Old ideas being dislodged

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Controversial visiting US cleric Bishop John Spong chats with Dunedin women (from left) Ann Broadfoot, Jenny Madill and Cynthia Greensill, at a seminar in Dunedin in 2001. Photo by Jane Dawber.

Nowhere have traditional ideas about life yielded so decisively to new knowledge as in what lies beyond it - or what does not.

Funeral services that once consigned the deceased to the afterlife in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life are rarer now as secular celebrants and ministers alike respond to families' wishes to reflect instead on the life lived by the departed, and to celebrate it with laughter, love and tears.

That marks a sea change.

Recently, I asked a gathering of 85 people, half of them churchgoers and half not, how many of them saw the purpose of their life and destiny as lying in a world beyond this one.

Only three put up their hands.

Modern cosmology and changing perspectives on religion are steadily dislodging old ideas of heaven as our final resting-place.

In the hymnbook I grew up with, the afterlife is graphically depicted as eternal bliss (or rest, take your pick) in an environment of pearly gates, streets paved with gold, magnificent gardens, harps and heavenly choirs.

The movie version of The Lovely Bones, currently screening, brings the imagery of heaven closer to earth with South Island alpine scenery alternating with prairie-style cornfields.

It is intriguing that the afterlife is continually being re-visualised in novels and movies.

Each new depiction of a spirit world is rooted in a particular culture, each reflects a lingering reluctance to let go of an idea that till recent times was central to human speculation.

Hence those images of jewel-encrusted palaces, alpine panoramas, lush green fields, shaded gardens, music . . . and for Muslim men, beautiful black-eyed virgins.

Some argue that the idea of an afterlife is deeply ingrained in the psyche.

Alone among living creatures, humans know that one day they will die, and a basic impulse for survival makes them receptive to the notion of another, better life to follow this one.

There is also a natural longing to meet again those whom we have loved.

An afterlife offers both hope and consolation.

Faith in its pre-modern understanding promises all three.

But in today's secular world, such faith needs re-thinking.

Another yearning is for fairness.

It seems only right that those who have lived exemplary lives should be rewarded, while those who have been selfish, indifferent or cruel should be punished.

Heaven and hell took care of both groups by offering a tidy balancing-up.

But fewer and fewer Westerners think that is how things will play out.

The latest of myriad thinkers to pronounce on an afterlife is American Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop John Spong.

In Eternal Life: A New Vision, he takes the scythe to ancient religious notions of God in a physical heaven (Galileo dealt to that), of divine manipulation of the natural world (Newton to that), and of human life originating distinct from the processes of nature (Darwin to that).

Past theologies built on those ideas, but they no longer square with what we know about the way the world functions.

So Bishop Spong steps outside that framework to ground his probing of an afterlife solely on human experience and on a redoubtable stack of abstract nouns.

He writes of selfhood and identity, of mysticism, of a universal consciousness resonating with unity and wholeness, of entering the meaning of transcendence, oneness, timelessness and eternity, and concludes: "I believe deeply that this life that I love so passionately is not all there is."

His convictions, he says, "are real and they are convincing to me".

But not to me. An afterlife remains unproven either way.

That has always been so, and it probably always will be.

In the new climate there is a simpler way through.

It is to accept that death really does bring our life to an end.

Our individual consciousness will not survive it.

We are part of nature in which every living thing dies.

Dead means dead.

It is possible, however, to accept that life on earth is all there is, yet still find abiding value in those qualities which Christians have always considered to be eternal, but which they have been too eager to source in a world beyond.

Among them - the list is the apostle Paul's - are love, joy, peace, hope, patience, kindness, generosity, fidelity, gentleness and self-control.

When these are naturalised in people's everyday lives, and on top of that they feel free to live richly and exuberantly, there is a sense in which they brush eternity.

Come to think of it, that's what Jesus was on about.

Ian Harris is a journalist and commentator