On zen and the art of motorcar maintenance

‘So you’re a Christian?’

Rajesh asks me this as I transport him back to his house after he’s dropped the car off at my house, a car I first dropped off at his house the day before, when he then drove me home. It has been that kind of operation. Rajesh is fixing my car seat, he lives in Reservoir Hills - not an insignificant distance away from my house in Hillcrest - and this little operation has led to us spending a not-inconsiderable time in each others' presence, driving back and forth and all.

So you land up asking questions.

‘Yes. How did you know?’

‘You’re wearing one of those collars.’

‘Oh.’ I had been at a church meeting just before this and had neglected to take my clerical collar off.

‘Yes. I am. And you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where do you worship.’

‘I worship at the Cement In Prayer house of worship.’

‘Here in Reservoir Hills?’

‘Uh-huh.’

 

Cement In Prayer seems like an odd name for a church. It seems okay maybe as a tagline, you know, ‘Welcome to WinePress Ministries here we like to ‘Cement Things in Prayer’’. Or WinePress: Cementing Things in Prayer since 2008, something like that, but as an actual name? I’m not so sure. But then Christian churches do sometimes adopt rather strange names. There was a church called the International House of Prayer Ministry that resided in a building not bigger than a double garage, a building that, no matter how it huffed and puffed and stretched itself, could not meet the criteria of such a lavish title. Or the Jesus Dome in Durban which, although combining two seemingly completely disparate words, is a hugely successful church held in a large building that, thoughtfully, is in the shape of a dome. Christian churches might be many things, but small scale visionaries they are not. (Only after re-reading have I fully realised the hypocrisy of this: I am a Methodist. This was a name first given as an insult to Wesley and his merry band of fellow Christians at university. It was meant as an insult, and unless history has not been kind, it does not seem a particularly witty insult. Thus, my stream is named after a jibe, and not a particularly smart one at that. So there.)

‘Have you been a Christian your whole life?’

‘No. I became a Christian about ten years ago. Before that I was Hindu.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘My father died and went to heaven. When he was in heaven he met Jesus who told him it was not his time yet, that he was to return to earth and he was to live for another five years. So we thought he was dead. He came back. He lived almost to the day another five years and then he died. My aunt too had a very similar experience. She was in a coma, met Jesus, returned and told us about it. We became Christians after that.’

There are moments in a conversation where things go from being politely conversational to something more like an interrogation, and how I wanted to move the conversation in that direction. I’m not sure what to make of these types of stories, known broadly as Near Death Experiences. I don’t particularly like the whole idea of them – and by them I’m talking about the world of online documentation and books written around this, known too as an acrostic: NDE. Only recently I’m led to believe that a wildly successful NDE book, written by a young boy who supposedly died and went to heaven only to return and recount how wonderful it all was, proved to be a hoax. (For the record I didn’t read the book or the hoax, which should prove to you what a stunningly shallow fount of wisdom you are currently drinking from.) I don’t like NDEs and I think that is part of it: the way stuff like this opens up the door for the disturbingly opportunistic to feed on the worryingly naïve. The other part of it is the way it can enforce the notion of belief in Jesus as a way to shuffle yourself off this mortal coil into the warmer and safer arms of Jesus. Or the way people always return with stories about how this place had a soft rosy glow to it, like a really bad 80s photoshoot, only without the shoulder pads and mullets (one would hope, with it being heaven and all.) Or they walked through fields of daffodils in a beautiful landscape awash with mountains and pastures, as if, had they not been recalled, they might have bumped into Julie Andrews carrying buckets of milk.

And the message is always the same: ‘Granny and Grandpa send their love.’

‘So you all converted to Christianity off the back of that?’

‘Well, you know, when it happens to two members of your family…’

I get that as well; but honestly, where NDEs are rather kinda super-rare, it does seem a little too fortuitous that the same family received it twice – this is akin to winning the ultimate lottery twice. (But I suppose only if you wanted to return. Otherwise, I don’t know, it is like being audited twice?)

And my mind then got to thinking: How did that conversation go down with Jesus? Did Jesus look up and see the gentleman standing there, a look of surprise across his face, a surreptitious glance towards Peter at the gate, a glance of inquisition, ‘How did he get in here now? We’re not ready for him.’ And when dad was given another five years, did an angel look at his wristwatch, set the timer and declare, ‘Okay, time starts NOW!’ Or was it nothing like any of this because this is heaven and people don’t communicate like this - they just knowingly nod at each other having, in a second fully absorbed the entire conversation, questions and answers alike.

I don’t know.

While studying, my Religious Studies professor had this cartoon on his door. It depicted a short conversation between a Zen Master and his student:

Zen student: ‘Zen master, what happens to us when we die?’

Zen master: ‘I don’t know what happens to us when we die.’

Zen student: ‘Yes, but how can you not know what happens to us when we die? You are the Zen master!’

Zen master: ‘Yes, but I’m not a dead Zen master.’

Exactly.

I find NDEs hard to believe. I just do. But then I think about my own faith and what I believe: a person who was God came to earth, declared Love as the only path to salvation, died on a cross, rose again, and ascended into heaven, bringing life, hope, love and the promise of peace, real peace. And I think about how atheists might listen to my argument against NDEs, nod knowingly at me with a look of, ‘See! See! Look how crazy it all is!’

And yet.

As I continued in conversation with Rajesh I asked about how tough it all was for his family. He informed me that, off the back of their conversion, much of his family disowned them outright; they turned their backs on them, and have never spoken to them again. I thought about Rajesh and his wife going faithfully every week to the Cement In Prayer gathering, and how much they were willing to give up for that little church.

And I thought about all the people who have nailed their lives to crosses right behind the cross of Jesus all the way through human history, their own lives responding to the high call of Jesus - to spend and be spent, to lay it all down for the promise of a New Day and for the birth of a New World. I mean, that should give pause to the most hardened atheist. Personally I find the whole ‘striving for the proof of the historical Jesus’ a fool’s errand, for liberals and conservatives alike. I’m far more intrigued by the notable, amazing women and men who have put up their hands to lay down their lives. That and my own resurrection experience is enough to fuel the fire in my belly and the faith in my soul.

Sometimes things are proven. Sometimes things are true. And sometimes those things align, and sometimes they exist quite happily as distant cousins.

Were these NDEs real for Rajesh’s family? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, for what family would give up so much for a lie? And I do not know, for I have no idea really of what the Great Beyond is like. Like Paul and all the rest of human history, I am looking through this glass darkly and though I am a Christian minister, and as such should maybe know a little more than I do, I rest comfortably on the fact that I am not (yet) a dead Christian minister.