on after

musings on death and the afterlife

Mary Retta

I.

I received my first period while sitting in church.[1] When I arrived home some hours later, my mother stuffed my pretty white church dress, stained fruitless with crimson, into the trash, quickly piling other garbage on top before shutting the lid. She explained to me that things were to be different from now on. I would no longer receive bread for communion. I could no longer sit with my father in the pews. And, most importantly, if I’m ever bleeding, I can no longer enter the doors of the church. I nodded, and slowly I understood: I was a child, yet I was a woman. I was a woman, and I was a sin.

Though I was raised Christian from the moment I was born, this incident was my first true introduction into how some people, and some bodies, are unwelcome by God. As I grew older and began to fully grasp the misogyny, homophobia, and overall intolerance that often runs rampant in the Christian faith, I started to reject Christianity altogether and—much to my parents dismay—embraced atheism instead. Being an atheist felt good for many years, and my newfound ability to make choices that were guided by my own desires rather than a looming fear of Hell was empowering. But lately, I’ve felt my thoughts towards God shifting in significant and unexpected ways. Throughout this past year, when fear, loneliness, and existentialism were rarely too far out of reach, I found myself in search of something bigger than mankind to take comfort in. I’ve developed new rituals, ones I practiced occasionally before this year but never had the language to name: I have started to let go of linear time.[2] Rather than stress over my life trajectory, I have begun to accept there is a plan in place for me. I am regaining control over my mind and my body. While I still resist the traditional Christian faith that I was raised in, and though I do not take comfort in the idea of an embodied “God,” these mantras do often feel like my new faith: the ideas of destined natural order I hold near are beliefs that, much like the dogma of most organized religion, are comforting if not somewhat naive to put trust in when we look at the material conditions of the world today.

While I never imagined I would revisit religion, these days I often find myself letting go of all that grounds me to this Earthly plane in search of something higher, truer, and more sure. The faith that I am seeking is not one of God, per se, but a more amorphous higher power, one who can confirm my sacred humanity and promise me that I’m destined to be safe. Despite my burgeoning spirituality, my years outside religion have left me unsure where to turn; what does God look like, and is it possible to find them within me?

II.

Last month, the 22-year-old rapper Lil Nas X released a music video for his hit song “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name).” The video, wherein the artist, banished from Heaven because of his queerness, embraces his fate by sliding into Hell on a stripper pole and giving Satan a lap dance, unsurprisingly upset the Christian right,[3] who accused him of pushing an agenda of Satanism onto children.[4] This outrage, undoubtedly rooted in a violent homophobia, struck me as not only bigoted, but misinformed. Though Lil Nas X quite literally embraced Satan in his music video, I did not view “MONTERO” as a rejection of religion—in fact, the extensive Christian imagery deployed throughout the video suggests an intimate understanding of the faith.[5] Rather than dismissing God, “MONTERO” functions as a religious reclamation, an insistence that marginalized folks can reimagine a higher power who allows them to be their whole selves without shame.

The “MONTERO” video shines twofold: in its depiction of a queer God and its thesis that human beings can become their own dietes. While the rapper recently said in an interview that he wrote “MONTERO” about a boy he was seeing last year, the music video recontextualizes the song’s meaning. Lil Nas X’s decision to portray every character in the video himself—from the snake in the garden of Eden to the angels who banish him from Heaven[6]—helps elevate "MONTERO" from an unrequited love song to an anthem of heavenly queer desire. When the rapper looks into the devil's eyes and says to “Call me by your name/But tell me you love me in private/Call me by your name/I do not care if you lyin,” is he speaking to his God or his lover? Are they one and the same? Lil Nas X embodying biblical characters in his video draws on a long history of marginalized groups, such as Black people, women, and queer folks, creating God—or in this case, Satan—in their own image. In his 1970 text, A Black Theology of Liberation, Rev. Dr. James H. Cone wrote, “for too long Christ has been pictured as a blue-eyed honky. Black theologians are right: we need to dehonkify him.” Similarly, gender-marginalized people have used the phrase “God is a woman” for decades; most recently, this mantra became the title of an Ariana Grande song. In “MONTERO,” Lil Nas X continues this tradition by reimagining a God that not only embraces his queerness where another faith might deem it sinful, but also mirrors it, embodying an ethereal queerness himself. In the video’s final scene, Lil Nas X murders Satan, takes off his horns, and puts them atop his own head. Here, in the artist’s final, holy form, he and Satan—his own queer God—share one name, one body, and one sacred, queer divinity.

