For the Joy of the Journey

Conversations Matter – Death and Dying (6)

George July 10, 2023 Conversations Matter 0 Comments

a Theology of Death

It seems curious that the people who believe most fervently in divine healing also cling most doggedly to the technology of mortals.¹

It is indisputable our society is characterized by avoidance of death. Dominated by a secular ethos, such a reality is not surprising or unreasonable. What I find surprising and unreasonable is avoidance of death in many western Christian contexts. Any attempt to answer why will reveal numerous factors. One significant factor is the absence of a theology of death. A coherent theology of death, will not sanction avoidance, but will embrace death and give it its proper treatment.
This post examines Richard Beck’s book “The Slavery of Death” which I found helpful in developing a theology of death .

The Slavery of Death

The central contention of this book is that death, not sin, is the primary predicament of the human condition. Death is the cause of sin. More properly, the fear of death produces most of the sin in our lives.
The Slavery of Death (p. 3)

Beck’s contention, if correct, is a game changer. Subject to debate, the book makes a compelling case in favor of his contention. Wrestling with the possibility that sin is not the defining predicament of my life has touched and opened questions about much I have either taken for granted or left unexamined — original sin, salvation, substitutionary atonement, human depravity, satanic power, powers and principalities, timor mortis, and more, I am still processing and revisiting my thinking; in some cases I have come to new and different understandings. This post cannot do justice to the whole book. I will share some excerpts intended to stimulate enough curiosity that perhaps some will pursue a theology of death.

The reason Christ appeared was to free those who , in the words of Hebrews 2 : 15 , “ were all their lives enslaved to the fear of death . ”

…an exclusive focus on sin tends to oversimplify the dynamics of our moral struggles .

The power of death that the devil wields is characterized here as a slavery to the fear of death . It is not death per se that gives the devil power . It is , rather , the fear of death . It is this fear that creates the satanic influence , a fear that tempts us into sinful practices and lifestyles , a fear that keeps us demonically “ possessed ” in our idolatrous service to the principalities and powers .

Salvation , then , involves liberation from this fear . Salvation is emancipation for those who have been enslaved all of their lives by the fear of death . Salvation is a deliverance that sets us free from this power of the devil .

Jesus came to “ undo the works of the devil ” ( 1 John 3 : 8 )

Genesis 3 might be less interested in explaining why humans are “ depraved ” than it is in explaining why we die .

We do inherit a predicament from the Primal Couple , but what we inherit isn’t a moral stain . Rather , we inherit the world they have left us . We are exiles from Eden . The world around us is not as God intended it . Death exists , but this was not God’s plan . We were created for incorruption but find ourselves to be , in the words of Paul ( Romans 7 ) , possessors of bodies that are “ subject to death , ” a subjugation that brings about moral “ wretchedness . ”

…the issue here isn’t to displace the importance or role of sin in bringing about death , but to embed our understandings of human moral failure within a richer theological matrix .

if the satanic forces in our lives spring forth from the fear of death , then emancipation from this fear will move us from darkness to light , into a life characterized by a perfect love that has cast out fear .

To be set free from the slavery to the fear of death is to be liberated from self – interest in the act of genuine love . Thus the sign of Christ’s victory in our lives over sin , death , and the devil is the experience and expression of love . This is resurrection and life .

Death is—apart from God—the greatest moral power in this world, outlasting and subduing all other powers no matter how marvelous they may seem for the time being. This means, theologically speaking, that the object of allegiance and servitude, the real idol secreted within all idolatries, the power above all principalities and powers, —the idol of all idols—is death.²

Resurrection in Christ, then, becomes freedom from death’s power in daily existence. William Stringfellow describes resurrection this way:
Resurrection . . . refers to the transcendence of the power of death and the fear or thrall of the power of death, here and now, in this life, in this world. Resurrection, thus, has to do with life and, indeed, the fulfillment of life before death. [Christ’s] power over death is effective not just at the terminal point of a person’s life but throughout one’s life, during this life in this world, right now. . . . His resurrection means the possibility of living in this life, in the very midst of death’s works, safe and free from death.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

1
Dugdale, L.S.. The Lost Art of Dying (p. 6).
2
William Stringfellow

So Much To Think About

George July 3, 2023 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

I haven’t gotten anything done today. I’ve been in the Produce Department trying to open this stupid plastic bag.

the naive algorithm

…the naive algorithm is the “idea that good intentions, a good heart, a love for people, and faith in Jesus will invariably lead to ministry success.”

