The Answer to Humanity’s Fear of Human Extinction

Jim Denison

President Trump announced on Truth Social yesterday that he had “a lengthy and highly productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia” as they discussed ending the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later said he had also spoken with Mr. Trump about a “lasting, reliable peace.”

According to Mr. Trump, a meeting is being set up for tomorrow at an annual security conference in Munich, with talks led by Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

If a just end could be found to this horrific war, millions in Ukraine and Russia would obviously be spared further violence. However, unless you live in those nations, you are probably reading this news more out of general interest than existential engagement.

By contrast, this ABC News headline is guaranteed to catch everyone’s eye: “Chances of asteroid striking Earth in the next decade has nearly doubled, NASA says.” The asteroid, discovered just after Christmas, could strike our planet on December 22, 2032. The rock measures as much as a football field in diameter. If it were to directly hit a city, millions could die. There’s no way to be sure you and I won’t be in that number.

Here’s the part the headline leaves out, however: the odds of being impacted by the asteroid have only risen from 1.3 percent to 2.1 percent. But still, you’d rather they be 0 percent, as would I.

Why Our Unconscious “Behaves as if Immortal”

Over the next seven years, we’ll have plenty more to worry about, from the threat of a bird flu pandemic to fears of nuclear war, annihilation by AI, and who knows what threats we don’t yet know. We didn’t know about the COVID-19 pandemic until we did, and it caused life expectancy to drop across the US.

According to Sigmund Freud, “Our unconscious does not believe in its own death; it behaves as if immortal.” Tragically, the COVID-19 pandemic made the fact of our mortality both real and terrifying for millions. “Death anxiety” rose significantly during this time, which is understandable given the horrific way many victims died alone in isolation wards, separated from family and friends.

However, according to researchers, humans fear the way we die less than what happens when we die: “The origin of death anxiety is fear of annihilation, the struggle of a living being with nothingness.” I would have thought that our death anxiety would be related to the pain of physical death, separation from loved ones, or grief that our earthly lives are coming to an end too soon. But studies clearly indicate that “humans are afraid of losing themselves and becoming nothing.” This is why, in Freud’s words, our unconscious “behaves as if immortal.”

“He Bears in Himself an Eternal Deed”

A perceptive essay produced by the Second Vatican Council in 1965 agrees with the research I cited:

It is in the face of death that the riddle of a human existence grows most acute. Not only is man tormented by pain and the advancing deterioration of his body, but even more so by a dread of perpetual extinction. He rightly follows the intuition of his heart when he abhors and repudiates the utter ruin and total disappearance of his own person.

The essay explains why this is so:

He rebels against death because he bears in himself an eternal seed which cannot be reduced to sheer matter. All the endeavors of technology, though useful in the extreme, cannot calm his anxiety; for prolongation of biological life is unable to satisfy that desire for higher life which is inescapably lodged in his breast.

This longing for a “higher life” is an example of what sociologist Peter Berger called “signals of transcendence,” which are dimensions of our lives that point to realities that transcend us. C. S. Lewis observed, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

And so, paradoxically, the death anxiety that prompts us to read about a potential asteroid collision, the possibility of a bird flu pandemic, or the threats of nuclear war or AI annihilation is itself evidence that this fallen and fearful world is not all there is. We instinctively do not want our lives to end because, unlike every other species in creation, we were made for endless life.

Here’s the good news: For followers of Jesus, that life has already begun.

The Part of John 3:16 People Miss

Christians often say that a person who trusts in Christ will receive eternal life when they die, but this is not so. The most famous verse in the Bible contains an often-overlooked dimension: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, my emphasis).

Christians receive “eternal life” the moment we trust Christ as our Savior. His eternal Spirit moves into our lives in that instant (1 Corinthians 3:16), making us the children of God (John 1:12), “and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17).

This is why Jesus could say so adamantly, “Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:26, my emphasis). Physical death for us is merely the door through which we step into the eternal presence of God. When we take our last breath here, we take our first breath there. When we close our eyes here, we open them there.

The fact that we already have eternal life is the antidote to the fear of annihilation that is instinctual to our fallen natures. It empowers us to serve Jesus at any cost to ourselves, knowing that the worst that can happen to us leads instantly to the best that can happen to us: “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

This assurance infuses us with peace in the face of peril, constituting a powerful witness to those without such peace. For example, John Wesley was so impressed by Moravian missionaries who sang in worship through a terrifying storm that their astounding calm became a significant step on the path to his own conversion.

Ronald Reagan observed,