Episode Summary

As to the question of whether there is life after death for our souls, there are only two options: either there is something or there are just the worms.

Episode Notes

I describe how I went from being a “worm guy” to being a “something guy”. I began as a worm guy because my teacher, Rabbi Richard Rubenstein, may his memory be blessed, was an extremely eloquent worm guy. Listen to how he describes what awaits us if there is no life after death, "I am convinced that I have arisen out of nothingness and am destined to return to nothingness. All human beings are locked in the same fatality. In the final analysis, omnipotent nothingness was lord of all creation. Nothing in the bleak, cold, unfeeling universe was remotely concerned with human aspiration and longing...Only death perfects life and ends its problems. God can only redeem by slaying. We have nothing to hope for beyond what we are capable of creating in the time allotted to us...In the final analysis all things crumble away into the nothingness which is at the beginning and end of creation." 

The belief that death is not the end of us is foundational to all faiths. It is first of all a useful belief because it brings us hope in the face of death and hope is the only real antidote to the poison of human finitude. Without the hope provided by a that death is not the end of us. We are forced to accept Rubenstein’s chilling vision, and also accept the fact that there is nothing to give us hope that the evil that is not punished in this life will be punished in the next life. 

Without a life after death there is also no hope that we will not be separated forever from those we love. 

These and other reasons considered in this episode are not merely useful. For believers of every community of faith they are true beliefs. I am with Albert Camus who wrote, "I would rather live my life as if there is a God and Heaven and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is."

This episode is about reclaiming the belief that our spiritual journey does not end at the grave.