10 min
02 – Why Do We Die? Remembering Death and the Afterlife with Shaykh Hamza Karamali
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- Islam
Why do we die? A materialist might answer that we die because our body stops working—our breathing, our heartbeat, our brain activity, everything, stops. We saw in the previous episode that this materialist is wrong—we are not our bodies, but our souls, and although our death is accompanied by bodily changes, it is not those bodily changes themselves, but something else related to the soul. Death is the separation of our soul from our body. We die because our soul is separated from our body.
But that is not, in fact, what I am asking. When I ask, “Why do we die?” I am not inquiring about the cause of our death; I am inquiring about the purpose of our death.
Everything in the universe appears to have some purpose. Another way of saying this is that everything in the universe appears to happen so that something else that comes afterwards can also happen. Allah Most High sends winds to move rain clouds over dry land (Qur’an, 25:48), He sends rain to make plants grow (Qur’an, 25:49-50), and He makes the earth orbit around its axis, the moon around the earth, and the earth around the sun to enable us to tell time by counting days and months (Qur’an, 10:5 and 17:12). He made hemoglobin in our blood cells to carry oxygen from our lungs to the rest of our body. He made chlorophyll in plant cells to absorb light energy from the sun. And so on.
When I ask, “Why do we die?” I am asking, “What is the purpose of our death?” Everything in the universe has a purpose. Everything in our bodies has a purpose. It would make sense for our death, too, to have a purpose. What is that purpose? Why do we die?
We have all heard someone remark, “You only live once.” The one who makes this remark has to make a choice between being responsible—doing a chore, studying for an exam, putting in extra hours at work, taking care of a father, a mother, or a child—and between doing something he enjoys—playing a game, watching a movie, going on a vacation, any kind of entertainment. What he means by his remark, “You only live once,” is that after he dies, he will stop existing. This life, he is saying, is all that there is. What this entails, he is saying, is that the purpose of his life before death is to maximize his pleasures, that every moment of his life that is spent in something other than the pursuit of pleasure is a wasted opportunity, a foolish choice, and that he should therefore only be “responsible” when that leads to some immediate pleasure, some selfish gain.
He might strengthen his conclusion with a second remark, saying, “Life is short.” He is now saying that not only only do you only live once, you only live once for a short time, and the urgency to experience immediate pleasures, to acquire a selfish gain, is even greater. That, according to his point of view, is the purpose of death. We die in order for us to be motivated to experience immediate pleasures, to acquire selfish gains, and to do so with great urgency. That is why we die.
He is wrong. But before I explain why, I want you to see that if, as he says, “You only live once,” then the pursuit of pleasure is not, in fact, the purpose of death. The purpose of death, if you only live once, is not make you happy, but make you miserable.
Leo Tolstoy captured this well. He wrote in the late nineteenth century that, “If not today, then tomorrow sickness and death will come to everyone, to me, and nothing will remain except the stench and the worms. My deeds, whatever they may be, will be forgotten sooner or later, and I myself will be no more. Why, then, do anything? How can anyone fail to see this and live? That’s what is amazing! It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion! Nor is there anything funny or witty about it; it is only cruel and stupid.” — Leo Tolstoy, “A Confession”
The urgent pursuit of pleasure and selfish
Why do we die? A materialist might answer that we die because our body stops working—our breathing, our heartbeat, our brain activity, everything, stops. We saw in the previous episode that this materialist is wrong—we are not our bodies, but our souls, and although our death is accompanied by bodily changes, it is not those bodily changes themselves, but something else related to the soul. Death is the separation of our soul from our body. We die because our soul is separated from our body.
But that is not, in fact, what I am asking. When I ask, “Why do we die?” I am not inquiring about the cause of our death; I am inquiring about the purpose of our death.
Everything in the universe appears to have some purpose. Another way of saying this is that everything in the universe appears to happen so that something else that comes afterwards can also happen. Allah Most High sends winds to move rain clouds over dry land (Qur’an, 25:48), He sends rain to make plants grow (Qur’an, 25:49-50), and He makes the earth orbit around its axis, the moon around the earth, and the earth around the sun to enable us to tell time by counting days and months (Qur’an, 10:5 and 17:12). He made hemoglobin in our blood cells to carry oxygen from our lungs to the rest of our body. He made chlorophyll in plant cells to absorb light energy from the sun. And so on.
When I ask, “Why do we die?” I am asking, “What is the purpose of our death?” Everything in the universe has a purpose. Everything in our bodies has a purpose. It would make sense for our death, too, to have a purpose. What is that purpose? Why do we die?
We have all heard someone remark, “You only live once.” The one who makes this remark has to make a choice between being responsible—doing a chore, studying for an exam, putting in extra hours at work, taking care of a father, a mother, or a child—and between doing something he enjoys—playing a game, watching a movie, going on a vacation, any kind of entertainment. What he means by his remark, “You only live once,” is that after he dies, he will stop existing. This life, he is saying, is all that there is. What this entails, he is saying, is that the purpose of his life before death is to maximize his pleasures, that every moment of his life that is spent in something other than the pursuit of pleasure is a wasted opportunity, a foolish choice, and that he should therefore only be “responsible” when that leads to some immediate pleasure, some selfish gain.
He might strengthen his conclusion with a second remark, saying, “Life is short.” He is now saying that not only only do you only live once, you only live once for a short time, and the urgency to experience immediate pleasures, to acquire a selfish gain, is even greater. That, according to his point of view, is the purpose of death. We die in order for us to be motivated to experience immediate pleasures, to acquire selfish gains, and to do so with great urgency. That is why we die.
He is wrong. But before I explain why, I want you to see that if, as he says, “You only live once,” then the pursuit of pleasure is not, in fact, the purpose of death. The purpose of death, if you only live once, is not make you happy, but make you miserable.
Leo Tolstoy captured this well. He wrote in the late nineteenth century that, “If not today, then tomorrow sickness and death will come to everyone, to me, and nothing will remain except the stench and the worms. My deeds, whatever they may be, will be forgotten sooner or later, and I myself will be no more. Why, then, do anything? How can anyone fail to see this and live? That’s what is amazing! It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion! Nor is there anything funny or witty about it; it is only cruel and stupid.” — Leo Tolstoy, “A Confession”
The urgent pursuit of pleasure and selfish
10 min