Abstract
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The End of Christian Life is not a self-help book of cheap “spiritual” psychobabble that offers tips to the terminally ill on how to arrive at Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s fifth stage of acceptance. It is a work of profound theology, deeply rooted in the Bible and enriched by pastoral ministry to fellow cancer patients. The book begins with an unflinching look at incurable cancer as the biblical Sheol, the pit, the “dark, sticky, ensnaring” (p. 24) belly of Jonah’s fish, where the anguished dying are barely soothed by well-intentioned promises of a cure.
It is from this place of darkest despair that Billings presents two views of death, both championed by great Christian theologians. The first sees death as a “pedagogy” (p. 54) teaching us that death is a natural end of any physical life. This view, espoused by the second-century bishop Irenaeus, is also the view, I may add, of all Asian religions, tersely expressed by the Vietnamese phrase “sinh lao benh tu” (birth, old age, sickness, death) as the law of human existence. The second view, espoused by Augustine, sees death as “irrational” (p. 59), as “an enemy, an intruder, in this universe” (p. 60), for which Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light” seems to be an appropriate shout of resistance. In his painful ordeals and in light of Jesus’s death on the cross, Billings at first seems to favor the second view, but upon further thought, he urges readers to embrace both views: on the one hand, accept death as “a dimension of the gift of life, an opportunity for growth, for witness, for service”; on the other hand, accept “the icy truth that death is an enigma and a wound” (p. 68).
The second view has produced the phenomenon of death denial in the contemporary psyche, a trait explored in depth by Ernest Baker. Billings agrees with much of Baker’s analysis of what he calls “partialization,” the defense mechanism by which humans shut off the terrors of death by focusing on some small aspects of life in order to be able to function in the world. Billings says that this partialization strategy strikes a deep chord with the terminally ill. It helps them to continue to live life, drinking it in small gulps, realizing that their “lives are tiny, short, a little speck” (p. 86) and enjoying “the beauty of living small” (p. 87). However, partialization can also promote a deleterious tendency, what Becker calls the “hero system,” in which humans terrorized by the prospect of dying long for and worship authoritarian figures who promise delivery through power and riches. Because of this danger, Billings paradoxically suggests that we should go back to the first view of death, “which we can eventually welcome, even befriend . . . . We can welcome daily death-reminders as testimonies to who we are: living and breathing and dying creatures who cannot master our future or heroically change the world or provide a lasting inheritance for our progeny” (p. 92).
However, this view of death as a blessing, or to use St. Francis of Assisi’s arresting image of “Sister Death,” is vigorously resisted by two contemporary trends, one from modern medicine and the other from certain brands of Christianity itself. The first trend, with promises of ever-new drugs and medical technologies, proves especially irresistible to cancer patients. The remedy Billings recommends against this chimera is the medieval ars moriendi (the art of dying), with its liturgies of holy dying, which also turns out to be the happy ars vivendi (the art of living): “Recognizing our mortal limits can lighten our load and deepen our joy. We are small, and the world is not on our shoulders” (p. 118). The second trend is the “prosperity gospel,” which is no longer limited to the churches of televangelists but has invaded the world of incurable cancer patients with fervent prayers for God’s healing miracles. Of course, Billings is not against prayer, even prayer for healing miracles, but he strongly cautions that God’s promise of eternal life in the Sermon on the Mount does not include good health and material prosperity. Rather, “it involves an ache, a lament, a looking forward to a coming order in which the kingdom of God turns our notions of status and prosperity upside down” (p. 139).
Turning his eyes to the world beyond death, Billings tries to answer the question of what it entails. He broaches the view that there will be “family reunions,” that we will meet our loved ones again, an image much popularized by funeral sermons. While he is not against such a vision of the afterlife, he argues that it undermines the tragedy of death, which is “the fracturing of our stories” (p. 148) and must not be sugar-coated with romantic fantasies of partying family and friends. Billings also evaluates widely reported near-death experiences (NDE). Wisely, he judges that they are neither purely illusionary, as most scientists maintain, nor reliable proofs of the afterlife, as most of those who have experienced them affirm. Rather they should be regarded as “imperfect myths, stories that we tell ourselves because we are so deeply designed by God for connection with God and one another” (p. 174).
Finally, what can we mortals hope for the end, with respect to the meaning and purpose of the universe? Billings makes use of two biblical narratives to imagine (not to give a journalistic report!) what will happen. First, he directs attention to the stories of barren wombs that bore children by the power of God (Sarah, Rebecca, Hannah, Elizabeth, and Mary). Second, he attends to the story of God’s dwelling in the temple and the tabernacle. All of these stories lead us to imagine the end as the fulfillment and resurrection of humans as individuals and also of the cosmos. Billings quotes Haggai 2:6–7, which speaks of the “cosmic shaking,” “the shaking of the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land, and all nations” (p. 199), after which all creation, including our bodies, even when wrecked by cancer, will be cleansed to become a worthy dwelling place for God.
To appreciate the deep and heart-breaking pathos of The End of the Christian Life, readers must remind themselves that they are reading the words of a dying man. With unparalleled skill, Billings interweaves the stories of his family, the deaths of his son Nathaniel’s dog and goldfish, and the joys and pains of the cancer patients to whom he ministers with rich biblical texts into a seamless garment of hope and courage, not for heroes but for those who face illness and must “learn how to live small” (p. 216). There is no more opportune book than Billings’s for our time, as we navigate a global pandemic. During the fall of 2020, I taught an undergraduate course on death and the afterlife. None of my students were suffering from an incurable disease, and thus they could not readily identify with Billings’s medical predicament; but one lost an uncle and another a grandmother to COVID-19. They found Billings’s book immensely helpful in making sense of life and death. No greater tribute can be given to a book of theology.