What's the point?

Sometimes I get an email which really makes me examine what I believe and why. Recently someone wrote. He'd read my article in the Guardian about Stephen Hawking's view that believing in heaven was a fairy story for people "afraid of the dark" ("I'd stake my life that Stephen Hawking is wrong about heaven"). He thought I might have something wise to say in the face of the apparent meaninglessness and randomness of life - and asked me how I regarded the prospect of death. Sometimes you get the sense that a person is raising awkward questions just to trip you up - but not in this case.

So during these wonderfully sunny warm autumnal days, I thought about my answer and this was a large part of it:

"To be honest most of the time I feel very small and vulnerable in a vast and perplexing universe. I think you have expressed the ultimate questions well and succinctly. To shuffle off this mortal coil, as Shakespeare put it, for another transcendental existence or else to be snuffed out for good seems a kind of waste and a denial of the rich sense of meaning that we have in our present existence. I can understand why some people choose to believe in reincarnation, so that there's at least some continuity of biological life. 

"You probably know the 17th century Englishman's famous description of life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". You aren't alone in struggling! I have no idea where you're coming from philosophically or personally, so I hope you will excuse me if I tread on any of your cherished notions. I don't mean to. As I've indicated, I don't feel I have all the answers. I feel more like I'm on a journey of exploration - which some people find an uncomfortable experience, but just happens to be the case with me. 

I identify with the poet who wrote: 

'We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.'

 That means that I'm on a journey of exploration in my disease - and of course it started before then! - which will lead to my death, I know. However, as I indicated in my Guardian article, I don't believe it will end there, which relates to where it started. As I wrote then, it was at university that I examined the evidence for the resurrection, in particular of Jesus Christ, and couldn't find any convincing reason that it didn't happen. The case for the defence was overwhelming. The documents were historically sound, the tomb was empty, no body was ever produced, independent witnesses saw him, hundreds of them, the disciples changed, and the Christian church 'happened'. The case was well argued by the leading lawyer, Professor Norman Anderson. If it was true, then the idea that life ends with death falls apart.  

"believing in nothing is just as
problematic!"

"However there's more to a journey than having one radical idea! Intellectually I didn't find it hard to believe in God. Certainly He can't be proved, but believing in nothing is just as problematic. I suppose you could say that my faith was largely cerebral for some years. It made sense. Its morality wasn't easy but was compelling. I reckoned it provided the most compelling worldview on offer. It was that in the end that took me into the priesthood. I won't bore you with a step-by-step account of the journey, but just point out a couple of milestones on the way. One was being diagnosed with ALS/MND nine years ago. That took me into a world of profound and disturbing questions, about meaning and suffering - I suppose to do with what you describe as randomness. But the other happened about seven years earlier. That was what I can only describe as an unexpected encounter with the Spirit of God when I was overwhelmed with the love of Jesus Christ. The effect it had on me was to transform my largely intellectual faith into a life conviction. It also meant that when my diagnosis came I had a different perspective on the questions concerning suffering and so on. I suppose I'd had long enough to prove that not only did faith make sense but it also worked in practice. And I'd also found that I was not alone in life.

"So although I've not had answers to all the perplexing questions, I've been given a sense that life is not pointless or random. I know that the process of dying will not be simple or pleasant for me, but so far the hard things of my life have had unexpectedly positive outcomes. I think if you stop learning and stop striving to learn then you've an impoverished approach to life. As for the nature of life after death - well, the two compass points I go by are the accounts of the nature of the risen Jesus, whose body had a continuity with his body before death; it was tangible and recognisable, yet transformed, unlimited and superior. That seems to indicate that there's a continuity between us as we are and us as we shall be. The second compass point is that Jesus seemed to indicate that there will be 'a new, or renewed, creation'; in other words there will be some sort of continuity between existence as we know it now and existence as it's going to be. Somehow everything won't go to waste or be lost to oblivion.  

"Recently I've read something a truly wise man wrote about spiritual life. He compares life to a race; it has a start and an end. Its 'rules' are quite confusing. But God wants everyone to "win": 'So don't just listen to people talking or writing about religion. Some do it well, others do not. When they are concerned only with the externals of religion, they make it all sound so boring. Listen again...: "the best way to explain it is to do it". So get involved, even if your attempt to do so seems a blundering one.'

"I'd say something similar, like I feel I've been invited on this journey into the unknown, and all I know is that I've been invited by supreme Love. I'm relying on Him. I left a line out of that poem earlier:

'With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.' That's what makes the difference.

"I don't know whether that's of any help."