Carolyn Moore – When Women Lead

God knows us

That God knows us (we wrongly imagine) simply comes with the territory of being God. “God knows everything,” we say, and assume that He should therefore be able to manage everything and run the universe in a way that is pleasing to Him. This, I suspect, is what we ourselves would do were we to suddenly become a god.

The world is created in such a way that God Himself holds it in wonder and awe. He sees not only its goodness, but its very goodness. This is more than mere knowledge and utterly transcends knowledge-as-information. This is knowledge of the most intimate possible meaning.

The modern world suffers from a crisis of loneliness we are told. I believe that much of that crisis is simply the by-product of an information society. The economy (whatever that is) knows pretty much everything about us. It is carefully mined from every action we take in the electronic world. That data is mined, stored, and sold. This is not only true, it is more true every day. But all of that information is the opposite of intimacy. Whoever possesses that information does not know you – though they could easily use it to destroy you. The information is dangerous precisely because those who possess it do not love you.

God has no desire to gather information about us. I’m not certain that God knows anything in a manner that could be described as information. God knows us as He knew Simon Peter. He could predict Simon’s denials while reassuring him that he was being prayed for (and preserved). Perhaps those words of reassurance are the very thing that saved him in the end. God knows us as He knew the Woman at the Well (John 4). He Himself was thirsty, but He knew her thirst (living water).

Fr Stephen Freeman

Crisis contemplation

When we’re in a crisis situation, the question becomes, “What’s the answer?” and “How does contemplation help, if it can?” No one is going to like the response because there isn’t a response in the ordinary ways. Everyone is going to want a clear process to resolve something. What do we do? How do we do it? What’s going to make us all feel better? There aren’t any answers like that. When there is nothing to do, some of the things that can be done are things we don’t want to do. Philosopher Bayo Akomolafe says it most clearly. He says the first thing you do is slow down:

To ‘slow down’ … seems like the wrong thing to do when there’s fire on the mountain. But here’s the point: in ‘hurrying up’ all the time, we often lose sight of the abundance of resources that might help us meet today’s most challenging crises. We rush through the same patterns we are used to. Of course, there isn’t a single way to respond to a crisis; there is no universally correct way. However the call to slow down works to bring us face to face with the invisible, the hidden, the unremarked, the yet-to-be-resolved…. It is about staying in the places that are haunted.

Barbara Holmes

Are You Bullsh*tting Yourself?

Sent on June 26, 2023

Two things for you to think about

Expertise makes something complex appear simple and intelligible. Bullshit makes something simple appear unnecessarily complex and unintelligible.

Expertise creates value for people who don’t know better. Bullshit extracts value from people who don’t know better.

Reflect: Then consider sharing this thought with others.

One thing for you to ask yourself

In what area(s) of your life are you bullshitting yourself? That is, what areas of your life are you over-complicating and making unnecessarily complex?

Recommended: Use these as journaling prompts for the week.

One thing for you to try this week

Stop bullshitting yourself. We often over-complicate problems as a way of emotionally coping with the problem. It feels hard, so we convince ourselves that it must be really hard.

If someone breaks our trust, we assume it must be for 27 different reasons and we have to approach the person like a chess match, when really, we’re just hiding from the painful fact that this person we care about broke our trust.

What’s one way you can stop bullshitting yourself this week?
Mark Manson

OFFER YOUR BODIES AS A LIVING SACRIFICE.

There are at least two massive dilemmas here. If the Bible has a singular call to action it is contained in this phrase. For most of the years I read this, I read it like this: “offer your bodies as living sacrifices.” In fact, that’s the way my favorite bible translation translated it—the 1984 New International Version. They actually mistranslated the singular word “sacrifice” as the plural “sacrifices.” You’re seeing the issue, aren’t you? The text actually says, “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.” Bodies (plural). Sacrifice (singular). Many bodies—one sacrifice. The New Testament church, the one Jesus is building, is not a bunch of independent individuals running around trying to make Jesus famous. This is perhaps the greatest challenge of the church of our time—to become the body of Christ living the will of God rather than millions of individuated bodies doing their own thing in God’s name.

