Always Bad

Here’s a brief proposition.

Death is always bad.

Our church family is in a bit of a fragile state because one of us is no longer with us. Vera Cook’s funeral service was today. It was an amazing service in which I was able to participate. However, even the best funeral services are always enveloped in darkness, because it is a funeral service. Whether it is the Wake/Visitation or the funeral service itself, we all struggle with what we should say to the grieving. “I’m sorry” is usually the safest and most helpful thing to say. Often times a well-intentioned desire to comfort the grieving results in statements that downplay how bad death is. It is these well-intentioned statements that I would like to address briefly. Death is bad and when we downplay its badness we can impose guilt and be very unhelpful to the grieving.

Some clarifying remarks. Please notice my proposition states that death is bad. I’m not asserting that the end of suffering is bad. I would never want to say that “going to heaven” is bad. I am simply stating that the means by which most of us will arrive in heaven, namely death, is bad.

Why is death bad? I would like to offer at least two reasons.  

1) Death is bad because it destroys the design of God’s good creation. The creation narrative describes what God in his goodness originally intended.

then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (Gen 2.7, ESV).

 These words from the creation narrative should shape how we think about life and death. God shapes the form of man from the dust of the earth, places him on top of the soil and breathes into him the breath of God’s life and man becomes what God designs. Death is bad because it is the undoing of what our good God created and intended. Death reverses the creation of God. Death steals the breath of life from a human God created. Death forces that human back under the soil that God had overcome through his act of creation. Death destroys what God formed returning his creation back to dust. Because it destroys the design of God’s good creation, death is always bad.

2) Death is bad because resurrection is so good. What we often read in the Bible as referring to life after death is what should really be called “life after life after death.” In other words we do have a few phrases here and there like, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ” (Philippians 1.23) and “being away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5.8). The majority of times, however, when God’s Word is plainly discussing our future hope, we are being promised, not something after we die, we are rather being promised a world without death because the world will one day be overcome by resurrection. My favorite description of that plain hope is found in 2 Cor 5.1-5

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed (i.e. death), we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens (resurrection body).  For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.  He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee (ESV).

From this passage the hope of New Testament comes into focus. Paul’s hope is not that one day he will die and get to heaven. Now it is true that when Paul died, he did go to heaven and for that he was thankful (Phil 1.23; 2 Cor 5.8). Still the true hope of the Apostle is that one day he will receive his resurrection body that God is protecting for him in heaven. In fact, Paul longs to put on that body without being found naked. He desires to be clothed from above without having to go through the process of earthly death, because death, even if it leads to something good, is always a bad thing. Thanks be to God, a generation of believers will receive their resurrection bodies without having to endure the undoing of God’s creative design. This is why the Bible refers to death as our last enemy that is not yet subjected to the Lordship of Christ (1 Cor 15.25-28). I suppose another reason we could say death is bad is because it continues to rebel against Jesus as Lord. Death claimed another victim today. But thanks be to God, one day death will become a victim, itself.

With the hope of the New Testament in mind, we are now able to respond appropriately to Vera’s death. Death is not a blessing. Death is not a good thing? Are we glad she is no longer suffering? Yes. Are we glad she has been reunited with Lowell, her husband? Absolutely. Are we thrilled to know that she is in the presence of Jesus? Certainly. We grieve, however, because a bad thing happened to Vera. We are sad because death has taken someone we love from us. We groan because we have once again been reminded that all things have not been made new, that the world is not as God intended. We grieve and mourn however as those who have hope, because one day God will damn death to hell, forever. And on that day, those whom death has taken will rise and God will transform their bodies to incorruptibility, breathe into them the breath of life and Vera will exclaim will countless others “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15.57, ESV).