Death and the Hope of Embracing Our Limits
Michel de Montaign once said, “To philosophize is nothing else but to prepare for death….Let us rid it of its strangeness, come to know it, get used to it. Let us have nothing on our minds as often as death.” Though you certainly wouldn’t want this man as your workout instructor, his quote is likely to meet with more sympathy these days.
The worldwide death toll of covid-19 now exceeds 6 million lives; the war in Ukraine continues to escalate; the threat of nuclear assault and an ensuing global conflict has resurfaced (some contend that it’s just more obvious now); the North American economy is buckling with all signs pointing to the situation worsening. These aren’t circumstances any of us would have chosen, but they’ve certainly robbed death of some of its strangeness. At the very least, it’s getting harder to distract ourselves from our condition–even the act of filling up our cars is a sobering reminder of our fragility.
But do we really need some killjoy reminding us that we’re going to die? The question “What’s an obvious truth you don’t believe?” was recently circulating on Twitter. Science fiction writer, Adam Roberts, answered it by saying, “That I’m going to die.” Death is both horrifyingly, viscerally real and inescapably abstract. Our imagination falls short of countenancing our own demise in any but the most primitive of ways, even as we endure the searing loss of loved ones. The state of affairs has the general shape of a paradox: Everyone dies alone.
In our own experience, death also seems to be something that happens to everyone else. This odd myopia concerning our own mortality led the cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker, to formulate a unified theory of modern human behavior that was predicated on the denial of death. As strange as it sounds, it’s entirely possible to be an intelligent and responsible adult who doesn’t really believe they will die. Many of us do it every day. The fact that so many of these global events are registering as total shocks to the system is confirmation.
If you think Montaigne sounds morbid, he’s positively tame compared to the Psalms: “O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah Surely a man goes about as a shadow! Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather (39:4-6).”
Why do we need the Lord of all creation to help us know how fleeting we are? When we lose sight of our own limits, two grave temptations emerge: 1) the temptation to see ourselves as in control, to play God 2) the temptation to mistake this world for our home. If we think of ourselves as rational men and women in control of our destiny, the grim state of the world is an occasion for dismay and even despair. If, however, we know that God is God and we are not, that we go about as a shadow, we can say with King David, “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you (7).”
