Now that I am closing in on 69, I find that the problem of death is not so much death itself, which, according to a “round up of the latest world news,” is inevitable.

The problem is wasting too much of my remaining time thinking about death. Trying not to think about death, like trying not to think about anything, is difficult.

Shakespeare was not much help. In his famous soliloquy in Hamlet, “To be or not to be” he describes death as “the undiscover’d country, from whose bourne no traveler ever returned.” So much for the advanced scouting reports.

So, I have been thinking about finding some peace through religion. However, I am a bit of a skeptic.

I remembered my conversion from faith to skepticism: I was in Sunday school, at the age of 8, and the teacher told us the story about Abraham.

God ordered Abraham to kill his son in order to test his loyalty. Abraham was going to do it, but God stayed Abraham’s hand at the last second.  

At that moment I thought about my own dad, and what he would have done. My dad had a mild acquaintance with mental illness, riding the roller coaster of mania and depression much of his life, but, he would never have acquiesced to stabbing me.

Then I got to thinking that maybe we have it wrong: God was really testing Abraham to see if he would blindly follow orders (going Nuremberg), or rebel in the name of love. And, what really happened at that fateful moment, is that Abraham failed the test.

This presents another problem: If God felt that love of family was of utmost importance, why would he sacrifice his own son and send him down here with a bunch of miscreants?

So, perhaps we have another piece of religion wrong as well: God did not make man in his own image, but precisely the opposite; man made God in his own image. No solace there.

Ernst Becker, in his classic book, “Denial of Death,” claimed that man cannot live without faith. I would argue that man can live without faith, but, frankly, it sucks.

Nelson Strasser lives in Lakeport, Calif.