The Inevitable

Across the aisle of unique experiences, human beings have more in common than not. Our quality of life varies greatly. Some marry and some don’t. One person is prone to fits of rage while another is disarmingly mild-mannered. No one variable is necessarily created wholly equal except that which we will go great lengths to dodge altogether or control. And yet, despite whatever striving we employ, it is futile. I am taking about death. Everyone who lives dies. Claim plausible deniability all you want. Burrow your head in the proverbial sand if you will. You can refute this claim until the cows come home, but unbelief has no bearing on truth. None of us chose to be born. Biology proves that our parents took care of that on their own. But you will die. I will die. Whoever we have ever known and will come to know, not to mention strangers the next city over and a continent away, will all die.

Medical professionals, those in law enforcement, morticians, and clergy like myself are reminded of this at a higher rate than most. Trust me, having such a permanent, front row seat to death in all its iterations is no walk in the park. We don’t like to think of anybody meeting their demise in an attic because of rising hurricane waters or while on their way home from church, but you can be sure that it happens. On January 26, 2020 the world learned that multimillionaire and beloved celebrity status can’t keep death at bay, when retired NBA star Kobe Bryant and seven others, including one of his daughters, perished on a routine helicopter flight. Envisioning details for too long of what my final moments might be gives me the absolute heebie-jeebies. It can be paralyzing. Even so, through the years I have found the books of Caitlin Doughty and Sheri Booker to be forthright, sobering conversation partners.

Death has unwavering, dogmatic persistence. All it does is win. No matter how someone plays their cards, in the end “ashes to ashes and dust to dust” is the fated declaration over our once oxygen rich bodies. Only zombies don’t find that a bit disconcerting. Your last breath may come in a rehabilitation facility or at home out of the blue on a lumpy couch. We’d certainly love to exit stage left surrounded by family and friends, but it can happen with us being alone on the side of some ordinary road just the same. Literal and figuratively broken hearts both have the capacity to rip us to shreds. There is so much that the toughest disinfectant, latest surgical technology, or superfood, vegan diet cannot overcome. In an instant, we are here and then we are not, and there is no consultation by God about the when, why, where, or how about any of it. Equally, we are in the dark and powerless.

Death’s obvious reality, you would think would inspire us to live with increased maturity and responsibility, but the opposite happens often enough. We cling all-the-more tightly to coveted Lululemon garb or a prized automobile. We obsess over the academic degree, promotion, or romance we hope acquiring will secure fulfillment. If anything, we double-down on what we should hurriedly retreat from, in a posture to cease-and-desist, and neglect all that deserves our upmost attention. Tim Keller, the retired NYC church-planting pastor (himself now fighting pancreatic cancer), penned a teeny-tiny book that you should read, On Death (How to Find God). In it he shares this memory:

One of my theology professors, Addison Leitch, told the class about speaking at a missionary conference. Two young women hearing his preaching decided they wanted to give their lives to missionary service. Both sets of their parents were extremely upset with Dr. Leitch, who they felt had filled their children with religious fanaticism. They said to him, “You know that there is no security in being a missionary. The pay is low, the living situation may be dangerous. We’ve tried talking to our daughters. They need to get a job and a career, maybe get a master’s degree or something like that so that they have some security before they go off and do this missionary thing.” And this is what Dr. Leitch told them: “You want them to have some security? We’re all on a little ball of rock called Earth, and we’re spinning through space at millions of miles an hour. Someday a trapdoor is going to open up under every single one of us, and we will fall through it. And either there will be millions and millions of miles of nothing—or else there will be the everlasting arms of God. And you want them to get a master’s degree to give them a little security?

As the late C.L. Franklin argued decades ago in his sermon, “Pressing On,” that we can run fast or slow all we want. There is no outpacing death, so why not live boldly for God while you still can?

