Fear, Loathing, Death, Dostoevsky, and Zizioulas

Henry Neufeld has been having a round of discussions on the Christian response to healthcare. His last post is here, but tonight I’m going to concentrate on this post. In the first linked essay before I get into the meat … Mr Neufeld remarks that, “Through this conversation Mark has been making good theological points while I have been telling stories.” Keep up with the stories! Narrative is a great way of making good theological points … likely better (and more pastoral) than the rhetoric employed by me.

However, in the post I intend to focus on, Mr Neufeld drills into an important feature of healthcare and end of life issues. Fear. In Being As Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church, Metropolitan John Zizioulas draws on Dostoevsky (note the ‘narrative’ connection above) from his novel The Possessed. In The Possessed Dostoevsky provides a shocking notion which Zizioulas identifies as “ontological freedom”. The character Kirilov remarks (quoted from pg 42 of Being as Communion):

Every man who desires to obtain total freedom must be bold enough to put an end to his life … this is the ultimate limit of freedom; this is all; there is nothing beyond this. Whoever dares to commit suicide becomes God. Whoever dares to commit suicide becomes God. Everyone can do this and so bring the existence of God to an end, and then there will be absolutely nothing …

Zizioulas correctly rejects this nihilistic notion of ontologial freedom … but connects it to Christianity. Via Baptism and the promise of Ressurection, Christians possess ontological freedom. Death has been “trampled” by Christ as expressed/sung about zillion times on in the Paschal liturgy last night and for until Pentacost) :

Christ is risen from the dead,
Trampling down death by death,
And to those in the tombs
He has given life!

Mr Neufeld in identifying fear focuses on two facets of this. Fear to the immediate family and fear, and anticipated by those concerned caring members of the parish community as they interact with the person and family who has a member suffering a diagnosed-to-be-fatal health related crises. This fear is present in most if not all parish communities … except I’d like to note two exceptions and follow with some prescriptive remarks.

In the line of narrative, some years ago when my youngest daughter was about three, one of the dear old ladies of our parish, with whom my daughter interact, had died. My daughter was completely unfazed by this. At first we were unsure if she undestood, because she was assuring us that “she’d see her soon.” We thought she misunderstood about the nature of death. What we didn’t realize was that she did, and further, had really understood even better than we what it meant to be Christian. Death has lost it’s sting and she knew that instinctively. Scripture tells us that we need the faith of the little ones … and this is an example of what was meant by this.

It is my impression that within monastic communities I’ve been told that death of one of the brethren (or sisters if a convent) is normally not a sorrowful thing, in fact quite the reverse. Death is seen as a joyful time. The assurance of heavenly reward and the ressurection and life (here on earth) to come has resulted in the ontological freedom which should be the part of every one of our communities and our families. It might be remarked however, that the monastic community while having close relationships and a particular focus on the vocation of seeking Christ in all things … lacks the marital connection. Husband and wife are one flesh, and children are precious gifts (Obama’s “punishment” meme notwithstanding … or more to the point, a thing to be firmly and absolutely rejected).  Loss, if only temporary, of the flesh of my flesh or one’s child is and will always be a hard thing. But this should be ultimately tempered with joy, especially if the duel with cancer (for example) is hard on the dying.

If, as is likely the case, the internalizing the idea of ontological freedom and the release from fear relating to death is not a part or prevalent in our  Christian communities then we need to take the advice from a famous quote of Albert Einstein. Einstein remarked that making mistakes was not dumb. But that doing a thing repeatedly and expecting a different result was. If our parish communities and praxis aren’t working to acheive the result of internalizing the Christian message then we can’t just keep doing things the same way and expecting that the results will change. If what we are doing isn’t working for us … and it is for the monks … then it is imperative that we all take up those things that those monastics and incorporate them into our lives and our parish communities.

A second remark is, that we should consider, when we think of how to interact with those who are in the process of dealing with dying … that, how we interact is also witness.  Our culture tries to hide death the ultimate obscenity, and rejects this far more than that the real obscenities in our midst. If we are mindful that death has been trampled by Christ when we interact with the dying and their families it seems to me that should temper our timidity and counter the hesitancy we might have in dealing with them.