Death:

1. Death: The only certain fact in life. “It is a horrible thing to feel all that we possess slipping away.” ~ Pascal, Pensees, # 212. www.prshockley.org

2. Death is an undisputed fact: • It is solid • It is sound • It is secure • It is indisputable • No one ever wonders whether he or she will die. • There is no nonsense • There is no evasion • There is no “nuancing” • There is no little mental two-step about it. • It is an obvious problem

3. Death guarantees religion: • “If there were no death, there would probably be no religion. As long as there is death, there will be religion…. But if we only judged things truly, calmly, sanely, objectively and rationally, we would realize the truth of life’s one absolutely unquestionable certainty: that we are are all on our deathbeds. The birthbed is a deathbed. The bed on which your mother lay when you were born is her deathbed and yours. ‘We give birth astride a grave’ (Samuel Beckett).” ~ Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans, 141-2.

4. Life is Terribly Fragile: Blaise Pascal states: “Between us and heaven or hell there is only life half-way, the most fragile thing in the world.” Pensees, # 213.

5. Life is Terribly Fragile: • “Life is a thin membrane, eminently puncturable. On the other side lies Heaven or Hell. Earth is only the porch of one or the other. ‘All that seems earth is [the beginning of] Hell or Heaven’ (C. S. Lewis). • We usually life with an unconscious image of earth as a large, stable, secure place, the absolute, the center with Heaven and Hell as barely visible points in the sky, shimmering and remote fantasies, tiny and uncertain. In fact, it is Earth that is tiny and uncertain.” Ibid., 142.

6. Death: The Human Condition: • “Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.” Pascal, # 199.

7. Death: The Human Condition: “We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it.” ~ Pascal, # 183.

8. Death: The Human Condition: “We are locked in a car (our body), rushing furiously down a hill (time), through fog (ignorance), unable to see ahead, over rocks and pits (wretchedness). The doors are welded shut, the steering works only a little, and the brakes are nonexistent. Our only certainty is that all the cars sooner or later fall over the edge of the cliff (death). So what do we do? We erect billboards at the edge of the cliff, so that we do not have to look at the abyss. The billboards are called ‘civilization.’ Our ‘solution’ is the biggest part of the problem.” Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans, 145.

9. 5 Responses to Death: • 1. Don’t look at it. Look the other way. Stay diverted. • 2. Look at it with the heart dulled by pop psychology. “Accept it.” Be indifferent to it. • 3. Look at it and despair. • 4. Look at it and put your hope and faith in science to conquer death by technology, by cryogenics, or by genetic engineering. • Put your faith in God, in Christ, in Resurrection. Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans, 145-6.