Where There's a Will ...

 

The wheel of karma

A Chinese student asks me if I believe in fate. He says everyone in his class does.

This is interesting, and I’ve pondered it before. There are not many theists in China. Yet even those who do not believe in God believe in fate: in karma. They believe in karma throughout East and South Asia.

Yet how can there be fate without God? Fate implies the existence of a cosmic, omnipotent and omniscient will. Without a God, the universe should be random and meaningless. There should be no justice.

My student, presented with this assertion, agrees.

In other words, everyone is really a theist. All believe in God’s existence, and all see God as a will; which is to say, a person.  We are divided only by semantic confusion. And by denial of what we know in our hearts to be true.

Boris the Cat

 

Friend Xerxes tells the story of Boris the Cat, a companion animal on a solo cruise around the world. 

His column is titled “The Absence of a Happy Ending.” With an added “[Reader alert: This column is a downer]”

Somewhere in the South Atlantic, Boris fell overboard, and was not seen again.

“When things go wrong, we’re told to have faith. As Julian of Norwich once assured us, ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’

            “I wonder if Boris would agree with her.”

As though this advice was for cats. Anyone who’s had a cat as a kid could have told him, cats do not live long in any event.

So why this melodramatic reaction, particularly when men, women, and children are dying daily in Gaza, or the Ukraine, and gruesomely in Israel on October 7? And yet it is the unmet cat, who died many years ago, that occupies Xerxes’s thoughts?

Jung once said, sentimentality is a scaffolding concealing brutality. Hitler loved his dogs. 

I fear we no longer care about humanity. Making much of “nature” and cats and the like is a scaffolding concealing our own brutality from ourselves, at times when in our hearts we know we are guilty of it. We reassure ourselves by manifesting exaggerated delicacy. Goodness! We wouldn’t swat a flea! We lament the death of every cat!

Death, after all, is every cat’s ending. “Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” 

The conventional belief is that an animal’s consciousness, when it dies, simply ceases to be. Lights out. That is not tragic: it is neutral. Sad because this cat’s life was a few years shorter than it might have been? 

Then where is the concern over aborted children?

Boris may have briefly felt panic. There is a Jewish prayer, “Lord, don’t let me die while I’m still alive.” I imagine that is a prayer against panic, against facing death unexpectedly. If so, Boris’s panic must have been brief. Cats are not renowned swimmers. A small furry animal in a turbulent sea? 

And if this is Xerxes’s or his readers’ main concern, do they spare a thought for the terror of animals led to slaughter, whose meat they eat every day?

Xerxes then makes Boris's death a parable to suggest that we invented heaven to console ourselves, because we want a happy ending.

But that does not work. Xerxes probably knows this in his own heart. He has a Christian education. Animals, according to traditional Christian belief, based on Aristotle, do not go to heaven. If heaven were only wishful thinking, we would surely insist that Boris did, and we would have our happy ending. Why does Xerxes choose an example that does not work?

Because his real point is a concealed one. He wants to believe we are all like cats, and cease to be at death. That is his wish for a happy ending. 

Because the alternative, as Xerxes neglects to note, is not heaven. All people do not go to heaven. In fact, in most traditional views of the afterlife, few do. There is an alternative destination, or perhaps two or three. Or, for Buddhists or Hindus, an infinite number of possible destinations, of future lives.

And moderns in general try hard not to believe in God or the afterlife, and insist that man is no better than an animal, a cat, and exalt nature, because of a guilty conscience, and terror at the just consequences of our actions.

Bad News, Adam

 

Orestes pursued by the Furies.

In his latest column, friend Xerxes writes that it is important to challenge our fixed notions. This is to introduce the concept of “eternal life.”

As my own body moves inexorably towards its expiry date, I become increasingly convinced that we are bodied people. Not disembodied souls.

            We cannot think, act, or even remember, without our bodies. Our thought processes depend on inputs from every organ. Eyes and ears, of course. Also heart, lungs, guts, skin…

            Without a body, there can be no ‘me’.

            If that conclusion offends you, sorry. You don’t have to believe it. Stick with your own beliefs. But I need to be honest – that’s where I am, at this stage in my life.

            The circle of life shrinks as we grow older. Ultimately, it contains just one person. Me.

            Then one day I’ll be gone, too.

            And life will go on without me.

Notice that he gives no argument or evidence for this belief. He does not, in other words, challenge it. Just as he is saying we must do.

Notice also the phrase “I need to be honest.” We are obliged to be honest at all times. Therefore, if anyone ever uses the phrase “to be honest,” he is actually admitting he is generally not honest. He is reserving the right to lie.

These are examples of how our conscience works. It will not really allow us to get away with anything. It obliges us to condemn ourselves. Xerxes actually does not believe that consciousness ends at death, and he inadvertently tells us so, if we are paying attention. 

He is whistling past the graveyard, to use an old expression. He is like the child playing peek-a-boo, who thinks that, if he covers his eyes, he cannot be seen. If there is no afterlife, he need not fear punishment after death. A consoling thought to many.

Irrational as this is, it is the common human reaction. Denial is the common human reaction. It is in the Book of Genesis, after the original sin:

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

Yeah; hide from God. That ought to work.

This is actually the ultimate evidence that there is an afterlife. We know there is an afterlife, because we know there is a Hell. We can see that we are programmed, the universe is programmed, by some cosmic programmer, for justice. Anyone who studies history comes to realize, as Martin Luther King says, that “the arc of history bends towards justice.” We see in the lives of those around us, as we see here, that the unjust either soon or eventually turn to self-sabotage.

And yet, we also see that it commonly takes longer than a human life to actually see justice served. Van Gogh was unrecognized in his lifetime. Mao and Stalin died in their beds.

