Christians, like Paul, have been in situations where they suffer horribly. These are situations of imprisonment, martyrdom, or suffering under the pains of life. And yet, Christians report a sense of peace, calm, and even joy in these situations. In Philippians 4 (NRSVUE) we read:
Rejoice[b] in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.[c] 5 Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about[d] these things. 9 As for the things that you have learned and received and heard and noticed in me, do them, and the God of peace will be with you.
There is an obvious psychoanalysis of this peace: by believing that death is not the end, and that death is the worst this world can do to you, you are in an existentially complete state. Put another way, you feel fundamentally safe. Caveat: this requires that you don't have any anxiety over whether you are living out God's plans for you – basically, as long as you don't feel like Jonah running away from your Nineveh.
Is it possible to learn this peace? "Not from a non-Christian", the Christian says.
But I disagree. While I've already written about this, I'll duplicate thoughts for this topic. I wrote the following in response to a prompt from class, about Socrates discussing how pleasures and pains, matters of the body, distract us from what matters most, which are matters of the mind and virtue:
Is it true that the body distracts us from what matters most?
In Christianity, God incarnates as Jesus, taking on a human body. From a Christian point of view, the human body is elevated and esteemed, validated by the God who designed and created the human body and the environment in which it lives. Even when Jesus rose from the dead, he did not turn into a bodiless spirit, but retained a physical body that somehow ascended to heaven.
Christians consider it a Gnostic heresy to say that the body is wretched and the soul pure, and that the physical is imperfect and evil while the immaterial is perfect and good. Indeed, the Christian would say that our souls are as corrupt as our bodies, both being corrupted by sin. It is only through faith in Jesus, and baptism, that the soul can be purified. So on one view, both the body and the soul are corrupt, and yet both are glorified and validated.
On a very different view, it is matters of the mind that distract us from what matters most, which are bodily affairs. For many folks, life just is a matter of family, sex, drugs, food, relationships, social experiences, traveling, and so forth—matters of the body. Matters of the mind are irrelevant, or even distracting us from living life. Philosophy, on this view, causes “analysis paralysis,” leading to a paralyzed life. While some people, like me, love to stay inside and read and write, many others would consider this an impoverished way of living, and a failure to live life to the fullest, which requires one to go out and do things in an embodied way.
On a third view, what matters most is transcendence. I’m reminded of a lyric I wrote long ago:
Aim for pleasure
And you won’t survive the pain
Aim for transcendence
And death will transcend your aim
I’ve heard it said that we shouldn’t aim for a life free of suffering, as that sets you up to be most vulnerable to suffering. Instead, we should engage in work we find so important that it’s worth suffering for. Transcendence refers to this ability to overcome suffering, even transform it into something good. Transcendence also refers to achieving a level of consciousness and existence that is higher than what you’ve had previously.
Death threatens transcendence, because you cannot exist on a higher level when you don’t exist at all. So, as the lyric suggests, we have a dilemma: If we focus on an embodied way of being, and ignore matters of the mind and soul, then we make ourselves too vulnerable to pain and won’t have a way to surpass our pain. And yet, if we aim for transcendence as a way to overcome pain, death threatens our transcendence. This dilemma lies at the core of the “human predicament.”
So how do we solve this dilemma? This is why Christianity is so powerful: it solves the problem of death through the promises of eternal life that Jesus makes to His followers.
But for those who find the challenges to Christian belief too challenging, this is not an option. If you find the idea of heaven too good to be true, you must admit that on some level death wins and we lose.
However, there is a way to transcend even death, not by defeating death, but by sharing in death’s victory. If you allow death to motivate you to work as hard as possible while you still have time, then, if you’re lucky, you will have the resources needed to create that thing or achieve that achievement that allows you to die happy. (Something even Christians may feel pulled by.)
If you can achieve something so great, at least of such great personal importance, that you enter into a state of bliss such that you can genuinely die happy, then, by enabling this possibility, both in terms of the urgency and of the magnitude of the achievement – of such magnitude that you can die happy – death itself becomes the mechanism by which you transcend. Death glorifies you indirectly through this achievement at the same time it humiliates you through your destruction.
If the achievement lasts beyond the grave, then you will have achieved the closest thing to immortality that we can. Though, it’s not the immortality that matters, but the state of being able to die happy. It just so happens that achieving such a state requires achieving something of great personal significance, and often such achievements will be the kind that leave a mark on the world. But you could have a person who does some great work behind the scenes that doesn’t last beyond their lifetime, but who is nevertheless connected to the work in such a way that they can die happy having done it. I think parenthood can be like this, a great work (when done right) that involves giving up yourself to build up someone else. When people say "Some people should never be parents," part of what they are getting at is the fact that some people are not connected to the work of parenthood in the right way; they see parenthood as a burden and not as a core part of their life's work.
Matters of the body can distract us from transcending death in this way: if someone ignores death and strives not to achieve that which will enable one to die happy, but instead lives in the moment and pursues entertainment, then death will creep up on them and they will have little, in their own eyes, to show for their life. They may find themselves regretful in the end, suffering at the thought of dying, because they cannot die happy. Those who do not account for death in the way they live run the risk of suffering in this way. Though, it's possible for someone to not know what it would take for them to die happy until after they have already achieved it, perhaps even ironically thanks to their ignoring death, living in the moment, and pursuing entertainment.
A disadvantage for the non-Christian is that achievements are not a reliable method of transcendence. It requires a great deal of luck to be able to achieve one's essential personal goal. Some folks will find it impossible not to desire something too ambitious, and will thus be stuck in unfulfilled desires. The Christian, on the other hand, need only believe, and from their beliefs come hope.
Paradoxically, as in the case of the Christian martyr, both horrendous suffering and existential completeness can be found in a person at the same time. Hope, from believing the best is yet to come, allows one to endure suffering, so of course a hope-based existential completeness is compatible with horrendous suffering. But does this mean that only a hope-based existential completion can withstand horrendous suffering?
I don't think so. "Die happy" needn't be taken so literally. Even Jesus, a paradigm of existential completion, didn't die happy in a strict sense. What matters is whether, in addition to your suffering, there is the added suffering of feeling incomplete, like you didn't do what you set out to do. As long as you feel complete, the most important pain is avoided. Achievement-based existential completion is just as compatible with a painful death as a hope-based one. Death is the worst the world can do to you, and for those who can die happy, not even the worst can impede their happiness. Feeling fundamentally safe in this way generates a profound inner peace, even in the face of death and suffering, even for the one without hope in a life to come.
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