CAN MODERN MAN BELIEVE IN IMMORTALITY?
Sermon preached by
Rev. Robert E. Romig
In
Broadcast over WSYR
My subject this morning is,
Can modern man believe in immortality? As Christian theology has presented the
question, life after death came to this earth because Jesus arose from the
tomb. Christian theology has maintained that life after death for you or me
depends upon our belief in Jesus as our resurrected Lord. This theology was all
right for the middle ages. It seemed reasonable in those dark ages when
everybody believed in spirits, devils and angels. But in this age of scientific
discovery, many of us, who want to be intellectually honest, cannot truthfully
believe in the Traditional Easter doctrine.
We are not going to spend our
time this morning debunking ancient mythology. I do not know, and nobody else
knows, what happened to the man Jesus after he was taken from the cross. The legendary
accounts in the bible do not tell the same story. The first account is in the
Gospel of Mark which was written some thirty years after the event. The older
manuscripts end with the 8th verse of the 16th chapter. If you pick up your
American Revised Version and turn to the 16th chapter of Mark you
will find a break in the text between verses 8 and 9. A footnote says, “The two
oldest Greek manuscripts, and some other authorities, omit from verse 9 to the
end of the chapter.” Verse 8, which was the end of the story as Mark wrote it,
and remained so for bout 100 years, says: “And they (referring to the two Marys
who to the tomb) went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and
astonishment had come upon them: and they said nothing to any one; for they were
afraid.”
Now apparently for the first
thirty years after Jesus died, up until the Gospel of Mark was written, people
did not believe that Jesus arose from the dead. The reports of him appearing
and talking to the disciples, and physically ascending into heaven, were all
additional after Mark was written. Certainly if the author of Mark had believed
that Jesus arose from his grave and appeared in the flesh, he would not have
concluded his story with the two Marys going into the tomb, and being astonished
that it was empty and running away in fear and trembling.
We might speculate until
doomsday as to what happened to his body, but we simply do not know. The
significant thing is, it doesn’t make any difference.
The Christian Theologians,
who wrote the doctrine that immortality came to the world through the
resurrection of Jesus, were writing personal opinions only. Immortality has
nothing to do with theology. If immortality is a part of the universe it is
conditioned by universal laws which control the issues of life and death.
Let us make this point
perfectly clear. Many modern men and women have the idea of immortality tied up
in their thinking with the theology. If you say to them, “I believe in
immortality,” they may say, “then you believe that Jesus arose from the dead in
a physical resurrection?” But that has nothing to do with it. Jesus either
experienced immortality or he did not, because the survival of man’s soul is
either a part of the grand scheme of things, or it is not. We are born into
this world in physical form according to certain definite, fixed laws of
biological growth. If we are born into another realm in a more spiritual form
upon the death of the physical body, it, too, is regulated by laws that are
universal, eternal and not controllable by theologians. These laws were just
the same before Jesus lived and died as they are today. The world hasn’t
changed during these centuries. Man’s ideas about the world have changed. When
it was thought that the world was flat, that didn’t flatten the world. The
belief that lightening and thunder were manifestation of wrath of the gods in
no way affected the natural laws causing lightening. The belief in angels and
miracles was man’s attempt to explain the phenomena that he saw about him, but
we know today that his explanation was faulty.
Many people today who want to
do their own thinking have turned away from the belief in immortality because
they cannot believe the Christian mythology; but since the two are entirely
separate, this is not sound thinking.
My thesis this morning is
that immortality is the fundamental and basic reality of life, and that it is a
thoroughly reasonable belief which is supported, not by mythology and theology,
but by modern science.
To begin with the sciences
have discovered the laws of cause and effect. Everything that is, was preceded
by direct cause. That which is, is the cause for that
which follows. New values are created as new effects come into being with
greater reality. Hydrogen and oxygen, for example, are two invisible gases that
unite to form visible liquid, water, which satisfies human thirst and sustains
human life. These new values and properties that emerge in the creation of
water disappear in the process of electrolysis through which water is broken
down into hydrogen and oxygen. The law of cause and effect establishes the law
that energy is not lost or destroyed. It is transformed, creates new values,
extends reality – indeed is constantly changing and flowing. Nothing in the
universe is static. Change and Flux and Flow are the Law. Science has proved
the immortality of energy, which is the basic substance of material form.
Matter, we know today, is reducible to atomic, electrical energy.
Does this concept not thrill
your imagination! Science proving the immortality of the essence of physical
being has discovered an Infinite Law and interpreted it to human thinking. This
Law shocks the thinking of man in a mighty revolution of thought. It overrules
the ideas we held fifty years ago. We have not realized its implications. The
scientific description of the immortality of energy becomes poetry and song.
Think of the radiant energy
of the sun, for instance. That gigantic sphere of super-hated fire throws off
tons of radiant energy every minute – casts it off into space. If we could
imagine a wiseacre sitting on the sun, we would hear him say, “These tons of
radiant energy are being thrown away, lost.” How could he think otherwise? He
would be more positive if he knew that millions of miles away from the sun
these rays would be “lost” in space where the temperature is absolute zero and
where darkness is as absolute as the cold.
Nevertheless, the radiant
energy proceeds and that which falls upon the planet Earth is picked up by the
earth’s atmosphere and the earth’s surface, is absorbed and reflected,
producing heat – heat that defied the cold of interstellar space! But the heat
is the mere beginning of the exciting facts that follow! A brief prologue
introducing the drama of life that plays upon the earthly setting. The radiant
energy germinates seeds, stores itself in roots and stalks, becomes the food
for animals and man, forms the tissues and stalks, emerges as strength of will
and character. Every living thing on the earth is radiant energy from the sun
transformed in multiple and varied forms! What mythology can equal this story?
