A Christian View of Evil and Suffering, Part 3: A Christian View of Death and Dying

-
(This is an article written for our local paper.)

A Christian view of death and dying sounds very strange to the modern ear.  This is especially true because Christianity has long seen death as true and right in one sense and evil and wrong in another.  It is seen as not a part of God’s perfect will, but it is seen as a part of his decretive will.

God’s perfect will, or will of desire, is expressed in His commandments as contained in the Bible.  It does not contain sin or the consequences of sin.  God’s perfect will is what He would have, not what He would allow.

God’s decretive will contains those things which He does not desire in and of themselves, but those things which He allows.  This will includes all things that actually happen (Ephesians 1: 11).  God allows death in this sense, and He allows death for good reasons.

In Christianity, seen from God’s perfect will, death is an enemy to be destroyed, not an event to be accepted. Christ has “overcome death,” our enemy (Rom. 4:25; 1 Cor. 15:16-20; 1 Pet. 1:3-5).  Death is wrong in the sense that death is not a part of God’s perfect will for the world. I know that intuitively.

Am I to adopt a worldview which would make death just an ordinary part of life? Should I just accept it as a part of the way the universe works?

No way! I want a worldview that accounts for the reality of death. I want it to be called evil, not just the absence of happiness that is a social construct of how people conceive that things should be. I want death to be wrong in some important sense. I need an absolute standard for right and wrong which calls death the enemy and triumphs over it (1 Cor. 15:25-28).

In Christianity, seen from the perspective of God’s will of decree, Christ’s resurrection guarantees the resurrection of those who place their faith in Him (Rom. 8:11; 1 Cor. 15:12-23; Phil. 3:20-21).

Christ’s death has changed the very nature of death for those who repent of their sins and place their trust in Him (Ps. 49:7; John 5:24; Phil. 1:21-23; 1 Thess. 5:9-10).  Death is not a punishment for sin; it is a deliverance from sin. In death, Christ makes Christians into the kind of people they have longed to be: people who are perfect in what they think, speak, and do.

I will never forget about how this hope ‘played out’ in my life. My mother died in 2006.  I struggled to explain what had happened to my three-year-old daughter. My mother had been very sick for some time, and I had taken the chance to read several books and pamphlets on how to talk to children about death.

Many of those booklets told me to tell my daughter that death was final so that she would not be confused. In this theory, Granny Jones was not “asleep” or “living in heaven,” but gone forever. That is what death is to the world: final. 

When I stood over Mom’s casket with my daughter in my arms, I picked theology over psychology.  I said something like this: “Granny is dead, but one day she will live again. When Christ comes back, your Grandmother will come back to life because she placed her faith in Christ before she died. She will have a new body that is perfect and joy in her heart.”

I tried to help my daughter understand that Christians will come back to life after they die. In this, we have hope.


This is death transformed in the mystery of God’s decretive will.  

Comments

Anonymous said…
"This is death transformed in the mystery of God’s decretive will."

Or just making stuff up.
February 21, 2014
J. K. Jones said…
Christianity is not made up. It rests on well-established evidence.

February 21, 2014
J. K. Jones said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
February 21, 2014
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Face of Terror

-
Osama Bin laden is dead. Since the rest of the internet is buzzing with opinions on that death, I thought I would weigh in. First, this is not the end of global terrorism. Like the Hydra of old, when one head is chopped off, two more take its place. We still need diligence in our fight against global terror. U. S. and allied Armed Forces still need our prayers. We still need a strong military and intelligence community. We have not yet cut off the Hydra’s immortal head. Second, the way to get to the ‘heart of the matter’ is with Christian missionary efforts. We must reach the people who make up those societies and population segments that produce terrorists . To tell a story I have told here before : Early in the twentieth century, Baptist evangelists preached through rural Mississippi and Alabama with such effectiveness that moonshiners could no longer sell their whiskey: All their customers were getting converted! In desperation, the whiskey sellers hired two men to murder on...
Read more

The Canons of Dort

-
I believe that the Canons of Dort are true. This is a statement that came out the Synod of Dort, held from 1618-1619. The Canons of Dort outline the system of theology known today as the “five points of Calvinism.” The problem I have with most “five-point Calvinists” is that the Canons of Dort contain much more than five points. Many explanations of the TULIP (total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and the perseverance of the saints) are gross simplifications of the Canons of Dort. [This is especially true of explanations given by those who oppose Calvinism. It is easier to knock down a straw man than it is to knock down a real man, and so it is easier to criticize an oversimplified Calvinism that the more robust form.] Some of those who teach the “five points” leave out some of the quotes below: This death of God's Son is the only and entirely complete sacrifice and satisfaction for sins; it is of infinite value and worth, more than ...
Read more

Intelligent Design

-
The Intelligent Design (ID) movement makes much of the argument from irreducible complexity. Dr. Michael Behe has become famous for a simple example, the mousetrap. He points out that the mousetrap will not perform its function without all of its parts. The wooden base, the metal hammer, a spring, a catch and a metal bar to hold back the hammer are all necessary parts. One component by itself will not catch a mouse. Mainstream evolutionary science has a counter-argument. To paraphrase Dr. Kenneth Miller, if you disassemble the mousetrap, each component can serve as something useful on its own. If we take away the catch and metal bar, we have something left that can serve as a paper clip. The spring could make a simple two-section key chain. The wooden base makes a paperweight. Evolutionary processes like random mutation and natural selection can combine and retain the useful parts as the complicated evolves to perform the complex function. The useful parts are combined into the mousetr...
Read more