How to Tell a Story About the Good Life

What kind of narrative can we build and share that motivates us to live well, in the absence of a religious story?

Some years ago, a panel of thinkers was invited to speak publicly about the question of life after death. The speakers included two rabbis, arguably the most biting atheist in the world (Christopher Hitchens), and the neuroscientist Sam Harris. Rabbi Wolpe mapped out the territory in the language of negative theology – saying what Heaven wasn’t, including that it wasn’t to be thought of literally – and closed by saying that at his father’s funeral, “whatever was in that coffin, he wasn’t there. But I also knew that wasn’t the same thing as he wasn’t. It just meant he wasn’t there...”

Rabbi Shavit echoed this spirit of doubt, claiming that he didn’t know for certain that there was an afterlife but he trusted that there was, and that similar beliefs inspire many “to live each moment with dignity and connection”. Hitchens waxed poetic about how insufferable and totalitarian an afterlife of the traditional Christian kind would be, a sort of celestial North Korea. He couldn’t be sure what h…