thoughts and ruminations while in exile (1 Pet. 2:11)

When God is dead, death is God—Peter Kreeft

Romantic death is rare. More common are involuntary groanings and screams of pain. The ignominy of death is pathetic. It is more often hellish than heroic—John Piper

If you’re busy killing time, the truth is time is killing you—Timothy Brindle

I don’t expect many people to read this. Most people flee from a conversation about death. We don’t like to talk about it. Possibly we think, “If I block it out, it will go away.” But as the saying goes, “The only thing certain in life is death and taxes.” Death is coming; of that we can be sure. It’s sort of like this uncontrollable monster that we would like to go away. Rather than going away, however, with each moment that passes, it keeps approaching with even greater ferocity. Death is unavoidable.

Death is on everyone’s mind these days because of the deaths of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcet, and Michael Jackson. It seems like this “off limits” topic is foremost on our minds these days. And this is a good thing. I don’t say this because I’m morbid, but rather because it is good to remember that our life on this earth is temporal. Jonathan Edwards’s ninth resolution reads like this: “Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.” I also think we could learn a lot from his seventeeth resolution: “Resolved, that I will live so, as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.”

People think about death differently. On the subject of death, most people exercise their reason autonomously just as they do with many other subjects. Still the question remains: What happens after a person dies? What is a Christian’s response to the death of superstars?

What the Bible says about death

In first Corinthians 15:43 Paul tells Christians that the death of their bodies is like a seed that is sown in the ground. Our physical bodies are “sown in dishonor.” These bodies of ours, however, are “raised in glory.” We will have a glorified body and be with our Triune God forever. For Christians, death is actually a gain, not a loss. We don’t lose our lives, we gain eternity. Thus, in first Corinthians 15:54, Paul quotes from Isaiah 25:8, which reads, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” Then, Paul quotes from Hosea 13:14, where the prophet taunts death by saying, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” Believers have nothing to fear because we have put our trust in the Lord Jesus who gave us the victory!

For non-Christians, however, the picture is far less glorious. As the writer of Hebrews says, “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9:7). This passage clearly shows that every person on the face of this planet has one life. There are no other opportunities. According to the Bible there is no such thing as reincarnation. As commentator David Chapman says, in this verse, there is “no hint of any intervening opportunity for change of status.”[1]

As much as people find it offensive, the Bible presents no hope of eternal life for those who reject Christ. Jesus said, “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 13:41-42). In Matthew 25:46, Jesus will say to some during the judgment, “Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.”
Jesus continues by saying, “these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” This is what Jesus said. I don’t see how a person can believe Jesus said these things, and then still believe he was “just a good moral teacher.” If you think this is a corruption of the text, and that Jesus did not say these words, I challenge you to show some sort of evidence, and in what manuscript tradition this was added.

When the apostle Peter was preaching, he said, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

The apostle Paul writes this: “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might . . .” (2 Thess. 1:7-9).

There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that after a person dies, they are annihilated, or that they stop being conscious. The Bible teaches, and all historic Christian traditions teach, that life after death is both eternal, and that a person remains conscious, either in the presence of God, or in hell. This is believed by all Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant churches. Despite all of the vast differences between these respective traditions, when there is unanimity, it should cause us to reflect deeply on these matters.

What this means for us

Thus, with superstars dying who are nice people, we must not compromise what the Bible teaches. As difficult as this may be for some people, we must not waver on these issues.

It also reminds us that we only have one life. It is important that we not waste our lives! The greatest desire inside of every person is to live life and be happy. I hear this a lot when I talk to parents (I’m sure I’ll be saying it soon!). I hear things like, “I just want my child to be happy.” This is a great desire. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be happy. The problem for us as humans is not that we want to be happy, it’s that we don’t want to be happy enough! Our desire to be happy is not too strong, it’s too weak! C. S. Lewis was right:

"Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

True and lasting joy is found in a relationship with the Triune God. This was Solomon’s assessment after searching for joy in all areas of life. Solomon searched for happiness in “drink, sex, and ambition.” Solomon said it was “all vanity and a chasing after the wind.” He worded it like this: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14). Christian hip hop artist Da’ Truth put it this way: “This is the plight of the basic nature of men: you got, you get, you done it, then you chase it again.”

So we have one life, and, as Peter Kreeft says, “At death we put our signature on our life’s unique self-portrait.”

What will people say about you when you die?
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The following quotes are taken from Peter Kreeft’s book Love is Stronger than Death:

“When the Christian church collaborates with a pagan culture by covering up death, it seals its own death warrant” pgs. 22-23

“The ‘good news’ of Christianity claims to answer the ‘bad news’ of death. Without the ‘bad news,’ the ‘good news’ sounds like a charming but superfluous fairy tale, a mélange of commonplace ethical platitudes inexplicably encumbered with miracles and mythology, an echo of parental imperatives already long known and disobeyed” pg 23

“The fact of death is the failure of our dream of divinity. No wonder we turn our face from it. Death’s face grins at us, and we must frown. In order to put a smile on our face, we must put the mask of a stranger on the face of death”—pg 28

“We seek happiness not in the ancient sense of objective perfection (eudaimonia) but in the modern sense of subjective contentment, being pleased. This happiness is indistinguishable from pleasure except by degree of depth and endurance. We worship ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ not life after death, the service of God, and the pursuit of truth. We prefer happiness to truth. That is why we do not think about death”—pg 29

[1] ESV Study Bible, 2376.