When you're dead you're dead!!!

 Having read David Baddiel's excellent book 'Jews don't count' which really helps to gain a proper understanding of racism towards Jews I had to read his latest book 'THE GOD DESIRE'

Baddiel writes 'A close friend once said to me: but don't you want to believe in God? I said: yes. Desperately. That's why I know He doesn't exist.'

This book is well worth a read. It has not altered my belief in God, rather it has helped to crystallize an understanding that has formed in my own mind over many years in relation to how I view death. I am going to die and death is a reality. I believe there is a God, for me as revealed through Jesus. So I trust in some way I will live but I am not hung up on what that looks like. Believing this means I can get on with living now trying to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Mind you if I  mention to my children in passing I am going to die they don't like me saying it. But I will. It's an end but not The end.

Baddiel is not interested in arguing people into not believing. He knows it doesn't work like that, just as I know you can't argue people into believing. Rather he is interested in the psychology of how some people in his view have a desire that there is a God. In fact as he writes he would like there to be one but knows there isn't. He writes as you would expect with a certain level of humour but then he needs that as he is a Chelsea supporter!!!

One of the many things that struck me in reading the book is how he recognises that people need there to be a God and want it all sewn up neat and tidy. Certain strands within Christianity can be like that, and that certainty can be a dangerous thing. To try and claim we have it all sewn up, and that if you believe this and that all will be well, does not allow for doubt and the messiness of life. 

Central to the book is death though it's not morbid. Wanting there to be a God is a way of putting off in his view facing the reality of death and thats it. So having a God helps put off the reality there isn't. It's like having a shield he writes.

What I have observed in people is their desire to know what heaven is like, and that as they explain death to others they need to express it in terms they think may help others or is it themselves? 'another star in the sky'. This is all understandable, normal even, but does not really address the fact of death.

For me as the years have passed, in spite of the Book of Revelation painting a picture of the eternal city, I just had to be honest with people 'I don't have an A to Z guide of heaven" I don't know what life after death will be like. While I can understand the need to draw upon life as we know it to try and explain life after death, I'd rather not. It seems to me that all is achieved by drawing upon this life to explain the next is to create a very poor account of life eternal. Bit like now but better! I'm trusting for something much more exciting.

The death bit is quite a challenge to people of faith, no faith and the unsure.

I think like many its the dying bit, or the manner of dying that I'm not keen on. Even though I know I will die I'm currently not scared by that thought. It's a fact of life. I believe that there is a God and I trust in that. This is based on my trust in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This is an experience which while I can share it with others I can not argue them into a similar trust. So knowing I will die and trusting in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus means what matters now is the manner of living. That's not about earning brownie points rather its the result of the choice to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. That means to work with others to create an upside down world where the Love of God as revealed in Jesus transforms peoples lives. So where the hungry are fed, the naked clothed, the sick healed etc. This is an inclusive Good news story. It will mean opposing many aspects of the way the world is currently organised so you must expect, and accept if you follow to end up being in conflict with the powerful.

As Rachel Held Evans wrote "The apostles remembered what many modern Christians tend to forget - that what makes the gospel offensive isn't who it keeps out but who it lets in" 

This 'Good News' happens in the here and now or it should, but the world, and sometimes the church, is the opposite with great wealth and power in the hands of a few and by its actions keeps people out.

But back to death. Overall I enjoyed watching the coronation service though the opportunity to pray that the new king 'might live for ever'  flies in the face of what Jesus invites us to, ' to die that we might live'.

David Baddiel wishes there was a God but knows there isn't.

I believe there is a God. I don't need to prove it to anyone. I just need to try and live the life of Jesus and  put my trust in the word's of Jesus

 'If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.'

David Baddiel writes of the God desire. That desire maybe is not to die, but we all know we will. So stop desiring not to die, accept its reality, and live a life of love which when push comes to shove is willing to die. 

Someone once said 'always keep praying because if you happen to die in the process it just means you get to finish it in person.'  

I think Baddiel's book is great and Christians, and others of faith and  no faith should read it.