Is "Death" A Dead Issue?
"Escaping death has always been an issue with us humans. Today we are just looking harder for the escape clause we know must be out there somewhere."
King Solomon wrote "Of the making of many books there is no end!” (Ecclesiastes 12:12, exclamation-point added), and this was composed many centuries before the printing press, not to mention ebooks. If he were to look at what the reader faces today, he would grieve for us and long for the old days when he only had to worry about laboriously hand-written scrolls.
Perhaps he would also be appalled at the tendency toward "trending topics," as if more words mean more wisdom. It looks to me like mortality is trending at the moment. It's starting to be as popular as books on getting out of debt, becoming a famous chef, becoming a multimillionaire in your twenties, and figuring out how to use your iPhone.
Escaping death has always been an issue with us humans. Today we are just looking harder for the escape clause we know must be out there somewhere. The percentage of people dying and staying dead (hovering at just under 100%...Jesus himself being our one outlier) is alarming to us. One of the questions that comes up often in counseling has to do with why someone close to the counselee had to die. Being a relatively hard-hearted counselor, I usually answer with some diplomatic version of "Well...duh!”
A recent entry into this book-pack is Paul Bracken's "Gilgamesh in the 21st Century: A Personal Quest to Understand Mortality." Paul Bracken was a cohort and admirer of Carl Sagan, who did a famous series of shows on television some decades back called "Cosmos." Dr. Sagan's admitted intent in that show was to dispatch "religion" as superstitious nonsense and convince the world that science was the only truthful and logical view of life...or as he said at the start of every episode: "The Cosmos is all there is or was or ever will be." Well, that certainly puts God out of a job.
Mr. Bracken falls in step with his friend, exploring the issue of our mortality with some frustration while dismissing all religions as useless mythology. For 234 pages he tirelessly explores reasons why we should NOT die, and tries out all the failed options including the fantasy options of his favorite TV show, "Star Trek." His last, best try is the potential for making a "copy" of our brain. Yet he admits that even here, a "copy" is not necessarily “me”, although to the outside observer it may seem to perfectly imitate my thought processes.
His avatar is the ancient hero Gilgamesh, whose story was told all over the ancient middle east many centuries ago, and which is best known from the cuneiform library discovered in the ruins of the ancient city of Nineveh. The fictitious Gilgamesh's odyssey began with the death of his friend Enkidu which so shocked Gilgamesh that he refused to bury the body, and sat beside it for a week awaiting his resurrection. When it became necessary to bury him (Eww...), he set off on a search for a cure to death.
After years of searching, he finally returned home, deciding that, though there was no cure, the best antidote was a rich and full life until your turn came. If you know the Bible well, you may have recognized that the writer of Ecclesiastes offers the same “conclusion” (as opposed to solution). The "Gilgamesh Conclusion" is the best answer that Mr. Bracken can offer as well, although he is clearly frustrated. Science ought to have found a better way.
In a movie that's out right now, based on a true story, a young football player is murdered for merely being in the wrong place. His friends are angry at God, or someone, for this bruising injustice. We forget that our sin brings death into the world, not God. God brings life, but we want him to take away death. From childhood, we are skilled at finding reasons why bad things are someone else's fault and assuming that our moral judgment is better than God's. If I am king of my life, God should answer my demand that he bring life where I order it brought. But God does not serve us in our kingdom just because we think he should. We are made to serve him. I will die just like Enkidu, but God—and not the Cosmos, nor a perfect copy of my brain—will preserve my life or continue it, that I may fulfill his purposes for my life. He will preserve me because of his amazing love for me. And he has paid a great price, his own son's life, that he might save me from my own rebellion. This is the amazing truth that Dr. Sagan and Mr. Bracken dismiss.
When we think about death clearly, maturely—about the inevitability of it, the heartbreak of it, the severing of loving connections because of it—our response is horror and fear. These are hard things that happen to those we know and love, and to us as well.
We must struggle with the truly frightening onsets of death, sometimes slow and inevitable and frightening, sometimes sudden and shocking, sometimes coming so near as to seem inevitable only to back off and leave us badly rattled and feeling incredibly fragile.
Some of us live with the prospect of death always nearby. Some of us seem so vitally and healthily alive that talk of impending death doesn't even merit serious discussion. But we are all vulnerable, with every heartbeat, every breath, every second of consciousness. I remember reading about a famous doctor (whose name I have forgotten...guess he wasn't that famous) who, while walking to lunch in Edinborough on a sunny spring day, suddenly leaped into the air and came down dead. Spectacular reminder.
For we who know Jesus as our Savior and Lord, we also know that the death of our bodies is not the same as the newly-enlivened soul that continues on in his kingdom (so obviously not our own kingdom). We live with a death made far less devastating than Enkidu's, along with a life made far more rich that the one Gilgamesh finally settles for.
Death is definitely not a dead issue. But for the Christian, it is amazingly and refreshingly less traumatic, less powerful in affecting our world view and sense of purpose, definitely more exciting than a Cosmos that constitutes all there is, or was, or ever will be.
