One of my favourite writers has always been Robert Anton Wilson (RAW). He wrote some sci-fi/fantasy, of which the best known is probably the Illuminatus! Trilogy. I've given his fiction a miss as I have a limited attraction to sci-fi but his non-fiction books like Sex, Drugs and Magick and the Cosmic Trigger trilogy are entertaining, witty and passionate defences of his libertarian, anarchist and esoteric take on life. He was influenced by such fringe prophets as The Beast (Aleister Crowley) and the crackpot psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. And he was a friend and defender of Tim Leary.
One feature of Wilson's writing was always a heartfelt hostility towards Christianity - especially Catholicism, the faith he was indoctrinated in as a child. Now, I'm not a Catholic but even I thought that sometimes his attacks on that denomination were a bit over the top. Whatever. Anyway, death comes to us all and for Wilson the year 2007 was his last. I was intrigued therefore to hear him saying in those last months that what absorbed him more than any other rumination at that critical period was the thought that if he'd hurt anyone during his lifetime he hoped that they could forgive him. When I heard that I immediately thought: Bejesus! if someone were to challenge me to encapsulate the essence of Christianity in a sentence then I reckon that saying "a Christian would be someone who at his life's close hoped that anyone he'd ever hurt could find it in themselves to forgive him" is as good a try as any. That's the true Last Judgement. The last moments of a person's life have always been considered of particular importance in most religious traditions and no doubt the Last Sacrament in Catholicism is a more-or-less inadequate attempt to capture something of what Wilson was expressing. The caricature that is our stereotype of such situations is of a fearful man or woman on their deathbed wracked with fear and shame at a life's wasted opportunities and guilt over shabby deeds done - in other words, someone wrapped up in their own selfhood. That has to be a most un-religious state! What I liked about RAW's quote is that he wasn't being morbid but was looking outwards *towards others* he may have distressed. Rather touching (and *not* in a sentimental sense). And it reminds me of a thought I've often entertained: Christianity is *not really* about whether you believe in God, the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, . . . , but is actually about "a way of life" - love, mercy, pity - and the traditional dogmas are just window dressing (essentially trying to say in the language of myth what is inexpressible in literal speech). It's not that I want to paint RAW as having had a "deathbed conversion" - he didn't need one! An agnostic like Wilson was closer to the message of Jesus than any confirmed Christian who also happens to be a prig and really believes that sinners are destined to eternal Hell.
