Denial of Death – Garments of Dust

Ernest Becker apparently viewed the world through a lens that focused on the supreme relevance of death. He defined “creatures” as being hopelessly bound to the reality of imminent death, and his words pay tribute to the brutality that exists on our planet as one creature devours another in an effort to survive or extend it’s importance.

“Everyone reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him. The mosquitos bloating themselves on blood, the maggots, the killer-bees attacking with a fury and demonism, sharks continuing to tear and swallow while their own innards are being torn out…”

There’s a realism to Becker’s observations that resonates with me and seems to align somewhat with what the Bible says about creation.

For example, we are all made of dust and when we die, our bodies return to dust:

Genesis 2:7
…then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

Genesis 2:19
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

1Corinthians 15:47—49
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Additionally, King David made countless references to men with an appetite for blood:

Psalm 10:8—11
He sits in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places he murders the innocent.
His eyes stealthily watch for the helpless;
he lurks in ambush like a lion in his thicket;
he lurks that he may seize the poor;
he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.
The helpless are crushed, sink down,
and fall by his might.
He says in his heart, “God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”

Psalm 14:2—4
The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man,
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.

They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.

Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers
who eat up my people as they eat bread
and do not call upon the Lord?

No matter how much it offends some Christians to be likened to primates, Scripture paints a picture of humanity as often being only marginally different from savage animals. Thankfully, this is really only the beginning of a much larger story. While Becker envisions a world of brutality and death, Scripture confirms this and also tells us of the care that our Creator takes to nurture and protect us:

Matthew 6:26-30
Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Ernest Becker’s “Denial of Death” dwells less on the obvious reality of imminent death, and mostly on how the primary motivation of humanity is to deny or transcend it. In the preface of his book, Becker states:

“The prospect of death, Dr. Johnson said, wonderfully concentrates the mind. The main thesis of this book is that it does much more than that: the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.”

I’ll pick up here in the next post with Becker’s analysis of Sigmund Freud, and the influence that he had on our awareness of human fear.

~ by Colin on September 30, 2008.