Despite the ubiquity of marginalized groups reimagining a more familiar higher power, many traditional Christians look down on the idea of finding humanity in God. “When we invent a god in our image,” states literature from the Presbyterian group Gospel Reformation Network, “like a divine buddy who is at times weak and needy—we are no longer talking about the God of the Bible.” Not only do many Christians frown upon viewing God as human, they reject the idea that humans themselves can be holy, warning against a “God complex,” popularly defined as “an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.” These strict dichotomies between God—perfect, all powerful—and man—flawed and submissive—are what religious reimaginings are trying to correct. Let us think about what many people, even those who do not have a traditional faith, might colloquially define as a “spiritual” or “religious experience”: a beautiful meal, a powerful song, incredible sex, a warm hug from the sun. Though these experiences vary physically, they share a certain immateriality; an ability to transport you out of this plane and into another, a quality that grants you a deeper understanding of your own curiosities and desires. In this way, becoming closer to a higher power is not a fatal “complex,” but instead an opportunity for personal and spiritual enlightenment. Rather than bowing before a terrifying, all knowing power that controls your every move, folks like Reverend Cone and Lil Nas X propose a different dynamic: one where we can be holy ourselves.

III.

One of the most successful contemporary popular explorations of the afterlife can be gleaned from a rather surprising source: the 2016 NBC sitcom, “The Good Place.” Birthed in the wake of the Trump era, the series’ politics is at once effortlessly dogmatic and playfully provocative: somehow, the show’s binary takes on good, bad, right, and wrong are exactly what makes it so complex and interesting. “The Good Place” follows four people—Eleanor, Chidi, Jason, and Tahani—who all die from sudden, tragic accidents. When Eleanor wakes up after dying in what she’s told is The Good Place, she’s at first overjoyed: until she learns that Michael, her new home’s self-proclaimed “architect,” has mistaken her identity for someone else, and she really has no right to be there. Though “The Good Place” leans more philosophical than theological in nature, the show’s intelligent use of traditional Christian rhetoric provides an instructive lens for understanding the harmful religious moralities associated with the afterlife; for example, the black and white conceptions of The Good Place and The Bad Place, which function as Heaven and Hell. While every character in the series shines, Michael is arguably the most complex. Though never said outright, he essentially functions as God: not only does Michael translate to “who is like God” in Hebrew, but his job title is also significant, as contemporary Christian folklore says that Jesus was the son of an architect. Throughout the show’s first season, it is slowly revealed that Michael has confused the identities of all four of the protagonists, who are then forced to lie and hide for weeks so as not to get caught and thrown out of Heaven. In the season finale, Eleanor finally realizes—in an iconic line that would be memed for years to come—that “This is The Bad Place!,” and Michael, their unsuspecting, power hungry overlord, has intentionally trapped four human beings in their own personal hell.

