The theology of the apocalypse is born from despair, among people who suffer horribly, hate the world as it exists, and wish for its destruction. Because they can see nothing but more pain and hopelessness, they are in dire need of the consolation offered by a promise that things are about to change in the near future. This promise gives them a taste of revenge against their oppressors; they can gloat at the prospect of a role reversal when their enemies will burn in hell or be wiped out during the apocalypse. This is perhaps why most descriptions of the apocalypse are filled of rivers of blood and other gory images indicating a frightening level of repressed anger. If we stop to consider the incredibly high numbers of people wishing for their version of the apocalypse to materialize, there are clearly a lot of angry people out there who can't wait for the world to end.
Apocalyptic expectations get on my nerves for the same reason the emphasis on heaven and hell does. Not only are they the mean-spirited, vengeful, sadistic fantasies of those who derive pleasure from the suffering of others, but they are also rooted in resentment toward life in this world, and in a sick relationship with reality. A healthy religion makes no space for these feelings.
Let's play a game. It's Religious Trivia 101. Who said “My kingship is not of this world”?
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How about “As for our own fortune, it is not in this world. And we are not competing with you for this world, because it does not equal in Allah's eyes the wing of a mosquito”?
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The first is Jesus. The second is Waleed al-Shehri, one of the 9/11 hijackers. Similarly, in 1 John 2:15–16, the Bible gives us this advice, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world. . . is not of the Father, but is of the world.”
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In another passage we are told, “This worldly life is no more than vanity and play, while the abode of the Hereafter is the real life, if they only knew.”
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In case I forgot to mention it, this last sentence is not from the Bible, but the Koran, which also tells us, “This worldly life is no more than a temporary illusion.”
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If we didn't already know where these quotes come from, it would be almost impossible to guess since they mirror each other so closely.
All these statements look like contenders in a competition to determine who can most effectively put down life in this world. Christianity and Islam aren't the only competitors: several passages in Hindu and Buddhist scriptures refer to this world as an illusion. The Hindu ideal of Moksha, in particular, means liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth. Worldly existence, in other words, along with the passions that characterize it, needs to be transcended. Contempt for this life and this world seems to be a recurring thread among many branches of most major religions.
I'm allergic to this desire to escape the physical world and the present time. And I sneeze often because this desire is not restricted to the religions described above. Several secular ideologies also preach a faith in pure, abstract ideas that can never be realized in the
world as it is. Plato's philosophy is a prime example of this. In his view, the real can never match the ideal; what is earthy is rejected in favor of a “pure” dimension beyond the earth. The ecstasy of being alive in this world is being trampled by those who can't appreciate what's under their feet! I'm allergic to seeing life as a sin, as merely a test to be endured on our way to eternal rewards. I'm allergic to all this because the focus on what is “beyond” is a slap in the face of the here and now. I'm allergic to all those who separate the physical from the spiritual and end up poisoning both.
I worship Life—all of life. The life that burns without shame. The life that dances, smiling, just one step away from the abyss. The life that sips margarita on the beach, surrounded by seagulls. The life that cries tears of blood when it gives everything it can give, but everything is not enough. The life in whose veins flow lightning. The life whose depth hurts. The life moved by the autumn rain and by the summer heat. The life that doesn't wait to continue after the commercial break. The life that sticks its tongue out at Duty. The life that runs in the woods chasing its meal. The life that reveals itself only when you are ready to leave it on the battlefield. Most of all, I worship the life that refuses to regret even one of the days it wasted.
This is why I can't stomach all these gloomy people who can't wait to go to another world. And I'm equally turned off by those salivating at the prospect of destroying this world. Hey! It's my world. Get your hands off it.
But what disturbs me most is that the more you adhere to fundamentalist ideas about the apocalypse and the afterlife, the more likely you are to attribute little value to human life. Life can be more easily sacrificed when you believe you are dying for God's cause and you will later be rewarded for it. It's from this mentality that the cult of martyrdom is born. For this reason, at least on this particular
issue, I'm much more comfortable with religions that focus on the here and now, such as some versions of Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto, and certain animistic traditions.
Even though I'm clearly not a fan of focusing on the afterlife, I do recognize that this belief carries a very real power: it defeats the fear of death. Antonin Scalia, one of the conservative bulwarks of the US Supreme Court and a Roman Catholic, expressed the connection between certain religious doctrines and a casual attitude toward death with brutal lucidity (I never thought I would write the words “lucidity” and Scalia in the same sentence, but let's move on). The more Christian a country is, Scalia stated, the more it is willing to embrace the death penalty because “for the believing Christian, death is no big deal.”
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José Millán Astray, the ultra-Catholic and ultra-fascist founder and first commander of the Spanish Foreign Legion, butcher of the Spanish Civil War, and one of dictator Francisco Franco's main henchmen, turned this theological insight into a battle cry: “¡Viva la Muerte!” (“Long live death!”). The survival instinct was seen as cowardly and a symptom of a weak faith, since death was but a doorway to heaven. Their fanatical faith freed Astray's soldiers from fear and allowed them to focus only on slaughtering as many enemies as possible.
This necrophiliac enthusiasm is even more evident today in the ideology of Muslim terrorists. In a tape attributed to al-Qaeda sympathizers claiming responsibility for the 2004 bombing of trains in Madrid that killed almost 200 people, the same concept reappears. “You love life and we love death,” they say. In other words, you
are attached to life because your faith in the afterlife is not strong enough. We think nothing of dying for our cause because for us, as Scalia would put it, “death is no big deal.”
