1. I'm not making fun of any of the people I'm talking about here.
2. This post trying to offer a serious rethink.
Now I've said that, what I want to talk about is death. Specifically, people who died in 2016. Without being insensitive, I can't actually remember all the names. Here are some of them; David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Allan Rickman, Steve Parfitt, George Michael, Prince. There have been a stack more people shuffle off this year. So many have died this year that people are branding this year as having been awful for celebs dying in large numbers.
I've been genuinely surprised by how strongly people have reacted to death of celebrities.
Some people have resorted to telling death to quote, "f#$% off", on public forums and social media. I find all this extremely intriguing and confusing all at the same time. I know our emotions often don't make sense. Sometimes we feel offended on behalf of a certain celeb. Or we might find an affinity with someone famous even though we've never stood on the same soil as them, let alone met them.
I guess Kurt Cobain, Michael Jackson and Princess Diana were to great examples of those sorts of reactions.
When Michael Jackson died a few years back, I felt immensely sad for him. To me it seemed like he never really had a chance to be happy and well adjusted from early childhood. Kurt and Diana were similarly pretty tortured I guess.
But let's get back to the issue at hand. Why is it that people's reactions to large numbers of celebrities dying is so strong and in many cases angry? Why are they so angry at 'death'? I mean, we all die, right? We all expect our life is going to end? Or do people really think celebs will live forever? Why does everyone keep using the word "tragedy" to describe death if we all die? I think I can tell you why.
1. Our society lives in partial denial about death
We are right to say that death is indeed "a tragedy". Every human being's death is tragic. Death destroys families, marriages, companies, art, music, development, etc, etc. Death destroys. There is really no good thing to say about death. As I said though, we're in denial about it. Our denial of it works in two ways in our society;A. We don't acknowledge that death starts working against us before we're even born.
Just think of how many babies die before birth. That's even before we talk about miscarriages or abortions. Then throughout our life, death snaps at our heels day by day, hour by hour. If things go well for us, we might avoid it for 80 or more years. Many don't. As many have commented, "we're born to die".
B. We don't live with death.
This might seem like a weird thing to say, but it takes cancer or a severe health scare to give us "real perspective" or a "bucket list". So even though we know everyone does die, we all go around effectively singing, "la la la la" with our fingers in our ears. Then when anyone dies, we are geniunely shocked that death has the hide to take them. The closest thing we get to in this regard is funeral plans or wills. Really, neither of them does any more than clean up a little of the visible mess.
All this is really the picture of a bigger problem working in our communities, families and heads. Here's how it works.
2. Materialism vs Metaphysics
For about the last 100 years, we've been gradually converted to the idea that life, wealth and happiness is only about what we see, hear, taste, smell, touch, own or buy. Now at one level that makes sense, because you can put your hand on it. You can measure it, you can feel it and know it's really there. It's approach to death is where it begins to unravel. Death is the end of life. In fact, following materialism to it's natural conclusion, death has nothing after it. It's just the end of a biological process. That's it. The process starts when we're conceived, it ends at death. One might further add that the decay of our bodies is then just part of another biological process. There's no right or wrong. You live, you die, you do some stuff in the meantime and that's it. That's materialism. There's only one problem.
Materialism doesn't work for us and let me give you a few reasons why.
A. Materialism doesn't explain the most important things in life.
To begin with, it doesn't explain feelings or our ideas. Take justice, equality and honesty. All of these things are essential to human life and relationships. Or what about love? How on earth do you measure that in material terms? You can measure brain chemistry, hugs, sexual intercourse, acts of service or words, but not "love". It's neither material nor objective. Quizically, it also fails to confirm 'rational thought' as a system of thinking for all the same reasons.
B. What about the nagging feeling that death is wrong?
Materialism has no way of measuring any values or even right and wrong. The material world just is. Values are just people's opinions in materialism. As for feelings about death, as mentioned before it's totally unable to say anything about death beyond, "death happens".
C. Stuff isn't making us happy.
We've got more disposable cash and stuff than any other generation of Australians before us, but many of us are just miserable. Mental health is rife. Marriage and family are in crisis. Worse still, I'm hearing the suicide rate for men has gone up not down, in the last few years. This is despite the valiant efforts of so many different organizations.
So we need a different way of thinking about things.
We should begin to properly deal with all those things we can't see, hear or touch but really exist. Things that sometimes don't seem rational, but also explain life and give us purpose. We're talking metaphysics here. That is, stuff 'beyond' the physical world. Because this is where our problem with death first shows itself. Every society on earth acknowledges that there is something beyond the material world. More than that, there is something beyond death.
"He has also set eternity in the hearts of men;
yet they cannot fathom what God has done
from beginning to end."
Ecclesiastes 3:11
For my part, the tragedy of people like these celebs dying is not the death itself. We'll miss them, but that's not the worst bit. It's more that they appeared to have no real plan for what follows it. That's no great surprise though, because we've all been sold "you only live once" (YOLO). Like so many rockstars we all live for what is right in front of us. Here's the thing though, there's more. Much, much more.
A very good friend of mine died this year. It was very sad and our church family still miss her immensely. The difference for us is this. While there was loss and destruction, we look forward to seeing her again. We know for sure. She spent her whole life preparing for it by following Jesus. Our relationships with her are suspended, but they're not ended.
Why don't we start living for what is beyond death as well as life now?
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