then which break up and form new bonds. For me, this idea just does not cut it. Ten years ago, it would have, and as I stated before, I can see how it could be very comforting. If death is the mere release of energy, then it is nothing to be feared or approached with awe. it is simply a change. It is, as Kalil Gibran has it, "to stand naked in the wind or to melt into the sun." But, to quote the Peggie Lee torch-song, "is that all there is?"
I admit that for me, it is difficult to say 'no' to this question, because when I do, I am forced to come to grips with the fact that death is a fearful thing, though not exactly for the mere ceasing of vital function in the body. It is fearful because of what awaits me, according to my Christian beliefs, on the other side. God will be revealed to us then, and we, as souls,, will know Him. But this is not even the end of it. There will be, we say, a universal resurrection in which we, all of humanity and all of creation itself that is, will be reintegrated into some sort of bodily life. Then will come the universal judgment, and that, so we believe, will be dreadful, because our choices in our past lives will be taken account of.
Then we come to the bit about Hell, which I've always had a problem with emotionally and intellectually, but which I know, somehow, is a true idea. however, this deserves some qualification. The word "hell" is a Norse word. it refers to the fiery roots from which the world was eventually created by the gods. "Hell," for the Norse, is sort of like the realm of Chaos as Milton depicts it in Paradise Lost:
"a dark
892: Illimitable Ocean without bound,
893: Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth,
894: And time and place are lost; where eldest Night
895: And CHAOS, Ancestors of Nature, hold
896: Eternal ANARCHIE, amidst the noise
897: Of endless warrs and by confusion stand.
898: For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce
899: Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring
900: Thir embryon Atoms; they around the flag
901: Of each his faction, in thir several Clanns,
902: Light-arm'd or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or slow,
903: Swarm populous, unnumber'd as the Sands
904: Of BARCA or CYRENE'S torrid soil,
905: Levied to side with warring Winds, and poise
906: Thir lighter wings."
Now, this picture of nature gone mad or fire unquenchable is really hard to take for the modern mind. Still, if we remember back to yesterday's discussion, we will remember that God does not permit our acts to go without consequence. As man fell, so fell the world, we believe, because we were created to be its rulers, but became instead, almost its slaves. So, what about our meeting with God? Will our lives go unnoticed by Him? We believe not. Those who have found their ways towards God and away from their little selves will find God to be familiar to them, if terrible. Those who have remained inside of their little selves will confine themselves in darkness and deafness to God's call as they did in life.
So, does Hell really exist? I believe that it does. Is it a lake of fire and brimstone? I really don't know, but I personally believe that we create our own little hells both in life and after death. We choose to isolate ourselves. We choose to be trapped in our own minds.
Do I have an understanding of who will be going to Hell? No. I can never say that definitively, because salvation is a lifelong process, and if God is a personal God, as Christians believe, than I cannot but think that the dynamism of the relationship between God and man continues after this life is done.
Do I know that I will be going to Heaven because I'm a Christian? No. I do not believe in "blessed assurance," as such. Will a non-Christian go to Hell by the very fact of his or her being a non-Christian? God forbid that I should ever say a difinitive 'yes' to that! The truth is that we do not know till we go, as it were. We really don't know what will await us till we get there. Still, I can't help believing that it will be an adventure! Our personhood just can't be reduced to a bunch of atoms. We have to be greater than the sum of our parts. at least, this is what I believe now.
So, again we come back to living a eucharistic life while we're here on earth. If we can learn to believe that our time and even ourselves are not solely our own, but are gifts from God, then this is a good place for us to start to escape our egos, to throw off 'the old man,' as we call the fallen self, and to embrace what needs to be done to be born again anew in Christ, the second Adam, the 'new man.' If joy can be tasted in this life, then it is fulfilled beyond this life. If life is brief and transitory, there is also a life that is eternal and dynamic. How, you may ask, is this different from the physicist's explanation of things?Well, there is one law upon which we have not touched with regard to energy, and this is the law or theory of entrapy, for while energy is perpetually changing, no new energy is being created and it also tends to break itself down into less coherent bits. We believe that death is more than this, and yet there is no attempt to gloss over the fact that the death of the body is a real and important thing.
This aspect of things will be discussed in tomorrow's entry. Till then!
Deo gratias!
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