Accordingly, when we do not see individual justice fully served in this world, we must assume the existence of an afterlife, which compensates those here wronged, or who suffered for justice, and punishes those who here do wrong, or profit from injustice. That same cosmic program would have it so.

All the world believes this, as if it is indeed part of our operating system: pagans as much as monotheists. 

For monotheists, it is the divine judgment: 

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the King will say to those on his right, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.”…

Then he will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” …

Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

For Buddhists and Hindus, it is karma.

“As a man himself sows, so he himself reaps; no man inherits the good or evil act of another man. The fruit is of the same quality as the action.” – Mahabharata.

Whatever is not achieved in this lifetime, determines one’s rebirth into a life of comfort or of suffering; or into hell itself. You can’t escape karma.

The ancient Greeks called it Dike, an iron law which even the gods were subject to. Evil deeds evoked Erinyes, Furies, which would pursue you in life to the ends of the Earth. After death, one faced an eternal punishment to suit one’s crimes. Greedy Tantalus, thirsty, could not bend down to drink the water that rose to his chest. Hungry, above him he saw a fruit tree forever just out of reach. 

Hear me, illustrious Furies, mighty named, terrible powers, for prudent counsel famed; Holy and pure, from Hades born and Proserpine, whom lovely locks adorn: Whose piercing sight, with vision unconfined, surveys the deeds of all the impious kind: On Fate attendant, punishing the race with wrath severe of deeds unjust and base. Dark-coloured queens, whose glittering eyes are bright with dreadful, radiant, life-destroying, light: Eternal rulers, terrible and strong, to whom revenge, and tortures dire belong; Fatal and horrid to the human sight, with snaky tresses wandering the night; Either approach, and in these rites rejoice, for you I call with holy, suppliant voice. -- Orphic Hymn 69

So we know the afterlife is real. We know because of many who have risen from the dead, and told us what they saw. We know from saints who have had visions. We know from those who have heard in dreams from deceased relatives. Christians have the warrant of the Bible. But we know primarily because we know from our programming and our conscience, and from our own close observation of the actions of conscience in history and in others, that Hell is real. 

The Atheism Delusion

All my life, people have asked “Do you believe in God?” as though it were a meaningful question. I have never felt it was. It seems to me like a dodge to avoid the real question. It seems to me that, to any sincere and thoughtful person, the existence of God is self-evident.

My friends Xerxes or Xanthippe say they do not believe in God. But then they scoff at Him as “an old man with a long white beard living in the clouds.” Obviously, this is not God. Theirs is a perfect straw man argument.

Richard Dawkins argues that everyone is an atheist about all gods but one: Christians do not believe in Zeus or Baal. But by definition, there can be only one God, and it cannot matter what name you give Him, either Zeus or Jesus or Allah. So by Dawkins’ logic, to be a theist one must be an atheist; Aristotle would choke on his retsina. Nor do Christians deny the existence of Zeus or Baal, or any particular pagan god. They only deny that they are God; and the pagans who worshipped Zeus or Baal would agree. They are not God, by definition, because there are many pagan gods. None are claimed to be omnipotent, or omniscient, or all-good. They are simply supernatural beings. Dawkins is intentionally or unintentionally confusing apples and rutabagas.

Aha, you may object; but the pagans did not believe in God, did they? They believed only in gods; they were atheists in the proper sense.

I think they were atheists only in the modern sense: that they were trying to avoid the issue. We do not have sufficient evidence to say much about the original beliefs of hunter-gatherer societies, but when we look at ancient Rome, Greece, China, or India, we see that they did believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, all-good power. The Greeks called it Dike, “Justice.” Even the Gods could not avoid it. Plato and Aristotle were philosophical monotheists. In India, they called it karma, even apart from Brahman, possibly a later concept. In China, “tian,” “heaven.” They simply did not personify it and make it the sole focus of legitimate worship.

Another “atheist” argument is that there is no physical evidence of God. This seems perfectly disingenuous, since God is spirit and prior to matter, which He created; He is not physical by definition. You could just as plausibly argue that there is no physical evidence of consciousness. But just try running the statement “I am not conscious” by Descartes. Conversely, instead of arguing that there is no physical evidence of God, you could argue that everything physical is proof of God, in the same sense that hearing a nightingale’s song and seeing a nightingale’s plumage is evidence there is a nightingale in the woods.

It seems to me people are not arguing here in good faith. It is not that anyone really does not believe in the existence of God. It is more a case of whistling past the graveyard; we all want plausible deniability.

The real question is “Do you believe in evil?” Or you could phrase it as “do you believe in karma?” Or, “do you believe in justice?”

This is what everyone is really trying to avoid; avoid by not even asking the question. We do not want to believe in justice, in right and wrong, because and to the extent that we are aware ourselves of having done evil. We want to avoid admitting it.

We are in the position of Adam and Eve, who, hearing Yahweh approach, absurdly tried to hide in the bushes. Yeah, that ought to work, with an omniscient being.

Another reason why “do you believe in God” is the wrong question, is that it is perfectly common for people to profess to believe in God, yet deny the existence of evil or justice. They will readily say they believe in God; but will they speak of the Devil? This really means they do not accept God at all; they are just mouthing the word in hopes this will serve as cover. Like Adam and Eve with their fig leaves.

They will profess, for example, that the only thing that matters is to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior. They will say salvation is by faith alone. If you simply say you believe in God, you need not worry about your actions. They will say God loves us all, there is no Hell, or nobody in Hell, and we will all get into Heaven. We are all saints. They will say the only sin is in pointing out a sin.

How common an attitude is that in the Christian world?

Almost the dominant attitude, surely.

As it is in the Muslim world, for that matter.

It seems from this that Hell indeed will not lack occupants. To sin is human; to deny God, to deny the possibility of sin, is diabolical.