J D Walt

During a visit to my doctor, I asked him, “How do you determine whether or not an older person should be put in an old age home?”

“Well,” she said, “we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the person to empty the bathtub.”

“Oh, I understand,” I said. “A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup..”

“No” she said. “A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?”

Knocking holes in the buffered self

As Anne Lamott has written, our prayers gather around three words, Help, Thanks and Wow. Lorica prayers–“You, O Lord, are a shield around me”–are prayers of help, prayers of protection.

Bishop Robert Barron, taking an insight from Charles Taylor, describes what he calls “knocking holes in the buffered self.” According to Charles Taylor, the modern self is “buffered,” closed off from external realities, especially spiritual realities. Consequently, the modern self feels itself to be autonomous and secure within itself, lacking the sharp sense of vulnerability intrinsic to finite, creaturely existence. To “knock holes” in the buffered self is to open it back up to larger realities.

Lorica prayers, prayers of help and petitions for protection, are tools that can foster this recognition. Beginning your day with the prayer “You, O Lord, are a shield around me” knocks a hole in your buffered self and places you in a vulnerable posture.

Simply ask for help. Pray for aid and protection. Ask regularly. “You, O Lord, are shield around me.” Such prayers restructure your ego and knock holes in your buffered self.

Richard Beck

Humor

“Although it is often considered trivial, humor is a universal and essential part of human social life – hence the saying ‘Whenever two or more are gathered … there is a joke!’ Indeed, after crying, laughter is one of the first social vocalizations by human infants. Later in childhood, humor recognition and enjoyment are key indicators of healthy cognitive development. The erosion of the capacity for humor is an indicator of cognitive decline as we age. It has been shown that humor is a key social attribute in communities in which people live much longer-than-average lifespan than in other communities.”

“When he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker,
and I was daily his delight,
playing before him always,
playing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race” (Prov. 8:29-31).

Humor Us! Preaching and the Power of the Comic Spirit

Photo credit – Susan Clark
View from the Front Porch

Things this old man thinks about:
“There is no I in TEAM”
I am increasingly aware praise and worship experiences are dominated with “I” and “Me” references and seldom any “We and “Us”; in contrast to:
“…so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” or
“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

“I” and “Me” overshadow the prophets’ vision of shalom for God’s people.
Brueggemann says it well:

The most staggering expression of the vision [shalom] is that all persons are children of a single family, members of a single tribe, heirs of a single hope, and bearers of single destiny, namely, the care and management of all of God's creation.

The origin and the destiny of God's people is to be on the road of shalom, which is to live out of joyous memories and toward greater shalom, which is to live out of joyous memories and toward greater anticipations. 

If there is to be well-being, it will not be just for isolated, insulated individuals; it is rather security and prosperity granted to a whole community-young and old, rich and poor, powerful and dependent. Always we are all in it together. Together we stand before God's blessings and together we receive the gift of life if we receive it at all. Shalom comes only to the inclusive, embracing community that excludes none. 

Walter Brueggemann- Living Toward a Vision

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

Conversations Matter – Death and Dying (5)

George July 1, 2023 Death & Dying 0 Comments

Honor and enjoy your Creator while you’re still young,Before the years take their toll and your vigor wanes,Before your vision dims and the world blurs And the winter years keep you close to the fire. In old age, your body no longer serves you so well.Muscles slacken, grip weakens, joints stiffen.The shades are pulled down on the world.You can’t come and go at will. Things grind to a halt.The hum of the household fades away.You are wakened now by bird-song.Hikes to the mountains are a thing of the past.Even a stroll down the road has its terrors.Your hair turns apple-blossom white,Adorning a fragile and impotent matchstick body.Yes, you’re well on your way to eternal rest,While your friends make plans for your funeral. Life, lovely while it lasts, is soon over.Life as we know it, precious and beautiful, ends.The body is put back in the same ground it came from.The spirit returns to God, who first breathed it.
Ecclesiastes 12 -MSG

In the process of grappling with death and dying I have come to recognize the importance of dying well. To that end, It is my goal to develop a plan to die well. This post is intended to establish a framework for developing that plan — a work in progress.

