Lymph Journal # 34

2/24/2012

 Part III of III

“…and to die is gain,”

I’m starting this blog entry back in the chemo lounge as the red medicine (Doxorubicin) begins its flow.  That’s a sign to start drinking copious amounts of mineral water so that the water I make spends less time taking on the hue of the infusion.  Full house this morning but pretty quiet.

Back to the subject – remember that this is not coming out of a morbid preoccupation with mortality or of pessimism regarding my treatment it was just time to work through this essential piece of what I hold to as truth.  I am, rather, optimistic at this time but should things “go south” these truths are especially important.

“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”  The first record of this maxim I found is that of Tom Delaney (1889-1963) – an African-American blues and jazz composer, pianist for Ethel Waters. It is the title of (and a lyric from) a song Delany wrote sometime prior to 1948.   It has appeared in the reggae and in the bluegrass traditions and was recently recorded by David Crowder who then (I just discovered in my research this morning) used it as the title for his first attempt at publishing a book. (Zondervan).

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Yeah, I guess it’s another gross generalization.   Some people want to die due to despair in circumstance, shame, clinical depression, etc. but, by in large, we tend to want to avoid this inevitability.  And we cannot argue that everybody wants to go to heaven but, I would argue that, everybody wants at least a neutral to a positive outcome on the other side of life.  Yeah, there are those who assert that they would rather end up in the eternal destination that is full of the cool people rather than the religious nuts but I really don’t think it quite works out to be enjoyable – please people, be careful for what you wish.  If you want to get one thing right in this life, it ought to be a reasoned and informed view of what comes after.

Paul asserted that death was “gain”.  Intellectually, rationally, based on the truth in Scripture regarding eternity he is absolutely right.  He knew that the “weight of glory” that lay ahead far outweighed the “light and momentary” troubles of this life (2Corinthians 4:17).  He knew “absence from the body” is “presence with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8).  (Lord knows he brushed death many times before he made his “death is gain” assertion and he must have been a bit weary of “cheating” death so many times.)  People who hold to a hope of some kind of heaven and certainly the Christian believer can agree that “death is gain” but the death part still bothers us.

Well, death should bother us.  It ain’t the way it’s supposed to be.  Here’s the biblical argument: death = a curse that wasn’t there at the start, death = a penalty for rebellion against God that won’t be there at the end of time, death = an enemy (Paul in I Corinthians 15:26 calls it the “last enemy to be destroyed”) already defeated in and by Christ but as not yet destroyed.  This is an enemy we’re not supposed to love. 

This is an enemy we’re called to fight against even though we never ultimately succeed, barring the end of time, in avoiding.  Death, even though it serves as the gateway to all that is promised, still stinks.  It usually hurts, it’s fraught with anxieties, it grieves all involved – yeah it pretty much behaves like an enemy.

How can death already be defeated but not yet destroyed?  Well, take a look at the bookends of Scripture.  On one end you have Eden and on the other end the New Earth joined by the New Jerusalem aka the New Heaven.  In both places there is the Tree of Life (in the last place its fruit is shared and “heals the nations” – cool picture!).  In both places there is God – in Eden a regular evening visitor, in New Jerusalem everlastingly at home.  In both places there is no rebellion towards God (temporarily in the first, permanently in the second).  But you and I live in “In-between land” – the place of rebellion against God, the place where death casts a dire shadow, the place of gross imperfection that the perfect Son of God entered into to make it possible for us to be reconciled with God.  “In-between land” has many a paradox, much upside down thinking, frustrating levels of things that make little sense. Have you ever considered that so much in this world makes little sense until you can see beyond this time and space and think things through in an eternal sense?  When you get there most everything makes sense – consider Paul’s “light and momentary” troubles – he faced some really bad stuff  for years before release came by, tradition says, beheading.  Bet it all makes sense to him now.

In In-between-land we can begin to see that death, the last enemy, has been defeated, as the resurrection of Christ clearly demonstrates, but is not yet destroyed.  We can know that its destruction is part of God’s game plan.  So here and now we’re stuck with needing to face and fight an ugly enemy to find the gain that comes when that enemy wins round 1.  It totally loses after that – the believer has gained immeasurably above all that could be asked or imagined. 

So, I think it’s OK to be a bit ambivalent about death as a believer.  I don’t want to die right now, I want to engage in “fruitful labor” – it’s a great life when you see that happening.  But I also want to, when it happens, die well – to “in no way be ashamed but will have sufficient courage” (Paul’s words).

But, like I stated before, it makes sense to figure out in this life a rational, reasoned and informed idea of what happens when you die or rather after you die.  I was once drafted last-minute to speak at a Career Day session because the “rocket scientist” (really – true story) had a last minute schedule conflict and the coordinator figured. “Well Kraines, he’s had a lot of different jobs, let’s ask him.”  Well Kraines doesn’t mind getting these kinds of opportunities but how to share core truths in a public school address?  Towards the conclusion of my recounting of the lessons learned in each job I had held to date I recalled the lesson from my days working in the funeral business.  I told the kids that “you’re going to be dead for a really long time” so you better search for truth regarding what’s up then. 

Yes, it makes sense to prepare for where and how that long time will be spent. There are loads of opinions out there.  Those that don’t think too deeply might assume that it’s all going to work out OK because, well, on the spectrum of living I’m not so bad and the God, or the Force or whatever vague idea of the spiritual - well, he, she, it is not so bad either so I’ll end up in the vague not so bad eternal not-so-badness or, at worst, it will just be all over and I won’t care.

But, for the believer, we know there is the enormously bad alternative ending.  Jesus, the real Jesus and not the vague guru of pop culture, spoke of Hell more than he spoke of Heaven.  He didn’t paint a pretty picture and He intimated that the pathway to there is wide while the way to Heaven is narrow (and, indeed was through Him). 

Consider another gross generalization: Human beings crave justice.  We don’t like to see cruelty run rampant (unless we’re excusing our own cruelties), we don’t like seeing tyrants win (unless it’s a tyranny that benefits us), we want “fairness” (as long as it breaks our way).  Our desire for justice is strong yet fractured.  Sometimes we even accuse God of unfairness because if He’s so “all that” why does such suffering happen? We don’t want to see Hitler in heaven or have Stalin in the next room of the mansion.  The drunk driver that walked away from the fatal accident – how is that just? 

This stuff bothers us.  Good – it’s part of the cracked image of God we bear.  God does not have a sense of justice - God’s is just, God is justice in all its perfection.  And God doesn’t only love, He is love and He doesn’t want any to ultimately perish but to come to repentance. And so God does the crazy thing.  He satisfies the demands of justice through his infinite mercy (but mercy is not enough) and the personal sacrifice of the incarnate God (yeah, that, God declares, is enough – as Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished” – no more important words were ever spoken by human lips). 

So our imperfect, self-biased search for justice is perfected by God and offered to us as a choice.  God does not make us buy into this but He desires that we will and offers it freely to all who will trust in it.  But that leaves the question for those who still hold out against the mercy of God.  This, the Christian view argues and it seems a rational argument to me, is not a choice that leads to anything I’d want to experience after I die but it does makes sense that such a bad outcome exists.  For the rebel against God’s mercy death is anything but gain.

But how to make death a gain?  There are two things necessary.  You need to trust in the finished work of Christ (trust is a big word – think putting all your eggs in one basket – kind of what it means when you say “for to me to live is Christ) and, here in “In-between land”, you’ve got to die. 

Think about this – you’re going to do the second thing no matter what, what are you going to do with the first?