A few summers ago I attended two funerals in a week.
One was for a man who was atheist and had lots of worldly success. The second was for a woman who was Catholic, raised three children and lived a much quieter life.
In the first funeral the man’s achievements were celebrated, but there was a deep sadness at the core of the service. No one would be seeing him again – this farewell was final.
By contrast the second funeral, a religious service, was more impersonal. The woman’s name was barely mentioned, her achievements were rattled off in a sentence or two by the priest. This woman’s individuality was dissolved during the Catholic mass into something more universal, neutral even.
Yet despite this depersonalisation of the deceased, the second funeral was much more soothing. Reciting the words and rituals that were used in Catholic funerals the world over, the liturgy promised God would comfort us in our sorrow, and the Resurrection meant this parting would be brief.
And although I knew I wouldn’t be seeing her again, to step into a church – into an entire belief system that assured its members of eternal life – was to suspend rationality and give myself over to comforting reassurance. Perhaps the most comforting reassurance.
Sitting in the pew that day, I interrogated my own threadbare faith. If I went back to the church, it would probably be for cowardly reasons – because of this reassurance it provides, more than anything.
When things go bad, there’s a God to pray to, whose 24/7 presence will be a comfort. And even when the worst happens, and people die – you’ll see them again! It’s soothing at the most profound level.
People talk about giving up faith as something that just lightly slips away – and in many cases that’s what happens. (Fewer Australians than ever are reported to self-identify as religious in the census. In 2011 just under 25% of the population claimed to have no religious affiliation. A decade later this number has risen to 42%.)
But to be a non-believer entails its own form of mental toughness. It’s a refusal to be soothed. Dead is dead. And humans stand alone, on the lip of this vast, mysterious cosmos, either majestic or abject in their self-reliance (often both).
As the great English poet Philip Larkin wrote of death in his poem Aubade,
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die …
In this secular self-reliance, there’s no God to pray to at night. No one to thank for each morning. No community to worship with. No schema to process the inevitable suffering of life.
In times of vulnerability, there’s a desolation to the vast nothingness of eternity that can be much harder to bear than the promise of eternal life. And so being a non-believer is not always the easy option.
Then AI comes along into our…
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