King Solomon wrote "Of the making of many books there is no end!” (Ecclesiastes 12:12, exclamation-point added), and this was composed many centuries before the printing press, not to mention ebooks. If he were to look at what the reader faces today, he would grieve for us and long for the old days when he only had to worry about laboriously hand-written scrolls.
Perhaps he would also be appalled at the tendency toward "trending topics," as if more words mean more wisdom. It looks to me like mortality is trending at the moment. It's starting to be as popular as books on getting out of debt, becoming a famous chef, becoming a multimillionaire in your twenties, and figuring out how to use your iPhone.
Escaping death has always been an issue with us humans. Today we are just looking harder for the escape clause we know must be out there somewhere. The percentage of people dying and staying dead (hovering at just under 100%...Jesus himself being our one outlier) is alarming to us. One of the questions that comes up often in counseling has to do with why someone close to the counselee had to die. Being a relatively hard-hearted counselor, I usually answer with some diplomatic version of "Well...duh!”
A recent entry into this book-pack is Paul Bracken's "Gilgamesh in the 21st Century: A Personal Quest to Understand Mortality." Paul Bracken was a cohort and admirer of Carl Sagan, who did a famous series of shows on television some decades back called "Cosmos." Dr. Sagan's admitted intent in that show was to dispatch "religion" as superstitious nonsense and convince the world that science was the only truthful and logical view of life...or as he said at the start of every episode: "The Cosmos is all there is or was or ever will be." Well, that certainly puts God out of a job.
Mr. Bracken falls in step with his friend, exploring the issue of our mortality with some frustration while dismissing all religions as useless mythology. For 234 pages he tirelessly explores reasons why we should NOT die, and tries out all the failed options including the fantasy options of his favorite TV show, "Star Trek." His last, best try is the potential for making a "copy" of our brain. Yet he admits that even here, a "copy" is not necessarily “me”, although to the outside observer it may seem to perfectly imitate my thought processes.
His avatar is the ancient hero Gilgamesh, whose story was told all over the ancient middle east many centuries ago, and which is best known from the cuneiform library discovered in the ruins of the ancient city of Nineveh. The fictitious Gilgamesh's odyssey began with the death of his friend Enkidu which so shocked Gilgamesh that he refused to bury the body, and sat beside it for a week awaiting his resurrection. When it became necessary to bury him (Eww...), he set off on a search for a cure to death.
After years of searching, he finally returned home, deciding that, though there was no cure, the best antidote was a rich and full life until your turn came. If you know the Bible well, you may have recognized that the writer of Ecclesiastes offers the same “conclusion” (as opposed to solution). The "Gilgamesh Conclusion" is the best answer that Mr. Bracken can offer as well, although he is clearly frustrated. Science ought to have found a better way.
In a movie that's out right now, based on a true story, a young football player is murdered for merely being in the wrong place. His friends are angry at God, or someone, for this bruising injustice. We forget that our sin brings death into the world, not God. God brings life, but we want him to take away death. From childhood, we are skilled at finding reasons why bad things are someone else's fault and assuming that our moral judgment is better than God's. If I am king of my life, God should answer my demand that he bring life where I order it brought. But God does not serve us in our kingdom just because we think he should. We are made to serve him. I will die just like Enkidu, but God—and not the Cosmos, nor a perfect copy of my brain—will preserve my life or continue it, that I may fulfill his purposes for my life. He will preserve me because of his amazing love for me. And he has paid a great price, his own son's life, that he might save me from my own rebellion. This is the amazing truth that Dr. Sagan and Mr. Bracken dismiss.
When we think about death clearly, maturely—about the inevitability of it, the heartbreak of it, the severing of loving connections because of it—our response is horror and fear. These are hard things that happen to those we know and love, and to us as well.
We must struggle with the truly frightening onsets of death, sometimes slow and inevitable and frightening, sometimes sudden and shocking, sometimes coming so near as to seem inevitable only to back off and leave us badly rattled and feeling incredibly fragile.
Some of us live with the prospect of death always nearby. Some of us seem so vitally and healthily alive that talk of impending death doesn't even merit serious discussion. But we are all vulnerable, with every heartbeat, every breath, every second of consciousness. I remember reading about a famous doctor (whose name I have forgotten...guess he wasn't that famous) who, while walking to lunch in Edinborough on a sunny spring day, suddenly leaped into the air and came down dead. Spectacular reminder.
For we who know Jesus as our Savior and Lord, we also know that the death of our bodies is not the same as the newly-enlivened soul that continues on in his kingdom (so obviously not our own kingdom). We live with a death made far less devastating than Enkidu's, along with a life made far more rich that the one Gilgamesh finally settles for.
Death is definitely not a dead issue. But for the Christian, it is amazingly and refreshingly less traumatic, less powerful in affecting our world view and sense of purpose, definitely more exciting than a Cosmos that constitutes all there is, or was, or ever will be.
