Precious Enemy

A Biblical Portrait of Death

Jennings

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498280686
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

King Solomon asserted, "love is as strong as death" (Song of Solomon 8:6). Solomon, the wisest of all Israel's kings, recognized that while every human would eventually succumb to death, death is not ultimate in power. The God whose essence is love designed and created both human life and death as instruments for the display of his own splendor and purposes. Neither human life nor death, then, can deviate from God's ultimate purpose and good for the creature made in his own image.Biblically, death serves as the perfect foil to mark both the immeasurable value of human life and at the same time the relatively limited value of it. Rather than either worshipping or desecrating this finite gift of human life, we can value it rightly and also worship the God who, in his literally infinite wisdom, gives and takes away life in accord with his good and gracious purposes.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The Anemic Memento Mori of Our Contemporary Setting

Life. Merely speaking this word stirs emotions and conjures endless vibrant images of fullness and engrossing intricacy. One “walks down memory lane,” reminiscing about the riches of life past. One talks of (or disregards) the dignity and the sanctity of life or of sharing one’s life with another. Popular magazines and even board games are named in commemoration of life. Fittingly, much ado is made over each new life that enters the world; moreover, each such entrance is celebrated annually. Life is considered so precious that people enter covenants pledging not merely their bodies but their very lives as their most valuable collateral. Indeed, even the constitution of the United States of America rightly acknowledges life as a God given right to all people. No wonder life is so treasured.

The word death, on the other hand, does not exactly invite riveting discussion. Rather, because it conjures a host of reflections considered intruding and discomforting, conversation about the topic is awkwardly hurried away. This avoidance is common even in Christian circles, though followers of Jesus Christ have been admonished that their suffering of death may in fact be God’s preferred will.1

In the modern age (particularly in the west2) where the grace of health care and medical advancements have eliminated many diseases and profoundly reduced the mortality rates of bygone history,3 the prevailing mindset concerning death is significantly different than even four generations ago—never mind that of Christ’s newly founded Church Militant. In generations past (particularly the Middle Ages), death was contemplated coram Deo much more commonly because mortality rates were so high that virtually no one could escape having to think about death. The general expectation today is not that many loved ones—including one’s own children—will likely precede one in death. Rather, the expectation is the exact opposite.

So much of the ecology of death and dying4 has been relegated to sewers and subways of our society (where necessary utilities may be executed without obstructing the comforts and pleasantries of everyday life) that death has become a virtually unnoticed visitor. Many of our predecessors—both biblical and historical—would assert that such a pathos is both subtly and devilishly deceptive and to our own very great detriment. One early British ars moriendi,5 for example, voices its mournful sorrow over such a condition:

But it is greatly to be noted, and to be taken heed of, that right seldom (that) any man—yea among religious and devout men—dispose themselves to death betimes as they ought. For every man weeneth himself to live long, and troweth not that he shall die in short time; and doubtless that cometh of the devil’s subtle temptation. And often times it is seen openly that many men, through such idle hope and trust, have for-slothed themselves, and have died intestate, or unadvised, or undisposed, suddenly. And therefore every man that hath love and dread of God, and a zeal of (the heal of) man’s soul, let him busily induce and warn every of his even christians [sic] that is sick, or in any peril of body or of soul, that principally and first, over all other things, and withouten delays and long tarryings, he diligently provide and ordain for the spiritual remedy and medicine of his soul.6

Reflecting on this same dismissiveness of death in our own day, Ray Anderson bemoans, “There is an immensity about death which transcends the biological event of cessation of organic life. The rituals of evasion which surround the contemporary avoidance of death are not because death is considered trivial or incidental, but because we feel an inner sense of bankruptcy before this sacred, and impenetrable immensity.”7 David Stannard agrees that our culture is bankrupt of its capacity to dialogue with death because of the former’s loss of a significant sense of transcendent reality. He warns that we currently live in a culture “in which virtually every individual can be replaced with such facility that his absence deeply affects at best only his most intimate relations. In a world bereft of ultimate meaning either in life or in death—in which neither the community of the living nor the vision of a mystical but literal afterlife any longer provides solace—modern man, in the face of death, has been forced to choose between the alternatives of outright avoidance or a secularized masquerade.”8 Indeed, our contemporary culture is compelled by this spiritual anemia to treat contemplation of death in very much the same way Israel and her priests regarded the truth proclaimed to them by the prophet Zechariah: “they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears from hearing.”9

The absence of a proper contemplation of death and dying in our culture has resulted in a further and more insidious sickness; perhaps one may call it “biolatry”—the idolizing of life. Human life is so idolatrously clutched (contrary to both the Bible’s depiction of God’s righteous and equitable love for human life,10 and the liberty with which Christ held even his own deity—cf. Phil 2:6) that little or no regard at all is entertained concerning either what comes after this life or the attention divine revelation gives to our end.11 Many have become mastered by this present life. They have contented themselves with finding sufficient human meaning and purpose merely in the “here and now” such that when death occurs—that is, the robbing of that hallowed contentment—they react as though some grave injustice has been imposed in affront to our humanity. Here lies a most serious flaw with our view of life and death. Life does not belong to us to worship it—for all intents and purposes—as we see fit. In grand scale, no greater ethic seems to be realized than the preservation of (human) life.12 Just consider how insulting people find the notion of the extermination of the human species.13 That notion, by the way, is not so insulting to the God who did just that, saving eight souls (Gen 6:23; 7:21–24; 2 Pet 2:5)!14 Rather than idolizing life, then, we should consider the reality that we are dust (Ps 103:14; Isa 40:17). The Lord of the cosmos gives and dismisses created human life as he sees fit (Ps 90:3–10). We should, rather, loosely hold our lives—which are not our own anyway, nor are they primarily for our own consumption—with the same dauntless composure that Jesus Christ possessed his deity (though that was indeed his own). That is, he did not consider his deity something to be “clutched” as though it could be taken from him (Phil 2...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: The Origin of Death
• Chapter 3: Death in the Old Testament
• Chapter 4: Death in the New Testament
• Chapter 5: Death and the Church Triumphant
• Chapter 6: Excursus: The Frowning Providence of Infant Death
• Chapter 7: The Laud of God for His Ordinance of Death
• Bibliography