A man was enlisting as a soldier at Portsmouth, and some form was put before him to be filled up, common, I suppose, to all such cases, in which was, among other things, an inquiry about what was his religion. With an equal and ceremonial gravity the man wrote down the word “Methuselahite.” Whoever looks over such papers must, I should imagine, have seen some rum religions in his time; unless the Army is going to the dogs. But with all his specialist knowledge he could not “place” Methuselahism among what Bossuet called the variations of Protestantism. He felt a fervid curiosity about the tenets and tendencies of the sect; and he asked the soldier what it meant. The soldier replied that it was his religion “to live as long as he could.”
-G.K. Chesterton, The Methuselahite, from All Things Considered
Methuselah was the oldest man recorded in the Bible – get it?
Whether it is survival of the fittest, questionable medical practice, or a thousand other means of self-preservation, we must be careful that we do not exalt the preservation of (our own) life to deity. We must be careful that our self-preservation does not become the law-keeping of the man-made religion of Methuselatism – which gives us the great commandments of Thou shalt preserve yourself at all costs and Thou shalt fear death above all.
