Fifteen years ago this week my mother passed away after an heroic 18 month battle with pancreatic cancer.
What does it mean to say that you love someone who is no longer alive? How do you have a relationship with someone who cannot respond? What is it that you are having a relationship with?
We can generalize this further and consider the relationship Christians claim to have with Jesus. No Christian alive ever saw Him. And yet most Christians profess some sort of relationship with Him. What does that mean to have a relationship with someone you only know through stories?
Most primitive religions involved some form of ancestor worship. Ancestors moved from living, breathing people, to ideas. I don't know that the survivors thought of the relationship as "love" - but it was certainly obligation. But how can you have an obligation to someone who is no longer alive?
I still love my mother, of course, regardless of the irrationality of the statement. My daughter is getting ready to graduate from high school and it is moments like those that I think most often of her, and tell my daughters stories about her.
What does it mean to say that you love someone who is no longer alive? How do you have a relationship with someone who cannot respond? What is it that you are having a relationship with?
We can generalize this further and consider the relationship Christians claim to have with Jesus. No Christian alive ever saw Him. And yet most Christians profess some sort of relationship with Him. What does that mean to have a relationship with someone you only know through stories?
Most primitive religions involved some form of ancestor worship. Ancestors moved from living, breathing people, to ideas. I don't know that the survivors thought of the relationship as "love" - but it was certainly obligation. But how can you have an obligation to someone who is no longer alive?
I still love my mother, of course, regardless of the irrationality of the statement. My daughter is getting ready to graduate from high school and it is moments like those that I think most often of her, and tell my daughters stories about her.
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