Faith and the Fear of Death

This morning, after a couple of weeks away, I got back to reading Hebrews. The Epistle to the Hebrews, that is. I started from the beginning, just to reacquaint myself with the early chapters, and was arrested by this passage:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Hebrews 2:14-18 ESV)

I want to take note of a few things here.

1. Fear of death and sin are connected.
2. All who are mortal (bound to die) live in fear of death.
3. This fear amounts to a kind of slavery.

The human condition, I suppose.  But God in Christ enacted a plan, conceived before time, to release men and women from this fear and, thus, this slavery.  Christ is the key that releases us from the shackles of slavery to fear and death and utter helplessness with regard to temptation.  The life of freedom from fear that results, for those who believe, is elsewhere in the New Testament called "new life," or life "in Christ."

Question: why then do we still live in fear of death?

Here's an observation that may hold a clue to the answer.  Our conception of faith, here in the LaLa-land that is American Christianity, is deeply skewed.  I would describe it this way: faith is understood as the confidence that the things we desire will be given to us, and soon.  We may rhetorically attribute this confidence to Jesus, but in truth it has nothing to do with him, and is far from the New Testament conception of faith.  

Nothing puts the damper on this kind of desire-centered faith more quickly than the fact of ensuing death.  If what we desire most is to avoid dying, then death will trump faith every time.

Another question: seeing as how Jesus has defeated death, why then do we not spend more time and ministry preparing ourselves and others for dying well and in peace, rather than acting as if, right up to the very end, all we really need to do is pray harder for a miracle (and then of course believe God will grant it).

Story: there's a new couple in the church.  The husband has ALS (Lou Gerhig's Disease).  It has advanced far enough now that he can no longer speak clearly, and the wife must speak for him.  They're desperate.  The medical diagnosis is utterly hopeless (that is if you define "hopeful" as the possibility of not dying from ALS).  What they need is a miracle, and so they have come to church to find one.  They go forward for prayer at the end of the sermon.  A prayer-warrior listens empathetically and quickly prays for just that: a miraculous healing.  Then he says encouragingly, "I'm believing for a miracle!"

But doesn't there come a time, sooner or later, when we must see our dying at last as inevitable.  I am not suggesting that we not pray for miracles, but I am suggesting  that our prayers for miracles may reveal more about our fear than about our faith.

The author of Hebrews says that death holds sway over us, enslaves us, and that it is at the root of our helplessness with regard to temptation.   Our fear of death shapes our desires, and our lives--even our lives of faith--become consumed by the pursuit of these desires.  And the one desire we pursue most avidly, and yet with the least hope of satisfaction, is the desire not to die.  The tragedy is that we import this attitude into our faith. In fact, we make our faith serve our fear!  The rags of the old man still cling to the new.  Our faith turns out to be nothing more than desperate and worldly (flesh-derived, flesh-oriented) optimism.

My ultimate point here is that we should spend some time on this, we Christians.  Should the fear of death so control us that it even shapes our understanding of faith?  Did it control Paul (see Philippians 1)?  Shouldn't our preaching and teaching contain a prominent component concerning the Biblical attitude toward death?  Where is the wisdom in avoiding this topic?  And shouldn't our church ministries include, prominently, a ministry to the dying that is something more than simply believing earnestly that God will not allow their death?

Sadly, with regard to the subject of death and dying, we are deeply influenced by the flesh, and not by the Word of God.

Flash: Two Bloggers Speak Honestly of Dying

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.

I wasn't going to link to Denise Spencer's personal memoir of her husband's death (Sometimes It's Just Plain Hard), simply because so many others have done so already. I will only say that it's one of the finest things I've ever read for it's sheer unblinking honesty.

Anyway, the reason I link to it now is because I've just read David Wayne's response, The Truth is Uglier Than We Think, God is More Beautiful Than we Realize. Both of these posts are must-reads.

