The Catholic Church, Husserl, Heidegger, and life insurance

One clever objection an life insurance agent may hear anytime from a bible-oriented and a religious client is about why should someone get insurance when only God can save and can insure life’s salvation in paradise. No problem. This isn’t a question between God’s plan of salvation and a life insurance’s guaranteed benefit to save someone’s health and future income for a family. It’s a matter of giving to Caesar what is for Caesar and to God what is for God.

I remember a particular concern way back during my philosophy years that one thing during the medieval period that motivated every thinker was about making a clear relation between science and divine revelation. This is the era that puzzled every philosopher to understand natural law and the divine law of God to survive. Now here comes the new world, and some are still imprisoned in the cave of their own thought while others have seen the village of caves already which made them think that objective truth is better than a subjective one. God really wants to save us from the damnation of eternal regret and gnashing of teeth. But he also wants to save us through our free will, the best gift so far in human history until the next civilization. It takes tears or laughter to understand this but it only takes faith in God and in the other good people he made.

However, there still a lot of us whose faith is like a kid-story that one man in the middle of the ocean won’t accept the lifejacket that a rescuer offered. God is his only savior who can take him away from drowning. In the story, the man died and he missed life’s happy ever after.

The simple thing, I think, so that you will not fall and see only one side of life and forget the other one is to keep on track. It’s not about being neutral. It’s about a balanced life or in the latter giving what is due to Caesar and what is due to God. In a simple way, it is about considering the other aspects of life.

The Catholic Church teaches us that a human person is an embodied spirit. We both contain body and soul. Therefore, when trying to survive in this world most especially this time of crisis, we must not only save our soul but our body too. In short, it’s about nurturing our attitude, character, mental, and spiritual thing, health, and relationship with others. Anyone can ask which of the two is more important to save. We’ll they are both important. It’s called a holistic approach for growth and survival.

Another thing is we don’t just exist with body and soul as an individual. We exist in this world with our own lived-world as the German philosopher Edmund Husserl would say. He explains that we live with our own world and others’ different-lived world and everything is part of the totality. One clear example of this is the crisis brought by COVID-19. The struggle we experienced as an individual is part of the struggle experienced by whole humanity.

The other German thinker, Martin Heidegger, would also say about Da-sein (being-in-the-world) and Mitsein (being-with-others). We exist in this world and do our activities: dreaming, working, surviving, and everything that signifies our way of living. However, what we do affects others. Our reason for doing things is also an effect on how others affect us. Therefore, even if we choose to live alone in a deserted lonely place, there’s always someone affected by our choice. And our choice to be alone might unconsciously be affected too from our experience with others.

Therefore, a life insurance’s capability to sustain life calls everyone to a life concern with the others while giving the best concern for yourself. Don’t just say you are fine and you are good while others, when you get sick or die, are obliged to carry the burden. Life insurance is not about money. It’s about the value that you deserve to experience in the future. Life insurance sustains your life for a chance to clean your conscience to deserve God’s plan of salvation.

Edmer John Caballes

Cebu City