From Halliwell Sutcliffe’s Priscilla of the Good Intent (1909), two men of the Yorkshire Dales conversing:
“’Tis not so easy to die as I thought,” said Reuben, breaking the silence unexpectedly. “You never know how fond you are of being chained to this daft world, until—well, till you begin to listen for the snapping of the chains.”
“I’d be sorry to leave it myself,” said the doctor, with his big, heathen laugh. “They work me to death, and I’ve seldom an hour to call my own, and first I’m baked with sun-heat, and then I’m chilled by this mist-rain ye’re so fond of, till I scarce know whether I’m dead or alive, but, bless ye, Mr. Gaunt, there’s some queer sort of joy in life, after all.”
Reuben Gaunt, who is “listen[ing] for the snapping of the chains” holding him to life, is not an old man, but I might be considered that. All the same, I’m not listening all that intently. It’s a “daft world,” no doubt, that we love, and people might occasionally be excused for thinking someone is getting a good laugh out of us little creatures loving it so much while it threatens us and punches us around so much every day, “and then you die.”
But, as the doctor says, “there’s some queer sort of joy in life, after all.” Whether we can account for it or not, we know the worth of human life. Some voices in our culture can tie themselves into knots denying that worth in language that carries celebration of humanness and life in it.
The crazy contrast of our desperate love for living even when life is hard confirms, for those of us who more or less believe the Bible, its tale of humanity as the self-punishing fugitive from God’s law and God’s love. We aren’t in Eden, but we are still in the wondrous and life-sustaining world that God created for us and our fellow creatures. While that world shouts “Your creator loves you!” we run and hide, convinced of the opposite, to the point of denying that we have been created by anyone other than our parents, and we’re not so sure about them either. And, again, all in language that carries celebration of humanness and life in it.
The conversation continues:
“Besides,” [the doctor] added, with his own grim pleasantry, “there’s a certain doubt as to what comes after.”
“There is,” murmured Gaunt, though he would have been slow to confess as much at another time. “I fancy ’twas the doubt troubled me, when I looked up at the sky, and felt the brazen heat.”
“Just my feeling,” said the other cheerily. “It might be hotter out Beyond—or again it might be damper—I never liked extremes.”
These two men reinforcing love for life by fear of hell reminds me of a peculiarly theological beer commercial of five decades ago: “You only go around once in life, so grab for all the gusto you can.” The “extremes” the “heathen” doctor doesn’t like includes the words of preachers who encourage that fear with quite another end in mind. Regardless of which of these two ways one might respond to belief in conscious existence beyond this life—”gusto” or righteousness, I notice that “Beyond” is capitalized, making it a personal noun and indicating that nervousness about conditions in that place is, in fact, a feeling about God. In other words, so the argument goes, God doesn’t like you so much after all.
Might either grabbing the gusto or living right—or both together!—be encouraged just as well or better by appreciation for God’s provision of life, just because he likes us, and its strange joys?
The One Story 