We're All Gonna Die, Right?

We’re All Gonna Die

We’re all gonna die! That’s what the Millennial Woody Guthrie, Jesse Welles, sings. Is this how we feel following the presidential catastrophe? I recommend you, Dear Reader, listen to Jesse before continuing this read.

Yes, we’re all gonna die.

It’s terrifying. We are haunted by the inescapable thought that our temporal existence will come to an eternal end. Tiefe Ewigkeit (eternity is as endless as it is deep), mourned the philosopher Nietzsche.

When I was a pre-school child, I dreaded going to sleep at night. I feared I would never wake up. I feared missing the world of movement, activity, creativity, excitement. I feared replacing daily brightness with night’s blackness and emptiness and nothingness. What I was feeling Kierkegaard called Angst. Tillich called it anxiety.

When a cut finger requires a band aid, I wonder: is this it? Does this cut mean I’m going get an infection that will kill me? Am I experiencing death before my death?

When we are overwhelmed with a political catastrophe, do we wonder: is this it? Is nuclear conflagration unavoidable? Are we experiencing death before our death?

Will we meet God after death?

Rumanian Orthodox Church, Chambessey, Switzerland. Note how the Easter Jesus raises Adam and Eve along with you and me.

Non-religious people know well that we’re all gonna die. This includes song writer Paul Simon. Paul says he can feel the gravity of his impending death, but he can’t quite formulate what he feels about it. So he settles for “the Lord is a virgin forest.” I would formulate it, “Sounds of Silence.” I despair when I want a voice to call me but all I hear is silence.

After Jesus’ death on the cross, he met God early Easter morning. The New Testament promises that, just as Jesus rose from the dead on the first Easter, you and I too will rise into the new creation wherein, according to Revelation 21, there will be no more crying or pain or morning. But it’s so very hard to see beyond the emptiness of the grave to that great gett’n up morning!

We’re all gonna die, right? Yep. But we still ask: what happens after we die? As difficult as it may be to believe, the New Testament offers an answer. “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died” (1 Corinthians 15:20).

Thanatopsis

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878). Brooklyn Museum.

Even as a teenager, William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) was acutely aware that we’re all gonna die. The prospect of his own death cut him to the inner soul. One of his earliest poems, Thanatopsis, comforted me while I was still a teenager.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

Patheos PT 3608. ST 4128. We’re all gonna die, right?

Afterlife? Really? What are the options?

For Patheos, Ted Peters posts articles and notices in the field of Public Theology. He is a Lutheran pastor and emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union. He co-edits the journal, Theology and Science, with Robert John Russell on behalf of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, California, USA. His single volume systematic theology, God—The World’s Future, is now in the 3^rd edition. He has also authored God as Trinity plus Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society as well as Sin Boldly: Justifying Faith for Fragile and Broken Souls. See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com. Watch for this new 2023 book, The Voice of Public Theology, published by ATF Press.

We’re All Gonna Die, Right?