Following on my post yesterday about a recent book entitled Ninety Minutes in Heaven, I feel it necessary to explain, with a not-necessarily-boring personal anecdote, why I wrote what I did, especially in light of the comments made by ER, a person whose views and person I respect a great deal.
First of all, thirty years ago, Carl Sagan wrote on the ubiquity of so-called "near-death" experiences, as they had been recently cataloged and commented upon by Elisabeth Kubbler-Ross. Writing in The Dragons of Eden, Sagan speculated that they might be the brain "remembering" the birth experience - the dark tunnel, the light, indistinct voices that were not clearly understood, etc. While I do not accept Sagan's view - why would near-death trigger a "memory" that for all intents and purposes cannot exist - I find it an interesting attempt to grapple realistically with the sameness of these experiences across cultures and time. Does this sameness mean that the after-life is in fact what we have been told it is, all clouds and harps and gates? Or, perhaps, does it mean that the human brain, despite personal differences, are physically the same, including the chemical make-up that triggers certain responses to stimuli, including the rare close approach to death? Of course, there are those who have had near-death experiences that are different - they either experience nothing at all, or they have horrific experiences (more on this below). My point is that there is nothing inherent in the experience, despite its very real psychological and emotional impact upon the individual, to serve as a reference for either research or speculation. Unless someone would willingly volunteer to undergo an MRI while placed in a near-death state to examine what happens to the brain as the body shuts itself off, we simply have no way of determining what, exactly is happening; even then, the firing of various synapses may or may not relate to anything the individual experiences (or doesn't experience) during this state, because we still don't know enough about how synaptic firing relates to the function which, for lack of a better word, we term "mind".
As a Christian, my problem with this whole after-life thing has been present since my childhood. I was an earnest child (actually, I was earnest until about age 33 or so), and took the Bible very seriously, and I failed to see anything in there that countenanced the whole angels-on-clouds-with-harps-St.-Peter-at-the-gate-choirs-singing-us-home after-life. It just isn't there, no matter how hard one tries to find it. The whole structure of belief in the afterlife is as much a fictional creation of a mind unfettered by the constraint of Christian scripture as is creationism. Indeed, it is not too much to say that it is as much an artistic creation - Dore, Bosch, Dante - as a (speculative) theological one.
There is warrant for the idea of the resurrection of the dead - that God's final redemptive act is the end of death itself, with a restoration of that which has died to everlasting life - a difficult, murky subject, one as shrouded in mystery as death itself. The subject itself is complicated by the fact that a mindless version of it is exploited by dispensationalists and other unreflective Christians - the whole Rapture business - to push an unorthodox reading of Scripture and view of history in which they are the heroes, and the rest of us the godless receiving our just reward in a lake of fire, locked away in eternal torment. The idea of New Creation, however, as N. T. Wright has shown, is intrinsic to the Christian message, the impetus behind the ministry of Jesus and the continuing hope of the Church. While I know DL is rolling his eyes as he reads this, all I can say is that this hope, this longing, is the source for the courage of Christians throughout history (although not the source for the crimes of Christians).
In high school, a young man (19 or 20 or so at the time) came to our youth group meeting to talk about the near-death experience he had as the result of a car accident in which his best friend died. Both had various chemicals, including alcohol, in their systems, probably ubiquitously. This young man had the experience, not of a wonderful tunnel of light, but of writhing in the pit of hell, separate from everything, with demons piercing his skin with pitchforks, etc. Upon his revival from his near-death, he got Jesus in a big way, at least for a time. The last time I saw him, he was picking a fight in a bar, and was tossed out after crushing another man's testicles with a pool cue. He was severely inebriated at the time; so much for the punishments of hell serving as a deterrent for bad behavior . . .
Despite my tone, I honestly have no opinion on these matters. They might have been exactly as they are reported. On the other hand, they might be nothing more than the final, overwhelming activity of the brain as its power supply shuts down. Like a private language, there is no way to take this information and turn it into something others can use. My problem is not with the reports of the experiences themselves, but rather the use to which they are put by those who exploit the emotional and psychological vulnerability of those who have experienced them. There is nothing - I repeat, NOTHING - to warrant the anti-intellectual leap from the experience of one, or a hundred million, near-death experiences, to a full-blown personal eschatology of pearly gates, winged cherubs, etc. Do I believe that coming close to death is an emotionally powerful experience? How could I not believe that? Do I believe the detailed reports of all those who have been revived? I neither believe nor not believe - these are matters for which belief, acceptance, whatever word one wishes to use, are inadequate. There is no way to judge or determine or come to a conclusion on these matters, so I refuse to do so.
Virtual Tin Cup
