Member-only story
What Do We Owe the Dead?
This is what it means to be alive
I lived most of my life as part of a faith tradition(1) that made doing work for the dead a central tenant of not only religion, but of life(2).
It was taken for granted that we all have souls, or spirits, that will continue to exist after we have sluffed off this mortal coil.
I was taught that we had a serious responsibility toward the dead. Their, and our, eternal salvation was at stake. When I turned 19, I served a two-year mission for my Church in Taiwan, where I would preach about this responsibility, among other things.
The most common religious practice in Taiwan involves something many Westerners sneeringly call ancestor worship. It was immediately obvious to me that the people did not worship their dead ancestors. They honored them, and they believed in caring for them — not that different from what I had been taught and was then teaching.
We all owed a responsibility to our kindred dead. In Taiwan, and in much of East Asia, people believe that the dead, or ghosts, inhabit a realm close to ours where they cannot get the essentials they need unless their descendants provide for them. This involved burning images of clothing and money(3). It sometimes involved putting incense sticks near, or in, food to allow the ancestors to eat the…
