Years ago, the movie Lion King came out and my daughter, then much younger, loved it. Heck, I loved it. At the time, it was for very different reasons. For me, it was representative of what I tell students all of the time: you are so much more than you think you are. This animated movie had many layers to it. One of the layers was the music and in it, the Circle of Life.
Tribal societies all get this right. Life is a circle of birth, death and rebirth. It is natural, normal, and expected. It is not feared because in those societies you grow up knowing it. Our modern society fears death because it is usually seen as the end of everything. We truly have lost our way! Some Christian churches have a better grasp. The African American church has a “home goin” for the one who has “transitioned”. I like that word, transitioned. That word is more honest for us since the resurrection of Christ.
Death no longer has a sting, it is defeated. Here is a secret, it has never existed! We have always been eternal, created in God’s image. The resurrection has always been there, throughout the Old Testament it is mentioned. A great example is in Ezekiel, with the dry bones image. The resurrection teaches us that we need to see ourselves as God does, eternal souls. The joy of the resurrection is that we no longer have to live in fear. Death is revealed as nothing more than the gateway to an eternity we have always had inside.
The circle is the circle of life, not the circle of life and death. That is where we miss it. It has always been from life to life. And this is what the Christian view gives that other religions are maybe not so clear about. The life and resurrection of Christ was personal. We learned that the God out there, was actually the god in here. A personal godliness that we let out, no one that has to be put into us. Other religious paths seek to be good enough, humble enough, whatever enough. We have always been enough. We have always been eternal.
TMM