There is no greater unknown, no more difficult question that we can face, than whether we are ready to die.
Matthew Lee Anderson, Called into Questions, 35.
I think he’s right. We are scared of death. We live in a culture scared of death. It’s much commented on that the Victorians seemed prudish (to us) about sex but were much more comfortable with death, obsessed by it even. We have swapped our obscenity and our obsession: no longer is it the mystery of the marriage bed that we hide away, rather it’s the cold, slimy embrace of the grave.
You reach further back in history and you find times that were obsessed with neither and for it much more comfortable with both. Death is a fact of life, right?
Except of course the Christian declares a loud: “No!” Death is evil, death is an imposition, death is the thing that should not be. We are glorious beings with our plumage all drab because we live in a world with no light: we cannot see what’s before our eyes.
The resurrection of Jesus—the historical certitude that all of time turns upon—has shown us that the grave’s grasp is broken. The ground will give up its dead and we will meet him in the air (1 Thessalonians 4), raised immortal.
Yet we still face it. Christians used to be known for their deaths. If death is a void, a yawning maw of nothing, then it matters not whether we face it stoically or raging at the dying of the light. If, instead, it is the beginning of our lives then how we face it matters. There is such a thing as a good death.
The faith should teach us the art of dying. In a culture that hides away death, Christians need to speak on it more. We hate death, but we don’t shy away from its reality. It is, after all, the core of the faith that after death comes life. Christians are the people who choose to die daily, repenting of our sin and giving up our self-centred self-directed self-obsession to serve the Lord of glory. We know that when we die, we will be raised—metaphorically and literally.
And yet, not one person living has died. That’s how it works. It remains an unknown. It is good to wrestle with unknowns. That’s one of the ways we prepare for death. In the same passage I quoted above, Anderson also comments on how education used to be about wrestling with these big questions of existence—and the act of questioning and wrestling is the preparation, not the answers—he would call us to reject ‘education as job training’ in favour of something older, deeper, and wilder.
Of course, my readers will be clamouring, there is one living person who died: the living God himself, Jesus the Christ. Ascended to the heavens to rule with a rod of iron (Psalm 2), he has passed before us and through the back of death—nothing so tawdry as returning to us—to leave a gaping hole for us to march through into life. Friends, he knows death, and he kicked its head in. He turns to highwaymen and says “today you will be with me in the garden” (Luke 23), and he says it to all who die in him. Death is a great unknown, but we can step into it with hope, nonetheless.
But to die well we still need to learn the art of dying: that is living, learning how to die. I mean this metaphorically and literally (so, symbolically, then). It is dangerous to face the big hoary unknowns of the world, but doing so prepares our souls for life and death. It is not safe to face reality, head on.
It is instead, to use the most overused evangelical phrase available, good. The longing that emerges, the sehnsuct or hiraeth, prepares our hearts for living and for dying. Belong to a community that can face the difficult things, the dangerous things, the terrible force of reality.
I fear that there is a kind of church that is uncomfortable with questions, or that much reality. I fear it’s the kind of church I’ve spent most of my life in. I don’t think there’s an inherently theological reason why this should be true. The Bible tells a story that is big, and weird, and not at all safe or tidy. We should tell it in turn. We should live it in turn. It will do us good.
All well and good, but how do you form this community? That’s my question too. My best first guesses are:
- Preach without trite answers to difficult questions. Offer people Jesus, and offer Jesus as the answer, but avoid trite responses that tie up untidy reality in a bow. Your theodicy isn’t as clever as you think; the Bible offers God rather than answers (Job 38).
- Ask your own questions with those you trust. You will learn who also wants to ask them by how they respond. Work at a questioning disposition.
- Treat people’s questions as serious, invite them into encountering Jesus while wrestling with them. This can require some pastoral wisdom as not everyone’s question is serious.
- Laugh at the absurdity of life as often as you can. Weep with those who weep.
- Take Jesus and Church very seriously, don’t take yourself that seriously.
- Teach the wildness of the faith, don’t domesticate Jesus.
There are probably other structural things you can do; I’d welcome the thoughts of others.
We live in an era of ‘deconstruction,’ especially in those who are terminally online. Perhaps some things need knocking down, but the faith is the only thing that is really true because in it we meet truth and discover that truth was a person all along.
He’s worth meeting. Worth dying for. When you do, he’ll raise you to glorious life forevermore and you’ll have a good chuckle about it.
Photo by Stanislav Ferrao on Unsplash
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