The crux of David's post is this: "I find that very few Christians are able to accept that we live in a fallen world." Thus, they are surprised and even affronted by death, when it touches their lives. David adds some wise words from a book called I Told Me So, by Greg Ten Elshof:

Terminal cancer wards are full of patients who believe things we all know to be radically improbable. They believe that they will be one of the very, very few who fight back and win-or that they’ll be the recipient of a miracle healing in response to the prayers of friends and family. It’s not just that they believe that they could get better-that God could perform a miracle on their behalf. In this they’re surely correct. No. They believe they will get better-that God will perform a miracle on their behalf. Nearly all of them are wrong. And anyone familiar with the statistics is well situated to see that they are. But-and this is the most salient part for our discussion-nobody corrects them. In fact, they are encouraged to persist in these highly improbable beliefs.

I know this so well, and have observed it often: Christians confused and dismayed about suffering. Surely it's not God's will, they say, as if they'd never read Genesis 3 or heard it preached.

I know a fellow who has sat by the bedside of many dying people, and he tells me that there's no way to predict how someone will pass through that portal--as if the faithful should always "pass" with beatific smiles, while the unbeliever goes in abject fear to the grave. Sometimes, my friend has told me, it's quite the other way around. But doesn't it demonstrate a horribly maimed understanding of the world, of life, and of God that so many of us feel surprised to discover that death is not more friendly to believers than to unbelievers?

I have heard Christians say, "Surely it is not God's will that His children should suffer." Besides completely ignoring Genesis 3, a piece of Scripture that ought to be foundational to our understanding of the world, they ignore Jesus' own words recorded at Matthew 16:24-25. Their rose-colored glasses only do themselves and others harm.

But the Biblical truth about suffering--that God hides himself in suffering--which David delineates so well in his post, runs exactly counter to the "you gotta believe" form of Christianity, which expects faith to act as a magical get-out-of-suffering card. Here faith is reduced to a confidence that one's desired outcome will surely come to pass here and now, and trusting God is reduced to trusting Him to give you what you most desire here and now. What else can a God be for, after all, if not to satisfy our desires? For these people, it seems that God looks at your confidence level, which is the key to all his promises, and rewards you accordingly. In this view, our faith determines everything, and God is not sovereign!

But every now and then someone has to mention that "sometimes it's just plain hard." Two truth-telling bloggers have done so in a rare and beautiful way.

Death has lost its dominion!

From Discipleship on the Edge: An Expository Journey through the Book of Revelation (p. 47-8):

"He laid his right hand on me, saying 'Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and look! I am alive forever and ever, and I have the keys to death and Hades'"(Rev. 1:17-18). Literally Jesus says, "Stop being afraid." Why? Because Jesus Christ has walked into the gaping jaws of the greatest enemy there is. On the cross he let all the powers that threaten to undo us have their unrestrained way with him. He let death take him captive. And then he burst out of the prison and carried away the prison keys!

... Jesus Christ has stolen the weapon of fear. Fear is a powerful force. Fear can keep us from doing what is right; and it can make us do what we know is wrong. All fear is firmly rooted in the fear of death. The fear of criticism, the fear of rejection, the fear of financial loss, the fear of pain--they are all, at rock bottom, the fear of death.

Let the imagery grab you! "I have the keys of death!" No one else has them. "I am alive . . . and I have the keys!"

Fearfully Made, and Fearfully Marred

A friend of mine had this as her recent "status update":

I was humbled and asked myself why Holiness would choose dirt, why Royalty would choose poverty, why the Great Provider would choose lack, and ultimately, why God would choose my ugly heart as His dwelling place.

Then one of her friends responded:

Because it's beautiful just like you you are fearfully and wonderfully made..don't you eva forget it girl

I don't know the commenter and don't want to intrude on a FB conversation with theological scolding or something, but I've got to say, God did not choose to dwell in my friend's heart because she is fearfully and wonderfully made. If so, since we are all fearfully and wonderfully made from the start, there would have never been a problem with his living in us. And there would never have been a need for the cross.

