WHEN you pass away, pop your clogs, hand in your chips, fall off the perch - or whatever your euphemism of choice is - is that the end of the matter? When your earthly remains are laid in the earth or shoved into the furnace is that the termination of your personal story - or is there another thrilling instalment to come?
Anyone searching the television schedules for a semisensible religious programme over the Easter weekend would have done so in vain. Fortunately, stuck in the small print of BBC Radio Scotland's listings was a real gem. Called Life After Death: This is My Story, it consisted mainly of interviews with people about how they understood the end of their mortal existence.
The action began with a conversation between an elderly couple and the programme's presenter, Mark Stephen. The couple said that after death they were sure that, as believers in Jesus Christ, they would go to heaven to be with the Lord. Mark confessed that he was not a believer, so what would happen to him?
They didn't shirk it. Unless he changed his mind, he would go to hell.
What made the interview riveting was that the elderly couple were Mark Stephen's parents.
They sounded kindly and decent people. They clearly loved their son, and he loved them, but that was the way life was. As a non-believer, he was destined for the fiery furnaces.
It was a stunning piece of radio. The normality, the casualness even, made this heart-stopping moment all the more grotesque. Two good people were telling their son that he was destined for eternal destruction because he failed to believe certain propositions.
His inability to believe that a Jewish teacher who walked in Palestine 2000 years ago was the Son of God - Stephen made it clear that much as he wanted to believe, he couldn't - apparently condemned him to an afterlife of punishment.
We'll return to this point later.
Over many centuries, large numbers of human beings have believed that when they die, their life will continue in some form. There is something in the human condition which rebels against the notion that this life is all there is. In my days as a minister, before returning to the less than gospel-greedy fleshpots of hackdom, I often felt that same visceral stab when I stood at bleak gravesides.
After every funeral, I would go back to the house and share a dram with the mourners. In the relaxation following the tension of the day, many a person would say to me: "I'm an atheist myself, but let me tell you about this religious experience I once had . . ."
But we live in a scientific age and for many people of integrity religious belief is not possible. The notion of a "soul", an intangible something at the core of my being which makes me who I am, is in decline, in Europe at least.
Neuroscience claims even to find places in the brain which are responsible for religious experiences.
Religious people are vulnerable to the accusation that their faith is wishful thinking, masking a deep need for security. This Freudian sword is double-edged, though. Might the atheist be unconsciously bodyswerving the unpalatable notion of ultimate judgment?
Discuss.
Some telegrammatic observations: consciousness itself is a profound mystery. Science is now much less reductionist and more open than it used to be. Researchers investigating "near-death" experiences say they have found evidence to suggest that consciousness can continue to exist after the brain has ceased to function. Neither the existence of God nor an afterlife can be proved.
Here's how I would answer Mark Stephen's questions. Do I believe in God? Yes, but I know less about the sacred now than I thought I did when I was 20. Do I believe in life after death? Yes, though what it might be like I haven't a scooby. It's beyond human imagination and language.
What about eternity? Can't get my mind around the word.
Any images we might or might not have about an afterlife will depend on our image of God. I can't worship a God who slaughters millions of people because they don't believe certain things - Slobodan Milosevic is rightly on trial for much less than that. Nor do I want to spend eternity flattering and brownnosing some ghastly genocidal tyrant. I'm putting my theological money on Jesus not being a misleading icon of the divine, though I recognise that particular imagery has a lot to do with the tradition and the community in which I was brought up.
And I do, at the side of these open graves, still want to affirm - often in the teeth of the available evidence - that love is not defeated by death. Irrational?
Maybe. Unscientific? Possibly.
But faith is more like a love affairwith God than it is about a tick-list of beliefs. And there are nailprints of suffering love in the hands that - I hope - will one day wipe away all tears.
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