God, for instance, is an object/person where humanity places their fears, believing that He can enable meaning for life, rendering death meaningless.  So, we ignore the harsh reality of death and dying through our conception of God. God enables our defense mechanism of transference.  Which, I might add, isn’t an evil per se, but — like everything — can have unintended and hurtful consequences.

The other factor, says Becker, in understanding the human condition is repression.  Repression, in the context of death denial, means the attempt to gain power as an immortality project, thus repressing our weakness in mortality.  We can repress our fears, our insecurities, our finitude by finding building our own everlasting kingdom or symbol. And once our kingdom is established, we can live on, albeit, through our legacy of might, thus repressing the mortality reality.

Repression and transference are opposites: one seeks power for oneself (Becker and others call this “Eros”), while the other seeks to embed oneself in another (Becker calls this “Agape”).  But, the two come together in perfect unison when we greet the bereaved family at a viewing and say something that both attempts to repress the reality of death and make it all better through religious verbiage.

The reason comfort clichés can be so offensive is that those who are experiencing grief have had their walls of repression and transference broken.  They are sensitive to the reality of the human condition and the loneliness that comes with it.  And here you come, attempting to minimalize their fears and pain with a cliché that’s meant more so to help you feel good than give real encouragement to the family.

When people use comfort cliches, they are often more concerned with comforting themselves than comforting the bereaved.  

And when you’re throwing clichés around as a defense mechanism, the bereaved will often know … and this, my friends, is what they hear:

I don’t want to hear your story.  I don’t want your pains to become a part of my life.  My life is painful enough.   It doesn’t need to be disturbed by your story.

Man, I can’t imagine your pain.  In fact, I might be able to imagine your pain.  Honestly, I don’t want to imagine your pain.

Your grief is your grief; it’s not mine.  I can’t walk this dark path with you.  Honestly, though, when I think about it, I could walk this path with you, I just don’t want to.  My life is good right now.  I like my view and I don’t like yours.

Here, instead of hearing you out and walking with you, I’m going to make myself feel good.  It’s important that I still see myself as a good person.  I’m not heartless, so let me make you a cake and leave it at your door.

Let me send you a card.

Let give you a Bible verse.

I think I read something about how time heals grief.  Let me tell you that.

Let me tell you how God has plans in this death.

I need to tell you something, give you something so that I can feel good about myself.  I can’t feel guilty, so I’ll half-ass comfort you so that I can feel good while you feel like shit.

“God is love.”

“Time will heal your wounds.”

“You can get through this.”

“You are still young … you can have more children.”

Defense mechanisms.  All. In the Spector of death, we use them too much.

If we want to be good communicators with those experiencing death and dying, we need to recognize both the repression and transference in our own lives and silence them for the sake of the bereaved.  Instead of denying the reality of death, accept it and listen to the grieving who are walking through it.  Instead of trivializing death as something “God has overcome”, be willing to enter the loneliness that comes with grief.  Enter the holy space of holy Saturday, and – at the risk of your faith – accept doubt and silence as real possibilities.

If you can’t do this … if you’re unwilling to do this, if you’re set on denying the reality of death, then do yourself and the bereaved a favor, and just stay away from it and those it’s touching.

There are religious and political fundamentalists.  Some people are both.  Right now, many people are of the latter.

Based on the works of Ernest Becker, a connection can be made between death and fundamentalism.  Richard Beck, in his book The Authenticity of Faith (which I’ve been reading of late), writes this about the relationship between death and fundies.  This quote is like ice cream … if you eat it too fast, you’ll get a brain freeze, but if you eat it slow, you may find it delightful.

Human personality and culture are inherently about the denial of death, about helping the human animal achieve day-to-day equanimity in the face of our existential burden and helping us manage our instinct for self-preservation in the face of a cognitive awareness that we are bound for death, that we cannot run away or escape our fate.  Death activates a fight or flight response in us, but we have nowhere to run.  No one to fight.  So the anxiety just sits there, churning away.  To handle this anxiety, we repress death awareness or sublimate the anxiety it causes by working on projects our culture deems significant and valuable.  Through these efforts we attach our life stories to goods that can outlive us.  And by doing so, we achieve both self-esteem and a symbolic immortality. We feel that we made a difference.  And our culture declares our life meaningful.

…. This daily exposure to alternate hero systems threatens our belief that our particular cultural heroics, our way of life are eternal and timeless.  As noted earlier, in our modern, pluralistic society there is a fragility of meaning.  We see now that this is largely due to the clash of worldviews we encounter on a daily basis.  Pluralism hints that worldviews are relative and not timeless and eternal.  And if this is so, is anything to be counted on?  Where am I to find meaning, truth, and significance in the face death if the foundations have all turned to sand?

The fear inherent within modernity, the anxiety that the ideological Other calls my worldview into question, is one explanation for rise of fundamentalism in the modern ear.

Religious and ideological fundamentalism, then, appears within modernity (perhaps paradoxically) as a defense against these questions.  Fundamentalism, of all strips, is the individual and collective effort to defend the truth of your worldview against the relativization inherent in the existence of the Other.  Becoming a true believer is one way to defend against the existential predicament of modern day pluralism.  And this leads to a surprising conclusion.  Rather than making humanity less religious, as Freud believed, secularlism is driving an increase in religious fundamentalism and often violent fundamentalism.  Modernity is shaping up to be less an age of reason than a violent battle between ideologies, ways of life and worldviews. Pages 75 – 77

Vote Romney.

Vote Obama.