Ah well, this is typical "encouragement" in the Christian world. To tell people how wonderful they are. On a perhaps somewhat related note, David Wayne has a thoughtful post called Words of Comfort for the Dying. In this post David is recounting a dialog from a book called Hammer of God. A man on his death bed, who has spent his life trying to cultivate a clean heart before God, is still plagued by the memory of his sin. David writes,

Johannes was trying to cultivate a right heart, a clean heart, before God, but that this is a work. This is a subtle but important point to make especially given the fact that it is common in our day to exhort one another to cultivate a clean "heart" before God. But even this is detour as the emphasis is on our work of cultivation, and it causes us to trust in a clean heart as the basis of our acceptance before God, rather than trusting in Christ.

But Johannes has a friend, Katrina, who is willing to share the Gospel truth with the dying man. Johannes asks her:

"But why, then, have I not received a clean heart?"
"That you might learn to love Jesus," said the woman as calmly as before.

My friend's status update demonstrated an understanding of all this, but her friend rushing in to "encourage" her with talk of how wonderful she is misses the crucial point. Does the dying man need to be told how wonderful he is, or does he need to be told that while he was a sinner, and in the full knowledge of his sin, Christ died for him. How much better than that can encouragement get?

Last comment. Isn't this the problem that the people of God face and have always faced: the seeking of an alternative message that will downplay the supposed "negativity" of the Gospel. But we are all dying men and women, and we need a real reason for hope, not falsely encouraging fluff. Positive thinking will no longer do.

And that's the real reason Christmas is a joyous day. Happy Christmas!

The Lord taketh?

"The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away." It was Job who said that, I think. Dude was having a hard go of it, what with all his kids dying and all. And he says, The Lord did this!

No attitude can be farther from modern evangelicalism in America than this. We're all about the Lord giveth, but it is not possible, apparently for the Lord to taketh away, at least he wouldn't do that to good, praying Christians.

We just don't go there. It seems to indicate a lack of faith.

That the Lord takes away is a very hard lesson. We want to say that it is the devil who takes away. We live and pray as if the verse said, The Lord giveth, and the devil taketh away (that is if we don't pray enough, obey enough, go to church enough, etc.).

Just listen to the way we pray for people who have life-threatening conditions. The language we use often reveals that we believe that there is a battle between God and the devil for the life of the person in question. The devil brought the life-threatening condition, but we're praying for God to win the battle and restore health to the person. Moreover, we're to believe God will do this, because that's what faith is all about, right? Believing God will do the good thing that we desire.

It's as if we see ourselves as under God's umbrella, which protects us from the rain of hard things. But if illness and death are threatening, that must mean that for some mysterious reason (owing no doubt to the devil) the umbrella wasn't protecting us.

Of course all this sets us up for a major faith crisis when a loved one dies. Instead of God taketh away we cry, How could God let this happen!

I am not, by the way, arguing for stoicism. Job was no stoic. But I'm wondering aloud how the truth that it is God who takes life away (as well as gives life) should affect how we think and pray and live.

In Genesis 3 God actually ordains hardship and mortality for Adam and Eve and their descendants. Which means us. Jesus didn't rescind that order for believers, but his mission and ministry, his life and death and resurrection, taken together, shows us the ultimate context of suffering and death in this world. We see death in a new light. The context is not a battle between the devil and God in which sometimes God wins (and we live) and sometimes the devil (and we die). We need to see our own sorrow, pain, hardship, and even our dying in the context of the God's unfolding redemptive plan, which by the way defeated death as an enemy (for those who "look to Jesus") back about 2000 years ago, on a hill called Calvary.

Death, where is thy sting?

I don't want to break anyone's heart, but I hope you all know you're probably going to die someday.

I recently heard a Christian friend of mine say, "I just don't understand how God can allow so-and-so to get cancer." I wanted to say, do you really think certain people should be immune from the normal frailties of the flesh? Or that being a believer should mean not getting cancer, heart disease, MS, etc.? The real question is, why shouldn't he or she get cancer? Or you? Or me? Or anyone else?

Where did we get this idea that it should be disturbing when a wonderful Christian believer gets sick or dies like everyone else in the history of the human race (with a couple of Biblical exceptions)?

I think I know where we get it. Three kinds of teaching in the church: Poor teaching. Lousy teaching. And downright creepy teaching.