Thinking about planning to die well, it occurred to me it is not new idea for me. Many years ago, working at Ford Motor Company, although I did not recognize it as such, I devised a plan to die well. Working in a highly stressful production environment, dying well was an opportunity for pay back. Let me explain. The demand of making production quotas was crushing, nothing else took precedent. Interrupting production was an unforgivable sin. I wrote an extensive post on making production in 2020. You can read it HERE .
Management’s tyrannical demands created great stress and anxiety, resulting in deep resentment, even hatred. Unable to express anger and desire for revenge, I developed a plan that would not only achieve revenge, it would make me a memorable figure in the annals of Ford Kentucky Truck Plant.
This was my plan to die well:

At a strategic time, perhaps when corporate executives were visiting and the plant manager was lauding the plant’s production achievements; I would appear at the end of the vehicle assembly line, angry and enraged, screaming about unfairness of production quotas and tyrannical leadership — promptly suffer a fatal heart attack; thus interrupting production until my body could be removed. (That would be particularly noteworthy, as the lore of Ford Motor Company was the only time production was halted was at the death of Henry Ford, and then only for two minutes.)

Obviously, there are problems with that plan on every level. Recalling it provides insight into the person I was at that time and how far my journey has taken me from that place. It is also helpful in understanding what a framework for dying well should look like. Interestingly, my plan demonstrated all the temptations expected by the dying as identified in ars morendi. Those temptations are disbelief , despair , impatience , pride , and avarice.¹

People who want to die well must be willing to confront their finitude. We do not have to accept death, invite it, or wish for it. But we must be prepared to say, “Yes, I am human and therefore mortal. One day I will die.” We cannot both cling to the indefinite extension of life and effectively prepare for death.²

Developing a framework for dying well starts with recognizing the feelings/temptations we face as death approaches. Ironically, those same feelings/temptations appear when we are confronted with our finitude. Consensus about dying well is that living well is prerequisite to dying well. “The art of dying well starts with the art of living well.”³ —living well is essentially over coming slavery to death.⁴

There are two distinct dimensions in a plan to die well framework.
First, there is the spiritual dimension— living life well.
If the ars moriendi teaches us anything, it’s that the work of living well is what enables dying well. The tasks of living well include living each day in the context of community with a view to finitude.⁵
No matter the number of days we have left, dying well entails living each day aware of our finitude, in community that shares that reality; however, the spiritual dimension of dying well is more than awareness of our finitude, which will be fleshed out in succeeding posts

Second, there is the “nuts and bolts” of dying well; planning for end of life care. To simplify, I am calling end of life care “End Times” I suspect most think of hospice/ palliative care when end of life care is mentioned. Though hospice/palliative care are important, end of life care is much more. Consider this reality:

…a Rand study found that “Americans will usually spend two or more of their final years disabled enough to need someone else to help with routine activities of daily living because of chronic illness. Long before we are visiting loved ones on their deathbed, we may be helping them cook, clean and ones on their deathbed . While the period may average three Years, many people particularly women-will spend more than a older parents and in-laws. In the coming years, “family care giving-[for so long the backbone of long-term care-will be heavily burdened,” the Rand study predicted. Today’s family structures–smaller, often spread across the country and more independent-make it even more difficult to care for the elderly and dying. “Longer durations of illness and greater numbers of women working outside the home also place greater burdens on the pool of potential caregivers.
In a recent fifteen-year span, deaths from chronic respiratory disease increased 77 percent. Fatalities from Alzheimer’s disease have doubled since 1980…. People now succumb to congestive heart failure, lung disease, diabetes that leads to kidney failure, ALS (or Lou Gehrig’s disease) that leads to kidney failure, ALS (or Lou Gehrig’s disease) Parkinson’s, [and] osteoporosis .
Chronic illnesses mean that dying takes a longer period of Chronic illnesses mean that uyg takes a long these challenges, the trend toward gradual dying offers a unique opportunity. “For the first time in human history,” Kiernan writes, “we can anticipate our mortality. ⁶

Rob Moll says that reality is a unique opportunity ..as Christians, we try to spend our entire lives living in view of eternity, not just our final years. But even with the benefit of a lifetime’s reflection on our destiny to worship God in his presence, the prospect of imminent death will surely focus our thoughts in new ways, The experience of dying will change us. A slow death also allows modern Christians the opportunity to relearn what it means to die faithfully

Challenges and complexities of “End Times” will be examined in future posts.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

1
Dugdale, L.S.. The Lost Art of Dying (p. 36).
2
The Lost Art of Dying
3
Dugdale, L.S.. The Lost Art of Dying (p. 23)
4
Hebrews2:15
5
Dugdale, L.S.. The Lost Art of Dying (pp. 180-181).
6
The Art of Dying – Rob Moll

So Much To Think About

George June 19, 2023 Notes Anthology 0 Comments

Enchantment

… enchantment is “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them.” Enchantment isn’t “escaping” the “real world” into a “fantasy world.” Enchantment is seeing a better world and then returning with a prophetic rebuke. Reconciling oneself to the “real world”–refusing to visit the land of Faërie–is tantamount to the prisoner refusing to escape his cell.

