I have been reading Rob Moll’s excellent Intervarsity Press book The Art of Dying. One of Moll’s key points is that we know we will die and in order to do so well, we need to have thought about it ahead of time. He doesn’t mean that we should obsess about death, sleep in caskets, or wear black all the time like a disturbed woman I saw on a television program. Instead, he encourages us to think about what it means to have a good death. While we are removed from the immediate danger, take advantage of the calm to consider how we should die and how we should make decisions about dying.
As I thought more about it, I realized that Moll’s insight about death has a lot to do with both moral and political thinking generally. One of the great reasons to draw up a constitution, for example, is to try to set up rules ahead of time. We need to have considered the possible situations for which law will be needed and to propose them now before they happen and we are caught up with either interestedness or our passions.
Bringing the example closer to home, I think about something I wrote several years go in response to a mass shooting incident at Virginia Tech:
I remember going for an evening walk with my young wife some years ago. As we strolled past a heavily wooded yard with a house barely visible, I suddenly heard the menacing growl of a very obviously big and mean dog. My immediate reaction was to run. The big muscles in my legs flexed and fired. The only thing that stopped me was my wife’s anguished cry, “Hunter, don’t leave me!” I forced down the fear impulse, backed up and put myself between her and the threatening sound. We walked on and nothing happened.
When Professor Librescu, an old man, a septuagenarian whose body had been through the terrors of the Holocaust, spotted a terrible threat he pushed his weight against a door and tried to keep a killer from murdering his students. All but two of the students and Librescu got away. In an email exchange yesterday, a friend wondered why able-bodied young men would have chosen to run instead of coming to the assistance of their heroic professor.
Thinking of my own experience and looking at what happened in that besieged classroom in Virginia, I think I know the answer. Liviu Librescu had seen death up close much earlier in life. He very probably saw his friends and neighbors killed and had many opportunities to measure his own reactions in light of right and wrong, valor and heroism. It is no surprise to me that such a man would resist rather than run. I suggest to you that he knew exactly who he was and who he was determined to be. The young men in that classroom were probably a lot like me in the situation with the dog. They were untested and had probably never been in serious physical danger. More important, they had probably never stopped to consider what they would expect of themselves in a life and death situation.
There are a couple of lessons that come to mind. The one that many conservatives will point to is that we have a culture that does not successfully impute manliness. We already knew the ethic of dedication to wife and children had slipped badly. We knew less well that we weren’t raising boys with expectations of self-sacrifice and protectiveness toward others. But this is the smaller of the two lessons.
The greater lesson is that we should all take pains to reflect on who we want to be and what we really believe. It was once common to speak of the examined life. That phrase fell under the massive heap of self-help materials and endless reflection on why we don’t have a better sex life, more money, and a better job. But the examined life goes deeper than that. It comes down to knowing who you are. Without it, you will almost inevitably run in the face of danger, quail before the bully, and excel in self-justification after the fact rather than action in the relevant frame.
Unprepared and without prior thought, none of us know how we will react in these situations. But we can prepare ourselves for the event and drastically increase the chance that we WILL do what we merely hope we would.
Take Rob Moll’s advice with regard to death and many other important moments in life. Prepare yourselves, friends.
February 19th, 2011 | 12:36 am | #1
It strikes me that there’s a danger of inappropriate self-involvement here. One might be tempted to think of preparation for one’s own death as preparation for a really important moment for oneself, where the ultimate goal is to experience it with some appealing state of mind (perhaps with dignified solemnity, courage, peace, or some deep sense of awareness). That, however, strikes me as perverse. It’s perverse in the way that it would often be perverse to have as one’s ultimate concern one’s own state of mind or welfare when one is exiting responsibilities, cares, or relationships.
Even if you’ve long since fully acknowledged that a sudden and early death is a real possibility, I suppose that severe disappointment and anguish is often still the most appropriate response to death if it does come early and suddenly.
February 19th, 2011 | 1:09 pm | #2
Moll’s point about death is that you prepare for it, not only for yourself, but also for those around you. It is a community event and you make it better for others, as well as yourself, when you consider what it will be like and what your priorities are when you face it.
February 19th, 2011 | 2:53 pm | #3
Then Moll’s point is a good one. Does he says anything about signing up to be an organ donor? That seems like something that Christians could really rally behind and promote; I wonder why they don’t.
February 19th, 2011 | 3:25 pm | #4
Is there any evidence that Christians as a group are strongly opposed to organ donation? I’d guess a great many of us have checked the box on our driver’s licenses.
Regardless, I haven’t finished the book, but I suspect Moll would say that is a very reasonable issue for every person to consider ahead of time so it won’t simply fall to relatives or friends to figure out.
February 19th, 2011 | 4:55 pm | #5
I don’t think of this as a matter of strong opposition, but rather as a matter of relative emphasis. (Strong opposition might require some reflection; it’s the general lack of reflection on this issue that’s usually the problem.) When one thinks of all of the church’s bio-ethical concerns, an active and positive stance on organ donation frankly doesn’t come to mind.
But why shouldn’t it? In my fantasy world in which Christians really do adorn the gospel of Christ with their good works and a thoughtful appreciation of the needs surrounding them, I expect churches to be known for being highly progressive on this issue.
February 21st, 2011 | 11:21 am | #6
It’s too bad that this serious reflection on the larger meaning of death and its relationship to eternity has devolved into something of a scolding about the purely temporal.
Moll’s larger point needs to be seen in the tradition of “momento mori” — a meditation practice of Christians for nearly as long as there have been Christians. The intention, as I understand it, was/is (at least) twofold. First that how we understand our place in this world and in the world to come, helps to form our character.
And second is the reality that we are born toward dying: “Remember thou art dust and to dust ye shall return”. As children of dust “feeble and frail” it behooves us to live with this reality before us in some measure — living in the now with posterity in mind.
Or as the great Richard J. Neuhaus wrote:
“We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of our dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well. Most of us are at ease in discussing what makes a good life, but we typically become tongue–tied and nervous when the discussion turns to a good death. As children of a culture radically, even religiously, devoted to youth and health, many find it incomprehensible, indeed offensive, that the word “good” should in any way be associated with death. Death, it is thought, is an unmitigated evil, the very antithesis of all that is good. Death is to be warded off by exercise, by healthy habits, by medical advances. What cannot be halted can be delayed, and what cannot forever be delayed can be denied. But all our progress and all our protest notwithstanding the mortality rate holds steady at 100 hundred percent. Death is the most everyday of everyday things.”
Which I could have written that.
February 21st, 2011 | 11:55 am | #7
This reminds me of a parody of “The Christmas Carol” when Scrooge, after the Ghost of Christmas Future points to his tombstone says in contempt, “I know that you idiot! Now tell me something I can use.”
February 21st, 2011 | 6:04 pm | #8
David C., I have spent a lot of time wanting to be able to do things like RJN did them! :-)
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