As someone once remarked, the problem with America is that you can't tell the inmates from the ones walking around the streets. As an example, back in 1968 and thus long before diversity, multi-culturalism and PC were words which inspired conflict, I was attending an evening fireside talk by a US park ranger in one of our national parks. The park ranger spoke glowingly about how we (i.e., middle-class whites) could learn much from the Indians -- they became "Native Americans" only many years later -- in the way of treating the land, respecting the elderly and so on. After the talk, some of us chatted with the speaker, expressing how much we agreed with what he had to say. One of the people in the audience said that he was a missionary who had just returned from a long stay with south-sea islanders and he could reaffirm that indigenous people had much we of the West could learn from. Then, rather casually he remarked that the way to heaven is through the hole in Orion's belt.

This was meant entirely literally, exemplifying the danger inherent when judging someone by outward appearance. He looked as sane as any other typical American and perhaps that should have tipped me off. Likewise for the book, Deceived by the Light, by Doug Groothuis. With the word deceived in the title, I imagined it would be a debunking of all the other light books -- Embraced by the Light, Saved by the Light, Beyond the Light, and Closer to the Light -- which deal with near-death experiences (NDEs). Groothuis's picture on the back cover, however, shows him to be a reasonable-looking fellow in a blue shirt, tie and jacket so I should have been wary.

Light plays a ubiquitous role in NDEs, hence its place in the titles. People who have claimed NDEs almost always use this metaphor literally and specifically to represent their feelings of emerging from a physical and/or a spiritual darkness. Almost invariably they see Jesus, some see spirits, some see angels, some have a life-review, some have an out of body experience, some subsequently become psychics and so on. In the appendix, "Is it all in the Brain?" Groothuis presents a summary of the scientific evidence to the contrary, that is, wholly physical explanations such as lack of oxygen, powerful drugs, release of endorphins and so on. He rejects outright any purely scientific exegesis:

The near-death experience proves to be a challenge to the materialism of modern science, just as it challenges those who are spiritually inclined to interpret its meaning properly.

While modern science's failings are reserved for the appendix, the majority of the book is given over to critiquing the spiritual interpretations of NDEs. Groothuis feels that "some NDEs are real experiences of the spiritual world, and that they indicate that the soul can exist apart from the body. However, this does not guarantee that all NDEs reveal the truth about the afterlife."

The truth, according to him is to be found exclusively in the New Testament or at least in his interpretation of what is found in the New Testament. He dismisses Betty J. Eadie's Embraced by the Light because of its Mormonism heresy while other NDE participants are seen as bearers of new-age fluff who proclaim "that religious doctrines don't matter" or who deny the existence of hell, a very important place in conventional Christianity according to Groothuis.

In fact, I suspect his real dislike for NDEs is because "The Christian faith is rooted in one who has returned from the dead, not as an NDEr, but as the risen Lord of the universe." In other words, the NDErs have taken on some sort of Christ fixation, a point of view I would have guessed myself without resorting to a discussion of the putative wavelengths of the various lights, kundalini energy (divine energy coiling at the base of the spine) or the absolute necessity of the literal validity of the resurrection as Groothuis does.

We further share, as demonstrated by the very opening lines to the first chapter of Deceived by the Light, a leaning towards the words of someone who has made a living at poking fun of his need for psychiatric care, Woody Allen. Although Allen is not a scientist, a theologian, a Christian or an NDEr, he may have said it completely with, "I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens."

Paul Alper
Mail Stop 4005
University of St. Thomas
2115 Summit Ave.
St. Paul, MN 55105

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