To borrow the phrase of Walter Brueggemann, enchantment is a “prophetic imagination.” Faërie is the vision of the New Heavens and the New Earth, the world set free from the consequences of the Fall.

Richard Beck

Closeness

…we long for closeness that is deeper than getting everything right all the time. “Getting it right” never meets our deep need to relax into the arms of a loved one. because the real way we keep closeness is not by performing but by expressing our needs and receiving a caring response” We all need someone who races toward us and embraces us before we even have the chance to explain ourselves.
Attachment to God

Right Answers
If we’ve dealt with suffering we see in the world by coming up with cause-and-effect systems of theology, then we will cling to those systems to avoid the more difficult questions, for instance, we may think those experiencing heartbreaking poverty are simply experiencing the consequences of their actions. When we believe everyone’s quality of life is the result only of their own choices, it’s easier to turn a blind eye to suffering.
We’ve quelled our anxiety by having all the right answers, so we have to hold a rigid way of approaching the world and our faith. The moment our “right answers” come under scrutiny, our anxiety rises-and then often anger comes. Maybe you’ve been a part of a religious community like this, where asking questions is experienced as a threat, evoking fear and anxiety followed by anger and suppression.
Attachment to God

Theology that prevents lament:
In a sermon, [Billy]Graham said the gospel is like this: a father asked his son to fetch some wood from the shed for their stove. The son, whose nose was in a book, didn’t respond. The father then became enraged, giving an ultimatum that his son could either obey or leave the house, The son chose the latter, slamming the door on his way out. A fortnight later, the son returned, pleading to be forgiven. The father “softened for a moment. Then he grew stern and, pointing to the woodshed, said, ‘Son, that same stick is in the woodshed. Get it, bring it in, put it on the fire, and you can come in.’
This is drastically different from the father who decides to gift his estate, even when the son is impudent. In Jesus’s story be father never asks the son to leave.
Attachment to God

Yearning
There has been a yearning in me that I’m only just beginning to to understand: a craving for transcendent experience, for depth, for meaning – making. It’s not just that the world needs to change-l need to change, too. I need to soften, to let go of my tight empirical boundaries, to find a greater fluidity in my being. I’m seeking what the poet John Keats called negative capability, that intuitive mode of thought that allows us to reside in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason. The subtle magic of the world offers comfort, but I don’t know how to receive it.
Enchantment

The Everyday Person
It was a long time before it occurred to me that the whole system might just have been designed for men — the kind who had their meals cooked for them and their children quietly removed from their company so that they could pursue their lofty spiritual goals. I thought back to my training and remembered our teacher telling us how he’d left his wife and children to go to India to study with the Maharishi. He learned a lot about himself there, he said. He sat alone in a cave for months and wrestled with hisoul. It was hard, but ultimately worth it. He could never have made such breakthroughs without giving meditation is full commitment. Next to me, a woman raised her hand.
“How did your wife manage?” she asked. “Well, I’m sure it was tough for her,” he said. “Buthe knew it was important to me.’
I’m ashamed now that I didn’t see it: the patriarchal way that we frame spiritual development, the way that men get enlightenment and women get to look after them as they do so, all the while getting mocked for the compromised practices they create in the scraps of time that remain.
I appreciate the value of the monastic tradition, and I understand that some insights can come only from true solitude but I also see very clearly how it prizes masculine knowledge over feminine, diminishing the wisdom of those of us who by necessity are anchored to the everyday.
Enchantment

Fire
We have not understood this earth’s full potency until we have recognised fire. Too often, we have allowed ourselves to believe that we can live whole lives in the absence of suffering. We are told that uniform happiness is the only desirable experience. But this in itself is a disenchantment. Fire brings us back into contact with the cycle of life, with the limits of our control, and with the full spectrum of human feeling. It teaches us hard lessons and burns through our fragile illusions. Without it, we are living only a surface existence, a shallow terrain. We must assimilate fire to become whole again.
Enchantment

