Kyle Roberts, PhD, is VP of Academic Affairs and Dean and holds the Schilling chair as Professor of Public Theology and the Church and Economic Life at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. Roberts has published A Complicated Pregnancy: Whether Mary Was a Virgin and Why it Matters (Fortress, 2017), co-authored Matthew: A Two Horizons Commentary (Eerdmans, 2018), and Emerging Prophet: Kierkegaard and the Postmodern People of God (Cascade, 2013). Roberts has published essays on Kierkegaard and modern theology, and other topics including Pietism, Karl Barth, eschatology, and Christian spirituality. At United, Roberts teaches courses on theology, religious interpretation, and ethics. Roberts regularly incorporates the work of Ernest Becker into his teaching and has also written articles for the Ernest Becker Foundation.

Can you tell us about yourself, your current work, and how you discovered Becker?

I’m currently the academic dean at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. My first job was at an evangelical seminary called Bethel Seminary in St. Paul and it was actually there that I encountered Becker through the documentary Flight from Death. I immediately took to it; I loved the connection between existential philosophy and theological existentialism. Once it clicked, it just stuck with me for a while, but it wasn’t until I moved on to United that I really started to delve into Becker’s thought. I taught a class called Evil, Death, and Alienation which used a lot of Becker.

When you teach Becker in a religious context, do students feel that it goes along with what they’re learning? What is the typical reaction?

The primary response is one of, “yeah, this makes a lot of sense.” In the context that I that I now teach Becker, people are very aware of religion and its human elements, with its historical features and factors and influences. Religion is looked at through a critical, modern, reflective lens. So when you talk about Becker and the way that religion can go either way, positive or negative, and you talk about religion emerging within the context of early Homo sapiens dealing with the inevitability of death and dealing with an existential crisis, it makes a lot of sense to people from a conceptual standpoint. Where more healthy skepticism comes in from students is if it starts to feel like this is the theory of all theories, that it explains everything and if we just understood that the root cause of all of our conflict is death anxiety, then we would solve all things. Of course, that’s not what the theory implies and no one believes that there is only one motivation for behavior, but it’s good that they are on guard for that.

Some people read Becker and find him very critical of religion. Would you say Ernest Becker is anti-religion?

We really explored this question in class. It’s clear that Becker is against certain kinds of religion, like the fetishized gods and the gods of fundamentalism, which are idolatries. But he is not against religion per se, and in fact, religion can be and is a very fertile soil for engaging with the idea of death meaningfully. I think visions or imaginations of an afterlife, or literal immortality, can fit within Becker’s theories. But to fit, it has to be an existentially-oriented religion that stays attuned to the ways that idolatries can creep in and replace the good, the holy, the numinous, and the profound with the petty, superficial, and sources of tribal conflict. And of course, it can turn on a dime. Religion can be very fertile soil for meaningful, peaceful coexistence and ways of thinking about humanity and dealing with our mortality. But, it can spin the other way very quickly and become death-dealing and conflictual and competitive in very demonic senses.

Religion can be very fertile soil for meaningful, peaceful coexistence and ways of thinking about humanity and dealing with our mortality. But, it can spin the other way very quickly and become death-dealing and conflictual and competitive in very demonic senses.

Can religion be used as another form of death denial?

Religion can certainly become a crutch or a detour to not face your mortality. I think religion can sometimes perpetuate what Luther would have called a theology of glory, which skips over the cross, the suffering, and the death that’s endemic to life. Even people who might have a confident belief in an afterlife still struggle with the loss of this life, and there is still sadness for the people they are leaving behind. So it’s not like religious people can avoid dealing with this part of our lives. We’re facing the chasm, the abyss, and we don’t know what’s on the other side. I don’t think at the end of the day, anyone can honestly claim that they’re immune to anxieties about mortality.

As we know from terror management theory, people can try to use religion to escape those feelings and thoughts that creep up. But you can’t ever really escape them. And that is the whole problem with repression – even if you think you’re escaping those feelings, you’re actually not. They will come out sideways and haunt you and others through your behavior. But all that being said, I do think that religion can be a very healthy and productive way of confronting death. Death is very much a major theme in many if not all major religions. You talk about it, you write about it, you sing about it, you pray about it. So it kind of forces those thoughts up out of the subconscious or the unconscious.

As we know from terror management theory, people can try to use religion to escape those feelings and thoughts that creep up. But you can’t ever really escape them.

What do you see as the major crossovers between Becker’s ideas and religion/theology?

In the Christian story, Jesus himself was the model of volitional suffering; a divine being; in orthodox theology, the divine Son of God willing to become a human being. “Emptying himself,” in the language of a New Testament text, relinquishing power and authority and to become flesh, to become mortal. So at the very center of Christianity is the message that God became flesh. And Becker has that great line that we are “Gods with anuses.” So there’s an interesting connection – to embrace mortality, to embrace finitude, to embrace the flesh, and to become a shitting God.

Some people infer from the Bible that we were supposed to be immortal. Do you think God wanted to make people immortal?

I don’t think it’s clear whether people would be immortal if Adam and Eve hadn’t disobeyed God’s command, but it’s clear that death is related to the “knowledge of good and evil.” I interpret that story as the evolution and the emergence of the profundity of human cognition and its potential for both good and evil. Much of the history of Christian interpretation of the story is about the “Original Sin,” which is then inherited down the evolutionary line through procreation or imitation and socialization. But this ancient notion can work within an evolutionary understanding. Our brains evolved in such a way that we not only fought instinctually to survive, but actually strategized to take over more territory, so human cognition evolves the capacity to be malicious. Instead of just natural suffering resulting from the instinct to survive, there are communal, tribal rivalries. Becker’s Escape From Evil speaks to this. This increase of cognitive powers is the blessing and the curse of humanity: we know we are going to die, we’re aware that it’s coming. That prompts a resolve and strategy to look out for oneself at the expense of others, to make sure that you get yours. As Becker says, “If I can’t have it, neither can you.” We eliminate the other in order to preserve or to protect ourselves. And it’s interesting, right after the Adam and Eve story is the story of Cain and Abel, about that very thing: if I can’t have it neither can you. So maybe the knowledge of our mortality is the catalyst for the emergence of good and evil. Put another way, the knowledge of and the capacity for both good and evil is rooted in the knowledge of death, our awareness of the inevitability of death.

How do you think we can work on reducing our tendencies to deny death?

A posture of humility is so important. It takes work because you have to fight off, you have to peel off the natural tendency to self-preserve. You have to ward off the natural tendency towards self-righteousness and the wrong kind of heroism. I don’t mean healthy self-esteem or healthy assertion in the world, but Becker’s observation of the tendency to expand yourself at the expense of others. I think being contemplative and mindful about our mortality is a healthy thing. How one does that differs from person to person. It might be reading poetry, reading religious scriptures, writing, reflecting, walking in the woods, whatever. Being mindful about our mortality puts so much in perspective.

I’m reminded of something I heard Richard Rohr, a Catholic spiritual writer, say: He suggested that it’s a good spiritual practice to laugh at yourself at least once a day; in other words, we should be mindful of our frailty, our fallibility, and we should accept it. We should embrace the fact that we’re going to make errors, we’re going to make blunders. And when we do, it’s okay, because we’re human, we’re fallible. It’s important to notice it, reflect on it, be mindful of it, and expect it almost. And that posture acknowledges our mortality as well.