“The Good Place” asks us a brilliant and terrifying question: what do Heaven and Hell look like, and are you able to tell the difference? In her recent essay in The Paris Review, “Oh, Heaven,” Eloghosa Osunde provides a few possible answers. Reflecting on her childhood beliefs, she writes: “What even is a heaven, anyway? My old faith described it as a place where we are blameless and holy, or God’s dwelling place. I still partly agree. But sometimes, I find, a word weighs you down because you are carrying an impersonal definition.” Later, she describes her burgeoning new faith. “It’s not quite the heaven I grew up believing in,” says Osunde, “even though that place has its own glorious music, a score. People fall down still, we stumble.” Osunde’s depiction of Heaven as a place where people can “stumble” touched me, as this was not the sort of faith that I was raised in. As a child and young adult, my parents kept very strict tabs on nearly every aspect of my life: I was rarely allowed to watch television in case I was exposed to drugs or sex, and I was not permitted to sleep over at other people’s homes. Though my parents never directly phrased it this way, looking back it’s now clear that they were trying to protect me from “sin” so that I could grow up to be perfect and pure. While traditional Christian ideologies often revolve around protecting people, and children especially, from sin, in my experience, these regulations did not make me feel protected—they made me feel stuck, anxious to participate in a world I could not fully experience. This dynamic helps explain the strength of  “The Good Place,” where the four protagonists resist this traditional narrative. Every character on “The Good Place” has one core flaw, which could arguably represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins: Eleanor, Greed; Jason, Sloth; Tahani, Envy; and Chidi, Pride. Despite this, the audience is actively rooting for the characters to escape out of Hell; in fact, the very “flaws” that a God might deem sinful are what give each character personality and heart. In this way, the success of “The Good Place” lies in its poignant meditation on how our human flaws, which traditional Christianity might view as sin, are actually what make us the most worthy of salvation.

Both “The Good Place” and “MONTERO” expertly flip the traditional dichotomic Christian script of the afterlife by portraying Hell as a destination even better than Heaven, a place where you can be human, flawed, and still find love and acceptance. In the “MONTERO” video, Lil Nas X becomes his freest self in Hell. While the heavenly angels chain, banish, and stone him, the Satanic creatures allow him a full freedom of pleasure and desire: the Devil luxuriates as the rapper twerks on his lap, while the snake, the classic Christian symbol of sin and temptation, sensuously kisses him. Similarly, on “The Good Place,” though the protagonists were technically in a secret Hell, each character took significant steps towards self growth: Eleanor became less selfish, Chidi learned to accept help, and all four people found friendship, community, and love in each other. In this way, both texts postulate that sin, at least as it’s traditionally described in the Bible, is a natural, necessary part of human life. Nearly all of the sins that Christianity condemns—either the traditional Seven Sins, like lust or anger, or ones like my childhood transgression, menstruation—are integral to the human experience: feeling emotional, desiring connection, existing within a physical body. Though traditional Christianity equates Heaven with perfection, “The Good Place” and “MONTERO” teach us that perfection cannot coexist with humanity. Instead, the ideal afterlife is a place where people have the tools to be happy, can communicate their needs, can create healthy bonds, and achieve a deep self love. A place where, as Osunde notes, we may stumble, but we are caught when we fall. 

IV.

Questions of the afterlife feel extra pointed these days, as a combination of the pandemic and the climate disaster has not only ensured that death is all around us, but made it so that even for the living, conditions on Earth can feel especially miserable. It is not a coincidence that meme from “The Good Place” remains so popular in our cultural lexicon[7]: between rising houselessness, mass food insecurity, extreme gun violence, and complete governmental incompetence, many have grown suspicious that their God, like Michael, has tricked them into thinking they are somewhere safe when really, we are all in Hell. Living in this strange limbo, the word "afterlife" feels almost uncomfortably contemporary: we are breathing, alive, yes, but often not really living.[8] The scholar adrienne maree brown addresses this phenomenon beautifully in her recent book, “We Will Not Cancel Us,” where she points to the many “unthinkable thoughts”—of death, fear, mass incarceration—we must shoulder on a daily basis in order to survive. “Oh unthinkable thoughts,” writes brown. “Now that I have thought you, it becomes clear to me that all of you are rooted in a singular longing: I want us to want to live.” As organizers of abolition and other anticapitalist frameworks, people like brown are asking what often seems like the impossible: what if there is a way to create Heaven on Earth? In a way, Lil Nas X is posing the opposite question: if we are living in Hell, or if we’re bound to end up there anyway, shouldn’t we just enjoy ourselves while we can?

