Remember Death

Last Sunday I recommended the book, Remember Death:  The Surprising Path to Living Hope, by Matthew McCullough.  It might sound morbid to remember death—and it would be if the idea was to obsess over it.  But it’s good to face facts, and then to call upon the Father, Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12).

A right way of remembering death is freeing.  We don’t have to grit our teeth in constant mental and emotional exertion to sustain an imaginary future in which this life just goes on and on.  Death-aware­ness is reality therapy.  Such honesty brings a sense of relief.

McCullough contrasts three responses to death:  avoidance, awareness, and acceptance.  Avoidance is the mindset driving a lot of medical decision-making:  “There’s always something more to be done” (p. 37).  And yet, “The harder we try to hold death off at all costs, the more ridiculous and ineffective we appear” (40).  Modern medicine is like a comb-over—we can only evade the truth for so long.

Ironically, “Death-acceptance is just as dishonest as death-avoidance” (174).  Both deny the grand reality of eternal life in Christ.  So give up pretending you’re not going to die, but don’t make peace with death.  Death is offensive; it drove Jesus to grief (John 11:35). And yet, death won’t have the last word.  Jesus’ resurrection gives us a secure hope of true, lasting joy in his presence beyond the grave (1 Cor. 15:23)!

The biblical calling is to practice death-awareness:  face the facts; live in the truth of BOTH our frailty now as fallen, dying people, AND our future as God’s children who will bask in his everlasting love.

McCullough offers a lot of comparisons, such as:  Life is like a vaca­tion—there’s that nagging realization that the end is coming (118).  Living in this world is like an appetizer, you can’t enjoy it for what it is if you expect a full meal (147).  Use your grief like a telescope—look through it to see Jesus filling the entire frame (176).

Let me quote McCullough as he explores a few more illustrations:  In colonial New England, each Sunday Christians typically “would have passed through a churchyard full of elaborate gravestones, put in place to remind them that they too would lie there in due time” (44).  Among other things, the visual aid of a church cemetery helped parents to teach their children about our mortality and our future hope in Jesus.

“Browsing around [an estate sale] is an interesting experience, even somewhat bizarre.  There’s an intimacy to it, for one thing.  You’re in someone else’s home.  You’re rifling through things that once belonged to someone else.  You know that every piece must have a backstory…  For all our time and attention, no matter how carefully we curate our stuff or how much we might enjoy ourselves along the way, we’re all merely stocking and staging someone else’s opportunity for bargain prices” (98-99).

“When we’re young, we’re most susceptible to self-deception.  We tend to live heavily invested in what tomorrow will bring” (100).  “When you’re young, it’s almost impossible to see that what your life feels like now won’t last forever” (122).  So McCullough challenges the young:  “Note the life arc of someone from history or an elderly person you’re close to…  Their worlds were just as full of meaning to them as yours is to you” (123).

McCullough thinks back about his grandmother:  “She was always the one following us kids around with a camera, always trying to grab hold of those moments and make them last” (124).  What is this impulse in us to capture life in a photo, this urge to preserve our experience and hold off the ravages of time?  Maybe there’s both a will to avoid death and a God-given yearning for the life to come where death will be no more.

How about you?  Are you consumed with the ups and downs of our present-day roller-coaster world—financial markets, political maneuvering, social media, sports, news, health, friends, aches and pains, etc.?  If so, remem­ber death—and give thanks for the One who is Life (John 14:6).  Rest your heart in the promise of Christ:  I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live (John 11:25).