Play
play is absolute. play is the complete absorption in something that doesn’t matter to the external world, but which matters completely to you. It’s an immersion in your own interests that becomes a feeling in itself, a potent emotion, play is a disappearance into a space of our choosing, invisible to those outside the game, It is the pursuit of pure flow, a sandbox mind in which we can test new thoughts, new selves. It’s a form of symbolic a way to transpose one reality onto another and living, a way to transpose mine it for meaning, play is a form of enchantment.
Enchantment

Community life
“…community life – care for one another-is built on friction, on sticky and inefficient relationships. Community is also under assault because we’ve outsourced care. As Peter Block and John McKnight argue in their book, The Abundant Community, a lot of the roles that used to be done in community have migrated to the marketplace or the state. Mental well-being is now job of the therapist. Physical health is now the Job of the hospital. Education is the job of the school system.
The problem with systems, Block and McKnight argue, is that everything has to be standardized. Everything has to follow rules. “The purpose of management is to create a world that is repeatable, “they write. But people are never the same.
When there is a loss of care, a neighborhood becomes fragile and so do the people in it. The people are still there but the fluid of trust in which they were suspended has been drained away. If things go bad they have fewer people to turn to. They yearn for a sense of belonging.
Care has been replaced by distance and distrust.
The Second Mountain

View from the front porch

On the journey
Occasionally I encounter someone’s writing that so resonates with me that I am almost overcome with an urge to claim it as my own. Resisting the temptation to plagiarize, I am sharing excerpts from Chaplin Mike’s post at Internet Monk. I don’t know him personally but I feel a deep kinship, he spoke my heart.

I stand on top of a rise in the road. Before me, a valley stretches, still shrouded in fog. Behind me, the sun has burned its way clear and I can see the ways I’ve come. I can make out a few of the sharper turns, various forks and crossroads where I chose this way or that for one reason or another, spots along the way where the road disappeared into a dark wood, then emerged on scenery wholly new. Well past halfway on my journey, I’ve forgotten more than I remember, and some of what I recall I don’t trust. In some ways I’m more sure of my path, in other ways I’ve never been less able to plot my course.

…at this point in the journey, I’m not sure I know what wisdom is. I have some hindsight, for sure, and plenty of experience. Maybe that qualifies. I have a deeper trust in the sovereignty of God than ever before, but it is not the kind of trust that can be expressed in “answers.” The thought of God’s sovereignty is like the fog in the valley ahead of me — a mystery that envelops the world but obscures my view. To think that I would appeal to such a concept as comfort for myself or others seems kind of crazy, to tell the truth. People don’t generally expect the guy down in the mail room to be able to delineate the intricate decisions of the CEO. About all I can say is, “I have no idea how to explain it, but I guess he knows what he’s doing.”

The world is broken, and I don’t have a lot of wisdom to offer. I won’t pretend to tell you what God is doing. But I know that love is real. I’m here to be your friend today, and I want to encourage you to be friends to each other. That’s how Jesus showed his love to us — by befriending us and laying down his life for us. We’re here to do the same for one another.

It’s foggy ahead, and the way is not clear.
Take a hand and let’s enter the fog together.

Posted 9/30/2020

Conversations Matter – Death & Dying (4)

George June 19, 2023 Conversations Matter 1 Comment

We modern people rarely face death in our day-to-day lives. Consequently, we rarely give death any thought at all. In fact, if we do take time to contemplate death, others might think that we have a morbid or depressive temperament. So it’s not just that we don’t think of death, it’s that we shouldn’t think of death.
…illusion of immortality, making it feel as though death has been banished from our lives. Because as a day-to-day reality, it largely has been. This is why speaking of death is generally avoided, why death is pornographic. Pausing to note death’s existence destroys the illusion. Rather than face the reality of death—which takes some effort in our society, given how death has been delayed—it’s easier to indulge the collective illusion of a deathless society.
Beck, Richard. The Slavery of Death

Writing about death and dying sensitized me to avoidance of death generally and, more specifically, in my church community. I understand an intuitive human response to the terror of death that produces the illusion of immortality, but, what perplexes me is avoidance of death in Christian communities. On the continuum of Christian communities some do not reflect an adamant avoidance of death; for example, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. However, avoidance of death characterizes much of western Christian’s experience, a deeply paradoxical reality for a faith in which death is the focal point of God’s mercy and deliverance.
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. Heb.2.14NIV

For me, at least two questions arise: 1) Why do church communities avoid death ? 2) What impact, if any, does avoidance of death have on the health of the community?