Expanding further on this morbid creed, Chief Palestinian Authority cleric Mufti Sheikh Ikrimeh Sabri said: “We tell them, in as much as you love life, the Muslim loves death and martyrdom. There is a great difference between he who loves the hereafter and he who loves this world. The Muslim loves death and [strives for] martyrdom.”
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Antonin Scalia and the most extreme Muslim fanatics have probably nothing but contempt for each other, but their attitude about life and death is formed by the same mold.
I'm disgusted by these people, but I'm not quoting them out of moral outrage. Rather, it's to show that their macabre theology can grant a tremendous power. The toughest enemies to fight, after all, are those who are not afraid of dying as long as they can kill you. Their power does come at the very steep price of lessening the importance of this life, but what they achieve is the conquest of the most primal human fear—not a small feat.
How can we tap into the strength of this belief without paying the horrific price it requires? Isn't this chapter about finding alternatives to defeat the fear of death? How about showing these gloomy bastards that loving life is not a weakness?
Ever since I can remember I have been terrified of death. One night, when I was four years old, I voiced my fear to my mother. She laughed, patted me on the head, and told me not to worry—it would be a long time before I would have to deal with death. I hate
to point this out, Mom, but your answer didn't exactly solve the problem for me. I kept hoping that somehow growing up I would come to terms with death, and the fear would just vanish away, but things didn't turn out that way.
Fear never let go of its hold on me. It has been my constant companion since then, following my every step. It has stared me down time and time again. No matter how far or how fast I run, I carried my own inner demon with me. It injected a pinch of anxiety into even the happiest moments of my life. No accomplishment, no amount of self-esteem, no wonderful experience made me forget that death could take it all away at any second. This thought turned me into a bit of a control freak (OK, maybe more than a bit. . . ). My innate devotion to laughter kept me sane, but I still felt I was fighting a losing battle.
And then I arrived at a proverbial crossroad. I reached a point in my life where I saw everything that I worked so hard for fall to pieces before my eyes. For years, I had strained every fiber of my being to bring happiness to the people I love. I had fought tooth and nail to make sure everything and everyone around me would be all right. But things slipped through my grip, despite all my efforts. A sense of powerlessness and desperation overcame me. The control freak in me was frustrated to the core. Staring me in the eyes was the realization that no matter how hard you try, you can't lock your doors enough, you can't prepare enough, you can't defend yourself enough. Ultimately, everything can and will be taken away from us—the people we love, everything we've ever accomplished, even our memories. At the end of it all, we don't control anything in life. No matter how careful or smart we may be, horrible things can still hunt us down. What we love will be ripped away from our arms. As Johnny Cash sang in one of the last songs he recorded, “Everyone
I know goes away in the end.” Our hearts will be broken over and over again. Maybe we will be lucky and we can delay the inevitable, maybe not. Either way, it doesn't really matter. We can play our cards well, but we can't choose what happens to us. At the end, we are bound to lose it all.
After all my illusions of control vanished, something snapped inside of me. Desperation gave way to rage. I'm tired of feeling anxiety breathing down my neck, I told myself. I'm tired of my many obsessive-compulsive habits. Most of all, I'm tired of living in fear. None of my efforts can spare me from pain, so screw it. I'll do the only thing I have control over. I can't choose what will come my way. The worst things in the world may happen to me regardless of my wishes, but I can choose how I will face them. And what I choose now is to not let fear boss me around for one more minute.
In that second I experienced more freedom that I had ever known.
Life will hurt me? My heart will break every day? So what. I'll deal with it. The typical reaction in the face of pain is to close up, become more defensive, build a higher wall. The fear of getting hurt pushes plenty of individuals to squash their emotions because their ability to feel makes them vulnerable. In this way, they die before dying and live at less than their full potential—mere shadows of who they could be. The fear of death encourages them to embrace religious fantasies offering them the illusion of control.
Despite my best efforts, I can't lie to myself. So I guess I'll face death without any fables to boost my morale. I'm OK with giving up the illusion of control. Come to terms with this, and the doors to true freedom open up. This is the same discovery that changed Frederick Douglass' life (one of the most famous abolitionists in history). After being terrorized for his entire life as a slave, Douglass one day
decided that no matter what punishments he may have to endure, he would not live another day in fear. He wrote, “I had reached the point at which I was
not afraid to die
. This spirit made me a freeman in
fact
, while I remained a slave in
form
.”
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Accepting death is the key that frees us from the prison of fear.
The battle cry of Lakota warriors perfectly captures this idea. “Hoka hey” is usually translated as “today is a good day to die.” The same sentiment is found in the war cry of their allies, the Cheyenne: “Only heaven and earth are eternal! I am not!”
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Unlike the “¡Viva la Muerte!” of Spanish fascists, the Lakota and Cheyenne battle cries don't indicate a death wish or a desire for martyrdom. Rather, as they get ready for battle, the warriors acknowledge that they won't be able to control everything that is going to happen. They can't be sure that death will not strike them down, but they can choose the state of mind in which they'll face whatever is coming their way. They embrace the possibility of death to avoid the fear that paralyzes those who cling to the hope of survival. If, after all is said and done, they end up surviving, so much the better, but they won't head into battle holding on to this hope, because hope breeds attachment, attachment feeds the fire of fear, and fear paradoxically increases the odds of getting killed. “Hoka hey” is about refusing to let any situation—even the prospect of death—rob you of your attitude toward life.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo, author of the Bushido classic known as the Hagakure, calls this mindset the “rainstorm attitude.” As he writes,
When caught in a sudden shower, one may determine not to get drenched, running as fast as one can or trying to thread one's way under the eaves of houses along the way—but one gets wet nonetheless. If from the outset one is mentally prepared
to get wet, one is not in the least discomfited when it actually happens. Such an attitude is beneficial in all situations.
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