We Have Had Our Run. It Is Time to Leave.

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 17 October 2013 4 Comments
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Question

I have just finished reading your book Eternal Life: A New Vision. I found it clarified on an intellectual basis many feelings I've had toward religion (specifically Christianity which was my childhood experience- although minimally), but was unable to articulate such. I grew up near Highlands, NC. I was in total agreement with your assessments and overall beliefs expressed in your book until I got to the end where you address life after death. I may have missed something. In response to the question of life after death, your response is “yes, yes, yes.” While the discussion is somewhat vague, if you truly believe in life after death in a heavenly setting, then I don’t get it. If what you mean to convey is by living a “good life in all regards would result in your life’s work/contributions continuing on after death,” then I get it. I would be interested in any clarification offered.

 

Answer

Dear Larry,

Thank you for your letter. I understand the problem you articulate, but I do not know how to address it any better than I did in the book. The issue is that every word we speak or write is time-bound and time-warped. I am trying to point to an experience of transcendence that is beyond the ability of language to capture. No, I do not think life after death occurs in “some heavenly setting,” nor do I think it is simply how “my life’s contributions continue after my death.” It is easy for me to say what it is not, but difficult to find any words that can communicate what it is. Of course that leads some, perhaps many, to assume that there is nothing to describe and that is the problem. That point of view, to which you seem to give your assent, may turn out to be true, But I do not believe that that is correct. I think the question is far more open and profound than your words suggest.

My conclusions and my hopes are assisted in the fact that life has all kinds of dimensions that most of us never experience. Human beings are self-conscious creatures who are not bound by time and space. With our minds we can relive the past and anticipate the future. In our relationships, we can approach openness with another. In our worship, we can experience a mystical oneness with the Source of life and can step beyond our limits into what I call a universal consciousness. In those aspects of our lives, I believe we touch and experience something that is eternal. I call that something “God” and I see that as a dimension of life that is beyond all limits. I test this reality all the time and in all the ways that reality can be tested and still I think it is real.

I look at my world with all of its wonder and try to understand it. The world I inhabit, however, can only be perceived by living creatures and the level of the perception will vary with the level of consciousness in the perceiving creature. How much of reality does an insect perceive or a bird or a dog? Can a dog explain to an insect the dog’s experience of reality? Can a horse understand what a human being can perceive? Is there a perception beyond that of the human? Why, I wonder, do people assume that the human consciousness is the limit that consciousness has or can achieve? Is the there is nothing beyond human perception to which we might point but never embrace??

My conviction about the reality of life after death does not lead to a diminishment of this life as was so often true in Christian history. It rather leads me to live so fully, love so wastefully and be all that I can be so courageously that I can begin to touch the edges of reality and to glimpse what is beyond all of my limits. I think that glimpse is real; that is as far as I can go and as far as I want to go.

John Shelby Spong

 

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