Eternal life; or how to leave a legacy

"Everyone ought to have a legacy, something to be remembered for." Clinton Tyree, aka Skink; in Stormy Weather, by Carl Hiaasen.

Last week--well, actually two weeks ago now--I wrote about death. Not a particularly cheery topic--sorry. And the somber mood continued through the week. On Wednesday, as we prepared for the imposition of ashes in a ceremony that was particularly poignant, we gathered in the fellowship hall for a discussion. After considering various aspects of the "I am" statements, both of God (Exodus 3:14) and of Jesus as recounted in John's gospel, we walked through the dark hallways of the church to the sanctuary, lit only by candles on the altar, having been enjoined to remain silent from the time of leaving the fellowship hall until our return. We were invited to sit and meditate, then go forward for the imposition of ashes, return to a pew and meditate, and leave when ready. Sitting silently and meditating is not a comfortable experience for many Americans, or for many Presbyterians. But I found it strikingly fulfilling. Before we left the fellowship hall, Rev. Bell asked us a question: "what do you have in your life that cannot be reduced to ashes?" This tied so well to my promise to address what we leave behind when all else is gone, that I thought maybe he was reading this blog!

I recently finished reading Natural Selections: Selfish Altruists, Honest Liars, and Other Realities of Evolution by David P. Barash. This is a fascinating book, but probably not one that all readers would enjoy. Barash is firmly at the liberal end of the writing spectrum, so if you find the ideas of evolution or climate change to be offensive, this is probably not the book for you. But it definitely got me thinking. Barash explains, elaborating on Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, that evolution is not about survival of the fittest individual, or even of the fittest species, but of the fittest genes. It is our genes that are immortal, that have found a way to replicate indefinitely. It turns out that we, like all animals, plants, even viruses, are just vehicles to support the eternal propagation of a set of genes.
Is that really all there is? That sounds rather depressing.
So let's talk about my brother-in-law Pete instead --it's got to be less discouraging. Pete used to have a goal: to read every book ever written. A great goal, until he realized that it isn't even remotely achievable. The British Library alone adds three million items each year. Even if they're not all books, there was still no way for Pete to keep up. So he decided instead to watch every film ever produced (at least in English). I don't think either goal was really serious, and he has actually spent his life in the much more useful pursuit of teaching. But I bring up his early goals because I too, at one point, thought it would be fun to learn as much as possible--to read as widely as possible. Browsing our home library you'll see that we do indeed have a lot of books, on a multitude of topics.
But I realized that accumulating vast knowledge is useless. When we die, our knowledge dies with us unless we have done something to propagate that knowledge. This epiphany was one of the incentives for writing this blog: reading expires, but writing persists.

Humans have grown beyond the simple propagation of a genotype. Through either (a) some happy coincidences of evolution, or (b) divine intervention--your choice--the human brain has developed such a high degree of complexity that self awareness and the ability to communicate--and thus preserve--ideas has emerged. The fear that this emergence may occur in artificial forms of intelligence, such as computers, has fueled a complete genre of science fiction.
But for us, it has allowed a form of immortality through the preservation of ideas. It has also spawned a new form of evolution, as David Barash explains in Natural Selections: social evolution. This type of evolution progresses very rapidly, especially when compared to the biological evolution of genes. It took around five billion years for our ancestors to evolve into a creature that, anatomically, would be called human, a process completed about 130,000 years ago. It was perhaps another 90,000 years before Homo sapiens started exhibiting modern behavioral patterns (although this figure is the source of considerable controversy among researchers). In comparison, look at how much technology has changed in the past 200 years, and society has changed in just the last half century.
This difference between the rate of change from genetic evolution and from technological and social evolution can create problems. As Barash points out, when animals with particularly lethal capabilities engage in intra-species combat, they are careful not to employ those capabilities against each other. Poisonous snakes, for example, may struggle with others of their species, but they do not bite them. Thus genes engage in competition, but not self-eradication. Humans, on the other hand, have developed particularly lethal capabilities,such as the firearm, but retained basic combative instincts applicable to fisticuffs. Our genes cause us to be quick to take offense and resort to violence, without having evolved to account for our new ability to make that violence lethal through the application of two pounds of force on a trigger, God help us.
And speaking of God, where does religion fit in this issue of immortality and life's purpose? This coming Sunday we sing the lovely anthem by Mark Hayes, To Love Our God, which, the anthem tells us, is the highest call. If I were to ask the question "how do I achieve immortality" in Sunday school, I know the immediate answer would be "accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Master", for He promises eternal life to those who believe in him. But what does it mean, to accept someone (or something) as one's Lord and Master?

Imagine we are a knight errant, be-bopping around medieval England, when we come upon a castle and pledge our troth to the lord of that castle. There are two consequences: we must now obey our lord's commands, and we get to wear his livery. We must be careful that we do not put all our attention into the latter, pledging allegiance so that we can be part of the popular club. When we do this, we have a nasty habit of enforcing our own will on others, but doing so in the name of our master. Better we take off the livery, and be known as his servants only by our actions.
NPR airs a series named "This I Believe", and in similar fashion I here give how I believe we achieve immortality through following the command of our Lord and Master, as explained in Luke 10:25-27. The first command, of course is to love our God (Matt 22:36-38)--there's that anthem again! And the second is to love our neighbour (Matt 22:39), which I discussed at length in an earlier blog post. Mother Teresa of Calcutta,  will have spread our spirit among many people. But even if, like that unusual Samaritan long ago, and more recently like Colin Farrell, we only touch the life of one other person, then our spirit lives on.

If we follow this second command, when we die in the body a part of our spirit will live on in all those whose lives we have truly touched. Some of us, such as teachers (remember my brother-in-law Pete?), and
So there we have the three ways that we can anticipate eternal life: by the propagation of our genes, by the perseverance of our ideas--especially through writing, and by passing of our spirit to those whose lives we enrich.
Next week (or month, or year), I will be discussing Choice--a topic I have wanted to write about for a long time, because we are often hesitant to recognize the need to allow others to have choice, and conversely (and perversely) claim that others have choice when they do not. Until then, errant neighbour, be careful who sees you be-bopping!