"Life is but a moment, death also is but another"
About this Quote
Schuller’s line compresses an entire theology into a palm-sized aphorism: if life is “but a moment,” then death can’t be allowed to loom as the tyrant of the story. The neat trick is the symmetry. By granting death the same grammatical status as life - “but another” - he shrinks what most people experience as an abyss into a transition, a scene change. That’s not abstract philosophy; it’s pastoral triage.
As a televangelist-era clergyman who built a ministry around optimism and mass appeal, Schuller understood how fear works in public. Death is the ultimate anxiety engine; it sells despair, it sells control, it sells distraction. This sentence tries to undercut that market. The intent isn’t to deny grief or flatten suffering into platitudes. It’s to reframe the emotional horizon so the listener can breathe: your panic isn’t proof of meaninglessness, it’s a symptom of perspective.
The subtext is also a subtle rebuke to modern self-importance. Calling life a “moment” punctures the idea that your resume, status, or long-range plans can guarantee significance. Yet he doesn’t land in nihilism, because death is “another” moment, not the end of moments. That small word smuggles in continuity - the religious promise of afterlife without overt dogma.
Context matters: late-20th-century American Christianity often competed with consumer culture for attention, and Schuller’s brand was hope as a usable product. This line is hope in its most minimal, portable form: a sentence built to be repeated at hospital bedsides, funerals, and private spirals, where the goal is steadiness, not debate.
As a televangelist-era clergyman who built a ministry around optimism and mass appeal, Schuller understood how fear works in public. Death is the ultimate anxiety engine; it sells despair, it sells control, it sells distraction. This sentence tries to undercut that market. The intent isn’t to deny grief or flatten suffering into platitudes. It’s to reframe the emotional horizon so the listener can breathe: your panic isn’t proof of meaninglessness, it’s a symptom of perspective.
The subtext is also a subtle rebuke to modern self-importance. Calling life a “moment” punctures the idea that your resume, status, or long-range plans can guarantee significance. Yet he doesn’t land in nihilism, because death is “another” moment, not the end of moments. That small word smuggles in continuity - the religious promise of afterlife without overt dogma.
Context matters: late-20th-century American Christianity often competed with consumer culture for attention, and Schuller’s brand was hope as a usable product. This line is hope in its most minimal, portable form: a sentence built to be repeated at hospital bedsides, funerals, and private spirals, where the goal is steadiness, not debate.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mortality |
|---|
More Quotes by Robert
Add to List
