This phrase came to mind the other day as our family got word that my wife’s beloved stepmother, Dora Walston Haggard, had died unexpectedly. She had been going through some health challenges, but none that appeared remotely life-threatening. All of a sudden when death comes calling for those we love, the loss and separation is devastating. It’s difficult to comprehend that this person we knew so well, who was a presence in our lives, in a moment appears to be no more. But as Christians, we don’t believe they are no more. We trust that their souls continue to live, but in an altered state with God. As Jesus said to the thief being crucified next to him, “today you will be with me in paradise.” So are all those who die in Christ.

But my response to death’s reality and inevitability is to wonder if what we believe as Christians is actually true. Because I can’t “see” this reality beyond the grave I find it difficult to believe. It brings great anguish as I contemplate this person so loved by so many gone from us for what appears forever. But as I’m going through this anguish, the second part of the title’s sentence impinges itself upon me with even more strength; I find it even more difficult to not believe. I ask myself, What alternative belief makes death more palatable, or makes any more sense of death? Or life?

Here’s the issue. If you don’t believe in the eternal nature of the soul, of the Christian conception of life after death, you HAVE to believe something else. There is no NOT believing. The question is, WHAT belief makes the most sense of life as we live it, and death as we experience it? So we are forced to ask, what are the alternatives to the Christian understanding of death? There aren’t many. In fact, I would argue there are three, and I challenge anyone to give me more:

  1. Theism
  2. Pantheism
  3. Atheism

Let’s take last to first. To look at death as an atheist, I HAVE to believe that everything came from nothing for no reason at all, and therefore we are all just a cosmic coincidence, lucky dirt, and thus death is a meaningless event. You’re born, you live, you die, oh well. The sadness and tears ultimately mean nothing, other than that experiencing such loss sucks. Any comfort we might seek in such a view of reality is an illusion. We are at best compost so that other things can grow. Great.

Pantheism is even weaker. Eastern religions don’t even try to explain why suffering, misery, and death exist. They just are, and those religions try in a variety of vain ways to overcome them. The ultimate path to a solution is to obliterate personhood, and meld our being into some kind of cosmic nothingness. Or some such thing. But how credible is a religion that seeks to destroy the meaning of persons in a universe filled with persons! I don’t find that credible in the least, and not much more comfort than can be found in atheism.

We’re left with theism. Islam claims to be the fulfillment of Judaism and Christianity, but it has zero evidence for the claims of its founder. Judaism is a story without an ending. Only Christianity, which its founder claims was the fulfillment of Judaism, makes ultimate sense of death because Jesus conquered it by raising from the dead. We learn of the ultimate purpose of God’s work in Israel’s history by these words from Isaiah written some 700 years before Christ:

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare
    a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
    the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
    the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
    he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
    from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
    from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken.

Now that is hope! And it isn’t a vain hope. We don’t say that our loved ones who died in Christ are still alive just to make ourselves feel better; it’s the truth! How do we know? Because God has given us massive quantities of evidence that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is not a myth or fairy tale, as the atheists never tire of saying, but that it actually happened, in time, space, and history.

I must end with one piece of this evidence regarding death that is the most powerful, and hopeful, in all of Scripture. In John 11 Jesus is standing before the tomb of Lazarus moments before he’s going to bring him back to life. What was Jesus’ response to seeing his good friend dead knowing he’ll soon be alive again? What do you think it would be? If you were making up this story it wouldn’t be what he actually did: “35 Jesus wept.” The Greek implies it wasn’t just tears, but a visceral anger and disgust at the reality of death. Every human being reacts the same way to death because, wait for it . . . death is wrong! Just like Christianity says it is. We know this because we are more than lucky dirt. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Death marred God’s perfect creation, and Jesus knows this more than any other human could because he was, and is, God! Even though he knew he would soon face and conquer death itself, he still wept. And so do we. So we ask with the Heidelberg Catechism, “What is your only comfort in life and death?” And we answer with a hope no other religion on earth can touch:

That I am not my own,
but belong with body and soul,
both in life and in death,
to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins
with his precious blood,
and has set me free
from all the power of the devil.
He also preserves me in such a way
that without the will of my heavenly Father
not a hair can fall from my head;
indeed, all things must work together
for my salvation.
Therefore, by his Holy Spirit
he also assures me
of eternal life
and makes me heartily willing and ready
from now on to live for him.

Amen!

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