Here's an example. In certain Christian circles it's very common to hear talk about the Christian life as if it were a battlefield between God and the devil. Good things happen, and that's obviously attributable to God, the author of all good. Bad things happen, like serious illness, and clearly the devil is trying to get to us. The universe, in this view, is pretty clearly a dualistic place. Good vs. evil in a fight to the finish. Mankind in the middle, choosing sides.

But much trouble comes of this dualistic cosmology. For one thing, the devil is given way too much credit for the world's evil. It's as if the greatest problem we face is "the enemy." It's the devil makes us sick, causes us to lose our jobs, messes up our relationships, causes automobile accidents . . . I've heard it all. But this view makes us out to be more or less innocent victims. We wind up crying out to God (who apparently should have been protecting us better), "How could you let this happen!"

Let me go at the problem from a different angle. If the sickness and death is from an enemy who means us harm, then the greatest problem we face is that enemy. We need God to stop him in his tracks. We have a powerful assailant, so we need an even more powerful protector (God). And we call it faith when we firmly believe that it is surely that protector's will to protect us from every harm.

Therefore, whenever someone gets sick and dies, it seems a kind of failure of God's. "How could you let this happen?"

But what if our greatest problem is not "the enemy"? Or, what if, like Pogo, we have met the enemy, and he is us? What if death is really directly related to sin (Rom 6:16)? Billions of people, throughout history, sinning. You. Me. Everybody. Ever since Adam.

If the devil is our main problem, repentance is not really necessary. We're victims, that's all. The solution is to get on God's side, because He's the more powerful one, and He will protect us. To put it another way, our most pressing need, in that case, is not grace, but power. Superior Spiritual power for vigorous devil-rebuking. If only we had more power! And here good old fashioned legalism has a chance to rear its hoary head, as we study how to coax this needed thing, power over sickness and death, from an apparently somewhat uncooperative deity.

But of course our most pressing problem is not the devil, but sin. And therefore that which we most need is not superior power for fighting the devil, but grace. Again and again grace. Again and again the knowledge of Jesus and his cross, and its victory over every enemy, including death.

I want to insert here Ray Ortlund's brilliant metaphor for the process of sanctification. Read this carefully:

I think of my inner self as a globe, a world, with many dark continents still unexplored, uncivilized, vast jungles of primitive impulses. But Jesus the Liberator steps ashore on the coast of one of those continents, plants the flag of his kingdom in my consciousness and declares peace. That is justification.

Then sanctification begins. For example, it doesn't take long for a half-naked savage to run out onto the beach with spear in hand to attack Jesus. This is some selfish desire in me rising up against the King. But he declares peace all over again and subdues that aspect of me by the force of his grace. "Clothed and in his right mind" (Mark 4:15) is the picture.

The King starts moving steadily inland, planting his flag in ever new regions of my being. He brings one dark thing after another into my awareness, declares peace again and again and again, and thereby establishes civilization.

Here's my point in inserting this passage. One of the darkest regions of our interior continent is that place where we harbor our thoughts about death. Our selfish feeling that death is just not fair, and our childish fear of it, which only reveals the shallowness of our faith. We just don't want to give up this cherished complaint. We don't want to let Jesus plant his flag of grace here, for then we'd have to admit that death for us was justice after all. But Jesus will plant his flag, nevertheless. See, the wages of sin is death, but when Christ took care of sin on the cross, he took care of death. The crosswork of Christ took care of both sin and death.

I know a fellow whose ministry it is to "walk with the dying." He befriends and advocates for dying people, and he's often at their side when they pass from this world. He told me once, "Bob, there's no way to predict how someone is going to die. I've seen atheists die peacefully in their beds and lifelong Christians die in abject terror. You can never tell."

I am not foolish enough to claim to know in what way I will face my end, whether in terror or in peace. But I know how God would have me go. Giving him the glory right to the end! I hope I go out whooping and hollering like a rodeo cowboy riding Elijah's whirlwind heavenward. I pray that before my last day comes, whenever that shall be, I will have so feasted on the grace of God, day in and day out, that in the end it will be clear to all who knew me that for me, as for Paul, to die was truly gain (Phil 1:21).