This blog is not supposed to be about the current pandemic. I promise it won’t be. When we’re past this, and even while we’re in the midst of it, I’ll be sure to write about a great many things.
But today I want to talk about death. I thought long and hard about how to put the pain of it into words, how to describe its cruel breaking of hearts, how to depict the dark dread that looms ahead of its terrifying approach, and I think I came up with an eloquent way of painting the picture for you: it sucks.
The county where I live is about to go on “lockdown,” so to speak. The stay-at-home order will close many, many businesses. We bunker down and sit for 30 days, or (let’s be honest) probably more. This is awful. But I take comfort in knowing it is a preventative measure to mitigate the spread and to limit the enemy Death. We will get through this.
I am sad that the church building will be empty for a while, but the church has never been a building. A building is a great asset (and responsibility). The building helps give us location, history, a joint project, a place to gather, and more. But the Church has always transcended buildings, because the Church is a Body, the Body of Christ. And His Body is healthy and flexible. It will still be on the move.
I also take comfort in knowing that this terrible, highly contagious virus is generally not claiming the lives of the young. Some pandemics haven’t been so kind to younger generations. Statistically speaking, my boys should be fine, even if the virus hits our household. I’m 41 and I’m fairly healthy, although I should exercise more. (I started working out again last week. My very wise wife who has been begging me to get more exercise looked at me last Thursday and said: “There is no reason you can’t exercise today.” So I did. Hello, my name is Jon, and I’ve been an exerciser now for 5 days).
My wife will celebrate her 41st birthday while we are on lockdown. Fun. I wouldn’t care much if it were my birthday, but Nicole’s a “let’s go out and do things” kind of person. She’s making the most of it with the kids, but misses her outings and her friends.
Anyway, she and I are likely to be physically fine, statistically speaking. Of course, that is no promise. I pray especially for those who are at high risk, and everyone who is caring for them. And I suspect that I’m not the only person who has been thinking about the odds.
C. S. Lewis wrote an essay about living in the atomic age, that is, in the age where the horrifying atom bomb is a reality. After listing a few of the many, awful ways to die, he said something that caught my attention: “It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.” (“On Living in an Atomic Age," 1948, in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays)
I’d like to say that in this current pandemic many of us have no chance of death, but that isn’t true. And lest I take comfort in the statistical slim chance of death for certain ages, Lewis reminds us that if it isn’t this, it will be something else. There is never a chance of death, but always and only the certainty of death.
You will die. And you don’t know how you will die. Are you ready today? Right here and right now? And how do we live in a world where the coronavirus and other forms of death are a reality?
Lewis’ advice about the atomic age: “This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”
Interesting that he mentions microbes. That’s what we’re dealing with now. And obviously the situation is different and some of the actions he recommends need to be modified for a time until we can come together again. But his main point hits home.
But how can we be of good cheer? How can we not let this dominate our minds, or break our joy, or crush our spirits?
The only way I know how is to be able to confess the paradox: In this world, death is not a chance, it is a certainty; but for us who are in Jesus Christ, death is not a chance, it is an impossibility. Both are true. Accept that you will die. Confess that you will not die. Prepare yourself to die and sleep in Christ, and firmly believe that though you die yet you shall live forevermore. Even when your body is laid to rest (sooner or later) your spirit will be at peace with Christ in paradise. And then, on the last day, your body will be raised to new life, and you will be you—body and soul again—new and glorified, imperishable, immortal dwelling in the New Heavens and New Earth forever.
Again, death is not a chance, it is a certainty. But in Christ, death is not a chance, it is an impossibility. Jesus says so: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (Jn 11:25-26).
truth + love
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