What poet matches this song? What dreamer of dreams could envision a comparable
tale of immortality? The new world of our discovery has gained a thousand fold
over the old world we thought we inhabited.
What else have the sciences
to tell us? For one thing, that nature allows completion of her design. She
makes possible the complete pattern. The pattern of the flower was latent in
the seed that was planted, and the law of growth sees to it that the flower
blooms. Under normal conditions that flower never stops growing until it has
bloomed and ripened its seed.
The same truth is observed in
animals. Barring accidents, all living creatures complete their lives. They
mature, produce their kind, then their atomic energy is transformed through the
process of decay. This is the law of immortality applied to the species. It is
a form enjoyed by man. The human race, we see, has an imperishable quality.
Generation after generation the race continues, carrying with it customs,
memories, habits we call culture. Culture is a product of the law of
immortality. “The good that men do lives after them.” Our influence flows
through the centuries in widening circles. An
There is a deeper implication
here, however. We hear an overtone of the law. Being of higher pitch, we
sometimes miss it. Perhaps we should admit a change at this point in the
sermon. We leave the solid ground to soar a little.
F. Parks Cadman was telling
his granddaughter a story one day. After the child had listened intently for
some time, she interrupted to ask, “is that really true, or are you just
preaching?” Some may think that as we proceed, we are just preaching. In any
event, the law which determines that the plan or animal shall fulfill its
design, reach its fulfillment, achieve its inherent
purpose, must also be operative in the realm of man’s spiritual nature. It
operates through animal man, gives him immortality of the race. As we grow to
maturity, reproduce our young, nurture them, contribute to he social needs of
humanity, we fulfill the inherent purpose of the physical man. But not so with
the non-material quality of life we call character, personality, spirituality.
The seed potential of the spirit hardly begins to sprout until maturity is
reached. In wholesome living the personality or spirit of a man gathers
strength and purpose year by year, and is at the height of its speed of
acceleration in old age. The spiritual self is just awakening when our material
bodies are becoming senile. If death ends all, it is a violation of the general
principle of the law as observed in other instances. It is comparable to the
stopping of the lily at half-grown stalk, and denying the unfoldment of the
flower. Nature doesn’t do that with the lily. It arrives at its conclusion,
completes its design.
Is not man’s soul of more
worth than the garden flower? Would we not expect the same law to apply to this
greatest of all creations known to the Earth? The mind and soul of Plato was in
vigorous growth when his earthly body was done. To assume that his mind and
soul ended with it is an assumption contrary to the evidence established by the
universal law of growth. It is more reasonable, and therefore more scientific,
to assume that the soul freed from the limitations of the body moves on the
faster to complete itself. And as it is with the greatest of us, so it is with
the least of us.
There is another foundation
for the belief of immortality found in experience. Our conduct indicates that
our souls assume immortality by instinct. The quality of life we seek, the
virtues of goodness, brotherly love, righteousness, loyalty to principles, and
the ethical life we cherish for ourselves and children – they alone make living
worthwhile; this is the only life that is food for the soul. There is something
in us that reveres the devotion to principles. We pay our highest tribute to
those persons who will sacrifice comfort, fortune, fame for high principles.
Jesus was devoted to his principles to a degree that he would face death rather
than violate his own integrity. That is, the life of his soul meant more to him
than the life of his physical being. Thousands like him have chosen the martyr’s
death to the life that would have been allowed them had they been willing to
compromise the voice of conscience. These are supreme examples.
Lesser examples occur every
day. Honesty, goodness, loyalty are everyday
experiences that hold society together. They are examples of animal man
restraining his animal desires because of demands of his soul. Why should we
pay respect to character? You can’t eat it or spend it. Animals don’t have it.
It is uniquely a man’s attribute. It is the instinctive demand of the soul that
is more powerful than the law of self-preservation! Why should men be willing
to give their lives in defense of country? Why should a mother be willing to
sacrifice herself for her children? Why should anybody be willing to refuse
material gain for the sake of his principles? It is because of the instinctive
urge of the spiritual self craving fulfillment, even as the physical stomach
craves food. How ridiculous this instinct of life would be if the soldier
really lost his life when his body is killed, or the
mother her life in protecting her children. The instinct of immortality in our
souls whether we know it in consciousness or not, is the source of all justice,
goodness, righteousness.
The voice of the soul spoke
to Thoreau on the wind one day, he said, saying to him, “Bear in mind, Child,
and never for an instant forget, that there are higher
planes, infinitely higher planes, of life than his thou art now traveling on.
Know that the goal is distant, and is upward, and is worthy all your life’s
efforts to attain to.”
Thus are the foundations of
immortality, based on the laws of the universe. When we absorb them in our
conscious mind and grasp their implications, we may learn the true nature of
our own reality. Building upon the rock of immortality we may erect a faith and
a religion and a philosophy of life that feeds life from the Infinite and
Eternal Life.
Give
me, O God, to sing that thought!
Give
me – give him or her I love – this quenchless faith
In They ensemble.
Whatever
else withheld, withhold not from us,
Belief
in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space;
Health, peace, salvation universal.
Is
it a dream?
Nay,
but the lack of it the dream,
And,
failing it, life’s lore and wealth a dream,
And
all the world a dream.
–
Walt Whitman
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