Being that there are no do-overs, no Diddy or DJ Khaled produced remixes that will allow one to skip over death, I want to shun cowardice and embrace a life of faith. Everyone commits to someone or something in this life, investing their time, treasures, talents, and attention somewhere. This we do have free agency to choose. I have no clue how it will feel to perish, nor the circumstances, socioeconomically or else, that will lead me to be “absent from the body,” (2 Corinthians 5:8) but in Christ I am not living simply to die. Yes, I will die, this I know — but I will also one day be resurrected like Christ was, and reconciled to God in the final coronation of a new heaven and earth. (Romans 6:1-14)

Right alongside death’s unforgiving, startling complications is the aging process. Our input or stewardship of this is essential. God expects careful contribution to human flourishing, nevertheless there is no fountain of youth. The longer you live you will increasingly confront bodily undependability. Surgeries accumulate and disobedient joints, with their corresponding aches and pains, gang up on you. Your gait may take a hit. The metabolism slows. Extra pounds begin assembling in places they once exhibited more graceful restraint. But no more, the gloves are off. The mind doesn’t fire as fast and accurately as it once did. Heart-to-hearts about retirement, DNR orders, estate planning, and healthcare options take on a progressively solemn tone. Vulnerability comes with the territory. Your childhood idols die. Some of your generation’s icons similar in age to you die. What is more, eventually those you know and love — parents, spouse, children — also pass into that good night, seemingly leaving you alone to fend for yourself.

Surely, none of this is new. Deferred dreams and derailed plans are the cost of doing business as a fallen human being in a fallen world. But as James Earl Massey has said, “We humans are chronic mistake-makers when left to ourselves.” We don’t take kindly to being denied what we want when or how we want it, so we will attempt to move heaven and earth to acquire that which we see ourselves as deserving. If that means auctioning our firstborn, dignity, or health to the highest bidder, well, then we posit that whatever will be will be. In my measly four decades or so of existence, I have learned that life down here is a knock-down, drag-out fight. I don’t care who you are, in this frenzied life you are going to scrap and claw toward some aim. Will the striving be worth it, I suppose is the question. While thoughts of my own death can still wig me out if I let them, I don’t want to give them power to define me. Like you and your neighbor, your friends and enemies, and human beings the world over, I am more than a mess of bones and guts, blood cells and fatty tissue.

God Almighty effortlessly arranged my entrance into this life and already has my exit scripted. (Psalm 139:16, Job 14:5) Therefore, I can fear not and, as William McDowell sings, “give myself away” in order that God can better use me. Before my life is demanded (Luke 12:20) I want to give myself away in the healthiest ways possible to my wife, first, and those I am called to shepherd. Marriage is hard no matter how compatible a personality inventory says you are. And the life of a couple in ministry is something altogether disorienting with little structural relief, unfortunately. Whenever the destined time arrives whereby I go up yonder to be “present with the Lord,” I hope to have been so devoted to my wife and others that there is actually something substantive for them to miss. They need not venerate me in iconographic portraits anyplace, but I failed if they can fully move forward with little sense of real loss or even worse the feeling that they are better off. This is why the discipline of prioritization is important, creating holy networks and adopted, blood-bought family connections that span race, class, politics, and location. Life is too short, unfair, and rigorous with too much on the line for counterfeit community. The Church should lead the way in representing a counter-cultural standard of mutuality and godliness in these ways.

In his devotional published during the 1400s, The Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis commented on death:

Today a man is here; tomorrow he is gone. And when he is out of sight, he is soon out of mind. Oh, how dull and hard is the heart of man, which thinks only of the present, and does not provide against the future!...If you are not ready to die today, will tomorrow find you better prepared? Tomorrow is uncertain; and how can you be sure of tomorrow?

I heartily anticipate meeting Jesus, hoping still that it won’t take place right now or today, if possible. But I am yet ready to go when he calls. In the meantime, may I heed the wisdom of the recently, dearly departed J.I. Packer, offered in The Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life, that, “Readiness to die is the first step in learning to live.” However the Lord allows, I want to ennoble and enable the Gospel being advanced through words and deeds. Come what may, this is my reasonable service. (Romans 12:1)