Interesting quote from Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death" (1973):
The Russians could not let go of Lenin even in death and so have entombed him as a permanent immortality-symbol. Here is a supposedly 'secular' society that holds pilgrimages to a tomb and that buries heroic figures in the 'sacred wall' of the Kremlin, a "hallowed" place.
No matter how many churches are closed or how humanistic a leader or a movement may claim to be, there will never be anything wholly secular about human fear. Man's terror is always 'holy terror.' Terror always refers to the ultimates of life and death.
An "enlightened" culture often thinks that it can dispose of God and live in humanistic freedom and security. There is no such thing. Ultimately a person has to confront his utter powerlessness before life and death and his fear of insignificance and non-existence. If we reject God, then we automatically erect another one to take His place. There is no escape. We either bow before Him in humility and gratitude or fight against Him in our self-deluded pride.
I have bowed before the Lord Jesus Christ because He is the only One who has demonstrated unimaginable love in taking on human flesh to die for me and unconquerable power in defeating death by rising from the dead.
Who's your Lord?