Support your symbolic immortality.

Ash Wednesday isn’t suppose to be comfortable.  It’s a day when the church takes repentance public.  A day when something we usually reserve for the private sphere get’s pushed into the public sphere.  It’s a day when repentance becomes corporate.  When repentance is there for all to see, with the sign of the cross inscribed in ash on our foreheads.

And it’s not just a time of repentance, but it’s also a time of relinquishment … relinquishment of our project of immortality.

As I wrote earlier this week:

Denial of death, for Pulitzer Prize winner Ernest Becker, is an all encompassing explanation for human endeavors.

Death, though, for Becker has two levels of meaning: The first level is phyiscal death.  After all, how many times a day do we attempt to distance ourselves from death?  Do you eat healthy?  Do you wear a seat belt?

The second understanding of death plays more into our discussion.  This type of death can occur during life. It’s the type of death that takes place when we experience a loss of meaning, worth or affirmation.  And this type of death, though it will happen eventually for us all, is what most of us work so hard to deny.

Ash Wednesday is an acknowledgement of Ernest Becker’s second type of death.  It’s an acknowledgement of our mortality; an acknowledge of our finitude; and an acknowledge of our depravity.

It’s the day we repent for our denial of death. Essentially, it’s a day when we prove Ernest Becker wrong.

It does us good to remember the old saying that is found on some tombstones:

Remember friends as you pass by,
as you are now so once was I.
As I am now so you must be.
Prepare for death and follow me.

It’s good for us to remember that the works of our hands will not last forever.  That our kingdoms will fall.  That America will one day be no more. That our bodies will die.  That our jobs, our business, our children, our name, our political ideals, and even our religion will one day — if they are lucky — find themselves in the annuls of history.  That even our Christianity as we know it will one day be rendered dead.

And maybe this type of doubt is the reason few evangelicals partake in Ash Wednesday.  After all, we have fervently engaged in the project of death denial as we’ve built theological buildings that we believe will last for time eternal.

And maybe it’s right to even press this farther.

Maybe Ash Wednesday is a day when the church should allow ourselves to doubt in the life after this one. That maybe our hopes of heaven are misinterpretations of Jesus’ words.  That maybe all we have is today to love and be loved.  And maybe, in forgetting this next life, we might strive for life now. We might find eternal life before our death.

Ash Wednesday isn’t suppose to be comfortable.  No, there’s nothing comfortable about this day.

“From dust you were made and to dust you shall return.”  – Genesis 3:19

I have a couple theories.

The main one is this: selfishness.  Egotism.  Narcissism.  Sin.  Whatever you want to call it.  That wrongful attitude that puts the almighty ME above everything else.  Even though we claim to be like Jesus, our selfishness proves otherwise.

But there’s a couple other theories as well:

Two: we become tribalistic and smear on the hate to all the “others” who aren’t a part of the “evangelical” tribe, or the “American” tribe, etc.

The third theory is the sibling rivalry theory; that those closest to us are usually the ones who have the greatest potential to receive our love and, when we disagree, our hate.

My main theory for us evangelical /protestant types is that we’ve simply vested too much of the Christian life into orthodoxy and too little into orthopraxis and orthopathos, so that any small disagreement warrants hate mail.

But here’s another theory that’s right up my ally, that few of us — including myself — have heard of.

*****

It comes from Pulitzer Prize winner Ernest Becker.  Becker combines the denial of death, symbolic immortality and — at least in this discussion – religion to offer an explanation for hatred.  And if you’re interested in Becker’s theory, here’s the short of it:

Denial of death, according to Becker, is an all encompassing explanation for human endeavors.

Death, though, for Becker has two levels of meaning: The first level is phyiscal death.  After all, how many times a day do we attempt to distance ourselves from death?  Do you eat healthy?  Do you wear a seat belt?  Do you stand more than 14 inches away from the microwave, and put on a radiation suit if you must go within the 14 inch safe zone?

The second understanding of death plays more into our discussion.  This type of death can occur during life. It’s the type of death that takes place when we experience a loss of meaning, worth or affirmation.

On a corporate/community/national level, Becker would say that religion, war, art, science … nearly every human endeavor is an attempt to save us from this second understanding of death … from the void of nothingness … the forgotteness that comes when we’re simply a nobody.

And this type of denial of death … of being apart of something meaningful … is a symbolic immortality, as its something that will live on beyond us.

Robert J. Lifton coined the phrase “symbolic immortality” and he posits five ways we attempt to obtain this type of immortality:

Through the produce of our lovemaking. Ex.: Children, grandchildren, our family.

Through our art work, scientific discover or our product. Ex. Ford, Mozart, Darwin, etc.

Through the well-being of nature.  “So that our children can live better than we do”; the green movement.

Through a transcendent experience. Buddhism, the born again experience, nirvana

Through our involvement with a community larger than ourselves. Political party, religion, etc.

*****

The hatred of others, posits Becker, occurs when somebody else’s symbol starts to tread on ours.  If you threaten my children, you threaten my significance … my contribution to the world … my stake in something greater … my symbolic immortality.

If you threaten the work of my hands, you threaten the mark I’ve made in this world.  You’ve questioned my worth and contribution and you’ve essentially diminished and cut off my contribution … the thing that’s made me significant.

And finally, if you threaten my religion … if your community of faith overtakes my community of faith, you’ve questioned my/our story.  You’ve diminished our chance for meaning in the history of humanity.  If you question us, you call into question our meaning … our worth … our contribution … and for that, we will fight you.