Photo by MudflapDC
Mira asks:
What do you fear? Do you fear death?
I appreciate Mira’s question because it always forces me to consider my priorities and do a little self-examination which, to be honest, I don’t do often enough.
My Past Panic
I recall viewing the life of an atheist to be like the journey of a tightrope walker without a net. Should she tumble, there would be no salvation from the tragic drop. Jesus was to me like a safety net that kept me from falling to my doom. If anything unpleasant could happen in the future, I had the hope that it would all work out for my good and that someone loved and cared for me enough to have a good plan for my life. Oh, and of course I would go to Heaven later, so really, shouldn’t that guard me from all fear? Sadly, this ideal didn’t work out well in practice.
As a believer who valued my faith as my most prized possession, I still feared just about everything: sinning, caring what others thought of me, conflict, loss, disappointing God by not fulfilling his will for my life, and the list goes on. Let’s take a tiny glimpse into my thoughts back in the day:
Does God want me to major in Communications or Marketing? How far is too far with my boyfriend? Is lying to save someone’s life a sin? Oh no, I missed church again! My sexuality is shameful, but I can’t stop desiring physical affection. Should I be Catholic or Messianic? If I die without repenting my sins, will I be shamed in front of God? Please God, tell me what to do! Am I sinning by feeling a call to the mission field and then not pursuing it? I don’t pray as much as she does; does that mean I’m a bad Christian? What if I choose the wrong Bible translation to read? How do I know when I’ve met “the one?” What if I don’t believe in Hell anymore? What job should I apply for? I feel so ashamed that I dislike evangelism so much. What if I’m not praying hard enough for my father to be healed? Could he die because I didn’t have enough faith? What if…? Which one…? Help!
One reason for all this anxiety was a lack of self-confidence. Because I could only trust God and not myself to be strong, capable, or to make the right choices, I was constantly doubting my own abilities and decisions. Not having a true freedom of choice, I was left to rely on guesswork about God’s will. If things went wrong, it was probably my fault. I was a fearful Christian, despite having a hope of salvation and love from God.
My Present Peace
Mira, I’m not going to lie and say I don’t fear anything. Here’s a nice list:
- I have a phobia of large ships.
- I’m afraid of someone I love dying suddenly. Because that’s terribly sad and difficult, and I don’t enjoy grief.
- I become anxious when confronted with something difficult I have to do for the first time–especially when I don’t know how to do it.
- I fear (or rather, I try to avoid) the emotions of embarrassment, shame, loneliness, and sadness.
- I do fear failure.
- I fear violence upon my person.
Do I also fear death? Not in the sense that I fear what comes after death, because I do not think anything happens except body decay and a recycling of my physical self back into the earth and thus the universe of which I am such a tiny part. I think the only times I fear death are when I consider the many horrific ways there are to die. My morbid mind has watched too much news and too much dramatic television. I don’t want to be scared, in pain, or to die without my loved ones around me. Other than that, I don’t fear death. I have one life, and that is all; that is fine.
Being an atheist certainly is living life on a wire. Instead of fearing a fall to the ground, I train harder, try to make better decisions, and concentrate on building myself and my confidence so I can make it across. No one–and no net–is going to save me.
Is this scary? I don’t think so. In fact, I am happier about who I am and what value I hold even more than when I claimed the Creator of the Universe loved me and spoke to me on a personal basis. My ego has shrunk, and reality has helped me live a better life.
No one has a plan for my life but me. My choices are my own. My mistakes don’t have eternal consequences and rewards; they have real consequences, and I need to care about them. I don’t have to guess what some other person thinks is right or wrong; I am responsible unto myself and the law of the land.
So I might possibly-sort-of-maybe be thinking about redoing my resume. If you know me, you realize I’ve said this for, like, years. So today I put on my figurative hard hat and went digging through my old documents. It turns out my most recent resume was from May 2008—which is right around the time I was a budding atheist but not yet courageous enough to call a spade a spade.
The objective I chose to describe my goal is especially fun:
OBJECTIVE: To obtain a position within
Company Namethat will further God’s Kingdom andCompany’sministry…
Yeah, I still work at this job. Must. Edit.
"Angel of Grief" Glenwood Cemetery, Houston, TX (photo by teejayfaust)
A former coworker of mine just lost his sister to cancer after years of riding the rollercoaster of hope and fear. His love for her inspired me, and it reminded me acutely of what it was like to watch a family member die from the disease.
I have only experienced fresh grief as a Christian. My father died in 2003, and I sought comfort and peace in the hope that he was “in a better place” and free from pain, experiencing the joy and bliss he always desired in life. He was a very passionate believer, and he would always tell me we’d “be together again” when my time was up. I found this to be very soothing and helpful, because I didn’t want to let him go. I wanted more time with him, and I desperately wanted him to be healthy again. I was so fearful of being separated forever. Magical solution? Heaven. Duh.
I’ve never lost a loved one as an atheist, so I honestly can’t speak to what it feels like to say goodbye to someone knowing we will never be together again. I imagine this could be a healthy, helpful way of letting someone go, processing the loss, and moving forward. Is that so?
What matters most to me now is understanding someone’s role in my life and how that helps me be a better person. That way, they live on in me, through me. My father is part of me down to my very DNA. He’s gone, but he has a legacy that affects me and every single person I encounter. I am very fortunate to have had such a great life with him while it lasted. Isn’t that what grief should be about?
What about you?
We can all can talk a good game about how great it is not to be oppressed by the burden of hell, yada yada… but only someone who has actually experienced a loss can talk about what grief is like.
Has anyone out there experienced intense grief as both a faithful religious person and as an atheist? How did your experiences differ on a personal level? Could you share with as much transparency as possible (as you feel comfortable)? Were both healthy experiences? Was one more comforting than another? When someone says “It doesn’t matter if so-and-so has faith in Heaven if it comforts them,” do you agree or disagree?
Randall Munroe, the creator of the well-known webcomic, xkcd, is on a relaxed publishing schedule due to a very sick family member right now. And out of that trying experience, he draws these three awesome panels:
Hell yeah, Randall.
Something Personal
When my father was fighting cancer, he (even while being a man of faith and prayer) relied on the advances of medicine and scientific research to fight the disease and keep it at bay as much as possible. Even though he wanted God to heal him, he still knew that medical care and advanced technology would be the most important weapons in the fight.
Now I look back and think, Why did we hope for miracles when we knew medicine would do all the real work? I’m honestly not sure if there are any practical reasons for prayers. When someone you love is dying, you want them to be instantly free of illness and suffering. Who wouldn’t? A miracle is a get-out-of-cancer-free card that no believer would turn down. To faithful Christians like us, we prayed for that easy-out, but we truly trusted in the doctors, the chemotherapy, and all of the other treatments used that were backed by tested science.
When praying for healing, you never know if you’ll be heard or if it will ever happen. There can be no reasonable expectation or time table; healing either happened or it didn’t, and sometimes a “miraculous healing” looked just like something explained just fine by science anyway. So when a loved one is ill or dying, you can feel free to hope for an immediate improvement, but trust in those who have tested treatments and medicines that you know can help. Even if your loved one does die, you can at least be thankful that it wasn’t your fault, your lack of faith, or anyone’s relationship with a deity that was at fault.
Science works, bitches!
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