Death Part 2: Friendly Death?

In my last blog, I built a case for Death as an enemy. This time I will examine the flip side and thus the title has a question mark in it.

Purpose from Death
Life has a natural rhythm to it. We are born and we start growing physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. By the time we are 20, we have finished growing physically and have a period of time where we have seemingly boundless energy. What if that period never ended?

Workaholics and overachievers might imagine that they would push themselves indefinitely, enjoying their relative invincibility (but isn't that a self-made hell?). But for anyone with even one lazy bone in their body, having forever to accomplish things is actually a curse. Prov. 20:4 states, "A sluggard does not plow in season; so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing."

The truth is that all of us procrastinate to one degree or another. Knowing we have a finite time in which to accomplish the things that matter most to us benefits us in two ways. 1) We accomplish more than we otherwise would. 2) We experience a feeling of purpose in working toward our goals that might be absent if we had an infinite amount of time.

Job 14:5-12 summarizes our mortality nicely:

⁵ Man's days are determined;
you have decreed the number of his months
and have set limits he cannot exceed....

⁷ "At least there is hope for a tree:
If it is cut down, it will sprout again,
and its new shoots will not fail.

⁸ Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil,
⁹ yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant.
¹⁰ But man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more.

¹¹ As water disappears from the sea or a riverbed becomes parched and dry,
¹² so man lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, men will not awake or be roused from their sleep.
In summary, many human beings accomplish far more and experience a sense of purpose during their years of finite life than they otherwise might if they lived on this earth forever.

Death as a Friend for the Suffering

This blog would be incomplete without acknowledging the relief that death can bring to those who are suffering with a terminal illness. Jack Kevorkian became a poster-child for the issue with his "death machine." Recently, Oregon, Washington, and Montana have constitutionally-verified laws that legalize assisted suicide.

Death Removes the Bad People
Let's expand our thinking beyond ourselves and consider the implications to this world if the evil people never died. Is that a world that you want to see? What if the world continued to accumulate the Hitlers, Stalins, Pol Pots, Osama bin Ladens, and Saddam Husseins?

Justice is a huge theme in the Bible. David and many of the prophets cried out for God to judge the wicked. In general, the reality is that evil rulers have rarely held sway for more than a decade or two at most.

2 Peter 2:4-9 summarizes God's ability to judge and hold people accountable. "⁴For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment; ⁵if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; ⁶if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; ⁷and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men ⁸(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— ⁹if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment."

Most of us have experienced an unruly, combattive, incorrigible, rebellious child. Such children can make my blood boil in anger and yet when I stop to reflect, I also get depressed. This is because such children become teenagers, and eventually adults. However challenging they might be, problems in children are more manageable than in adults. Yet this scripture tells us that God is fully capable of dealing with even the most determined, rebellious, and defiant adult.

The amazing thing is that God even applies this justice righteously, with compassion and love. It is really difficult to take such an attitude toward someone you believe deserves tremendous punishment. How do I know God has this attitude? Jesus' example! After he rants at the Pharisees as a last-ditch effort to get them to repent in Matthew 23, Jesus mourns, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing."

I believe God keeps upping the ante in individuals' lives, trying to get their attention and get them to repent. After a certain point, he is left with no recourse but to end their life as a natural consequence for what they've done. This is perhaps the most merciful act that God could offer someone, and far from the concept of an everlasting hell. Rev. 20:11-15 clearly teaches that people will suffer a finite amount exactly commensurate with their sins.

In sum, Death is a tool in the hands of a just and righteous God to make life liveable and deal with those who choose an evil path and reject him.

Death Brings Humility
Every human being is susceptible to the sin of pride. We naturally get excited about our abilities and eventually grow overconfident in our ability to handle life. I've realized that I need to change the language with which I talk to my kids from "You did it yourself" to "We did it" or "You did it." But a change in language alone won't prevent pride. Humility must be learned. Over and over and over again.

"Meet Joe Black" is an intriguing movie where Death is embodied as Brad Pitt who comes as a visitor to an aging businessman who is not yet ready to let go of life. Death helps us develop humility because we have so little control over it. About the only thing we can do is choose to die early and possibly the manner in which we die. We have no choice about whether or not we die.

The reality is that our lives are very short-lived and we think of ourselves much more highly than we ought. The Psalmist reflected in Psalms 39:4-7,

4 Show me, O LORD, my life's end
and the number of my days;
let me know how fleeting is my life.

5 You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Each man's life is but a breath.

6 Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro:
He bustles about, but only in vain;
he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it.

7 "But now, Lord, what do I look for?
My hope is in you.

When we consider the duration of our lives and those who have gone before us, we turn to God as our only source of hope. The wisest man ever (Solomon) gained humility in the realization that his destiny is no different than the animals. Ecclesiastes 3 states, "¹⁸ I also thought, 'As for men, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. ¹⁹ Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath'; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. ²⁰ All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return."

In Ecclesiastes 9, Solomon exposes the pointless struggle to achieve and accumulate wealth. We certainly cannot take it with us after we die so why go to such bother? Furthermore, living life for yourself will most certainly disqualify you for any afterlife.

³ This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. ⁴ "Anyone who is among the living has hope"—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!

⁵ For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing;
they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten.

⁶ Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished;
never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun.

Solomon's warning is clear: figure things out with God while you're still alive! Death is a gift that grants us a measure of humility and shows us our need for God. It reveals who is really in charge, and it ain't me!

Conclusion

I hope this blog has challenged your traditional viewpoint of Death. Death can give purpose and urgency to our lives because we know we have only a limited time. At a deeper level, however, we must realize that this life is simply a test. A finite life grants us a measure of humility that is enough to show us our need for God. Knowing someone who has recently died causes each of us to reconsider our mortality, and that is a good thing. Lastly, because of Death, we can be grateful that evil people inevitably eliminate one another. Thankfully, there are no 30 billion-year-old ugly grudges!