Though my own God is still unfamiliar to me I know this: I want to love them and not fear them. As a child, I was taught a very specific language for communing with God: get down on your knees and ask for forgiveness, then ask for what you desire. If God loves you, He is listening. If he does not answer, you are not living by His will. This dynamic helps explain why the “MONTERO” video has both angered and shaken the Christian right, as the faith traditionally hinges on scaring people into blindly submitting to God’s will—or, more rather, whatever a man in the church tells you God’s will is. The right’s assertion that Lil Nas X was pushing an agenda on the youth feels particularly frustrating, as Christians often project “the fear of God” onto children as soon as they’re born, and that terror can stick with people for years. Even now, all the puritancial lessons I was once taught about God’s wrath and never saying His name in vain make me nervous as I type this. I feel as though I should stay quiet for my own spiritual safety, or that perhaps I don’t have the authority to write this essay at all. Faith is so personal and it is difficult to talk about because it's’ all wrapped up in fear: of God, and of our own limitations.

I’m still not quite sure what Heaven looks like—whether I can find it on Earth, or after death, or if I want to be there at all. Osunde has one theory that has brought me comfort. “I think of God—as in Love—as heaven,” she writes, “the boundaries that fence my life as heaven, the tenderness weaving through my chosen family as heaven, community as heaven, my dining table as heaven, a home with full acceptance as heaven, the absence of pretense as heaven, right now as heaven. Heaven is, in the end, wherever we are fully known and fully loved.” Finding my own God, or even becoming Her, is an exercise of mutualistic divinity: I believe my higher power, whoever or whatever they may be, will hold me, guide me, trust me, know me, and love me—but only as I do so unto myself. My mother’s God would smite me, I know, but still I’m growing to love a certain holiness within me. Maybe Heaven is, after all, the place you can call God by your own name.

Kristen Bell in The Bad Place

Thank you so much for reading! If this story spoke to you, please consider sharing with a friend or two. If you have the means and would like to support me, feel free to do so through Venmo (@Mary-Retta) or Paypal (maryretta33@gmail.com). If you’d like to see more of my work, you should subscribe to this newsletter or follow me on Twitter (@mary__retta.) Be well and more soon!

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1. I was raised Orthodox Christian. Some of the rules and traditions I talk about here, such as men and women sitting in opposite pews and not being allowed inside a Church while menstruating, are specific to Orthodoxy rather than Christianity as a whole. I do not mean for this essay to insult organized religion, or even Christianity; I’m solely describing my own thoughts and experiences.

2. I wrote more about rejecting linear time in this essay, “on vibing.”

3. This Vulture article by Craig Jenkins touches on this very well. I especially loved: “Pop stars (at least the good ones) push against the boundaries of what’s possible and acceptable, sometimes in the noble interest of challenging the prevailing social mores, sometimes just for the devilish thrill of crossing lines, and sometimes because they just can’t help it.”

4. Kimberly Foster did a great roundtable on this on her YouTube channel “For Harriet.”

5. Reverend Jacqui Lewis wrote this really beautiful piece for Harper’s Bazaar that explores the Christian imagery in the music video. She notes: “Throughout the video, we see a profound truth: Often, those who have been wounded by the Bible know it more deeply than folks who wield our holy text as a blunt instrument.”

6. Nicole Froio does a really beautiful exploration of this in her essay for Bitch Media. My favorite line: “Amid the messiness of queerness and the internalization of homophobic religious morality, people become their own wardens; they’re both their queer selves and the self who hates their queerness.’’

7. Writer and organizer Kelly Hayes also makes the case that “The Good Place” is an argument for abolition.

8. The song “Petal” by the artist Raveena has really helped me release a lot of my anxieties around death. The music video is also stunningly beautiful.

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