WHY?
This quote from an earlier post, provides a troubling answer:
Vast portions of American Christianity are aimed at propping up the illusion—that the lives we live are not essentially and intrinsically mortal — giving religious sanction to American death avoidance. We see this in the triumphalism within many sectors of Christianity—the almost manic optimism of church culture that cannot admit any hint of debility, disease, death, or decay. These churches are filled with smiling cheerful people who respond with “Fine!” to any inquiry regarding their social, financial, emotional, physical, or spiritual well-being. Due to many churches’ explicit and implicit religious sanctioning of the American success ethos, church members become too afraid to show each other their weakness, brokenness, failure, and vulnerability. Such admissions are avoided, as they threaten to expose the neurotic lie that sits at the heart of Christian culture and American society—that death doesn’t exist. ¹

When avoidance of death prevails, a secular mindset is exposed.
For Christians, avoidance of death is an implicit endorsement of Satan’s lie, “You will not certainly die.”.

So What? — the costs of avoiding death

Whether you are a Christian or not avoiding death is costly. This post focuses on costs to Christ-followers and their community— the Body of Christ. The list is not exhaustive but represents highlights of thoughts and ideas that have emerged in the course of writing on the subject. As usual, your input is appreciated.

Avoiding death denies encouragement to the body of Christ: “… thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.
For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
Therefore encourage one another with these words.²
Avoidance of death leaves no space for mourning as a community; the bereaved mourn privately, leaving those “who are fine” undisturbed and uninvolved.
Where death is avoided, opportunity to die well is diminished; dying well requires continual awareness of our finitude.
Death wounds the body of Christ. “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. ³
…the good death still injures the community Death, even the good or happy death, is a painful event. It is evil and not a part of God’s are ation, though God can bring good from it. And those closest to the deceased, in particular, need their wounds healed.
Avoidance of death inhibits healing for the body of Christ.
When death is avoided death is no longer sacred..
Christians in previous centuries, death was a sacred moment long prepared for. Christians sought to learn from the dying because of their in creased spirituality as they neared eternity
The community drew comfort and encouragement from reports of those who crossed over in peace and hope.
Another feature of this tradition taught that the dead were a permanent part of church life.
Not only were Christian interpretations of death marginalized by a country that had become more secular, but Christians themselves now looked differently on death. Letters from the first half of the twentieth century show a marked change in how Christians talked about death. They began to use strictly material terms. Christians used their faith not to under stand death’s meaning and purpose and prepare themselves for life eternal, but to provide comfort in grief. “She’s gone to a better place,” we now say: Death became not the inevitable result of sin but the natural process of journeying to heaven.⁴
WE HAVE NO CHRISTIAN DYING
“The dying person in the Christian tradition is invited to immerse as she or he did in baptism-a human story in a divine story, the Christian’s dying in the paschal mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection,” says Donald Heinz.
“The idea that deaths can be inspirational–even redemptive-almost never enters modern conversations about death,” writes John Fanestil, “yet this understanding lies at the core of the Christian gospel.⁵
Avoidance of death shapes memorials, i.e. obituaries – We hide the deceased’s final months and years, We list accomplishments, books written or organizations led. We measure the subject’s significance, and we quote the fond remembrances of friends and loved ones, we never mention how the subject died, how he faced his end show she prepared for the life to come.

The church, more than anything else, is a community that believes in the resurrection of the dead-first that of our Lord Jesus Christ, to be followed by the resurrection of those who believe in him and the re-creation of the world. Our faith has this-world consequences in how we treat our neighbors, how we behave at work, how we relate to our families, how we care for loved ones nearing death. If our faith has any earthly consequence, then certainly it should affect how we practice our deaths. ⁶

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

1
Death and Life: An American Theology – David McGill
2
1 Thess. 4:13-18
3
1 Cor 12
4
The Art of Dying
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The art of Dying
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The Art of Dying