Losing Shanta
Last summer, my dear sister-in-law Shanta was taken away by an aneurysm without any warning. In a matter of moments, this vivacious person – a fixture of my life for decades – was gone.
At Shanta’s memorial, family and friends reminisced about Shanta with tearful words, portraying what she meant to them personally. When it was my turn, I spoke about who Shanta was to me, and what I admired about her – her passion, her strength, and most of all, her ability to be both honest and loving in the same breath.
I closed with the phrase “Until we meet again, dear Shanta…”
My wife, Shanta’s younger sister, and my daughters all expressed a similar idea, about seeing their beloved sister and aunt again.
To be clear, I was not referring to a spiritual event but a real, physical, in-person meeting. It may seem rather baseless – we know that folks who pass on do not come back to life. Yet, this idea I expressed – that one day we will reunite with Shanta in person–was simply a statement of faith – that I would see Shanta, who left us so prematurely, once again in person.
Blind faith?
There was no doubt in my mind when I said those words. I didn’t say it to simply prop up my emotions or hold back the gloom. While it did have a comforting effect, that was not the purpose. Rather, it was an expression of knowledge – of confidence that we will see Shanta again.
Even though I was born into a Christian family, I was an atheist in college. I did not and could not accept the idea that a creator God and a supernatural world were real. It seemed inconsistent with the world I observed. As an atheist, I equated religious faith with blind faith: a belief held without any relationship to reality.
My transition from atheist to believer started when I realized that being an atheist was not as intellectually sound as I imagined. I realized I could not prove that God did not exist. Much to my annoyance, I had to accept ‘on faith’ that God did not exist – a position which to me seemed no different than being a ‘believer.’
In my view, a believer was someone who blindly believed the suppositions of their religion. I was no different. This was a disconnect – a chink in the armor of my atheism.
A chink in my atheist armor
At best, I could say that I did not know if God existed. But this was not a satisfying position. Blind faith – one way or another – would not work for me. I had to find out the truth for myself. All my decisions would be affected by this question: is God real?
So, I decided to pray to God who I did not know existed, and asked Him to reveal Himself to me. And He did – through a faculty member at the university who gave me a book called More Than a Carpenter. This slim but powerful book made a very intellectually satisfying case for Jesus being who he claimed He was: God the Creator in human form.
I realize some may read it and not be as convinced as I was. Everybody has different mental blocks and filters. But for me, it addressed all the mental roadblocks that I had. There was enough evidence to convince me.
I was at a crossroads. I could discard the arguments presented and ask for more proof. Or, I could look closely at the evidence and where it was pointing. It was a choice.
So, in 1985 I decided to become a follower of Christ.
My new view on life – and death
It is breathtaking how monumental that decision was. As the years rolled by, each decision I took was governed by this new worldview. These decisions had a cumulative effect on all my relationships – as a husband, a father, a son, and a friend, pushing me towards compassion, honesty, and living more like Jesus did.
It also changed my view of death, which in turn gave me a new perspective on living life. Decades of Bible study clarified that this life is a prelude to the afterlife, which is eternal. In this view, death does not extinguish the individual, the self-conscious soul. Death just leaves the body behind – temporarily. And the Bible promises that one day, Jesus will come back to earth, and we will be resurrected with him when he returns.
Since then, I’ve lost people so dear to me, my father and Shanta. Yet I know that their essence continues in another realm – fully conscious, fully aware, and fully individual. I believe they are fully at peace awaiting the day when they are bodily resurrected on earth at Jesus’ return. For me, that view of the world shaped my words at her memorial.
Why I Believe
Is this not blind faith? Not quite. For me, it is much less blind faith than my original atheistic beliefs. My new faith is based on external evidence and not just an internal preference. Let me explain.
Over the years, I better understand evidence-based faith. For instance, when we get on a commercial flight we exercise this kind of faith. Most of us are confident that we will reach our destination when we board that plane. We believe this to be true though we don’t have proof that this particular flight will arrive safely at its destination.
Of course, there is considerable empirical evidence that millions of commercial flights have safely completed their journeys, except for the one we are on. Boarding that flight is a step of faith. But it is not blind. We derive confidence from past evidence of safe journeys.
In other words, our confidence in a future event is based on past events. This is not blind faith, but faith based on evidence from outside of us.
Will I See Shanta Again?
So why do I believe I will see Shanta again? That faith comes from the evidence of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
If Jesus really did die and come back to life 2,000 years ago, then the Bible offers factual support for my belief that I will see my loved ones again. If the resurrection did not happen, my faith would lose its underpinning.
Christian and non-Christian scholars alike agree on the reality of Jesus’ birth and death. Did his resurrection happen? After years of study, I believe with all my heart that it did.
There are compelling arguments in research about the historical validity of Jesus’ resurrection and the reliability of the Bible. My favorite book – The Case of Christ by Lee Strobel – lays out the historical evidence in detail. The Bible itself reiterates the idea of bodily resurrection consistently. For a book written over 1500 years by 40 different authors, this one postulation remains surprisingly consistent despite prevailing cultural views that run counter to that idea. That makes my confidence stronger.
I know I will see Shanta again, with my own eyes.
I have faith
One of my favorite passages from the Book of Job has these lines:
“And after my skin is destroyed, this I know,
That in my flesh I shall see God”
Scholars believe the Book of Job is the oldest in the Bible and these words were written over a thousand years before Jesus Christ was born. Job, like the other prophets of the Old Testament, had faith in his own resurrection. Reading this passage makes me well up each time.
That faith undergirds my whole journey on earth. It frames how I view all my relationships, these beautiful but fleeting terrestrial connections that last all too short a time. In the face of our short-lived lives, this belief – this knowledge – imbues my walk here on earth with confident hope.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
