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Death

We all will experience it.

Does it matter?

Does it matter how we die?

Death is something we all must think about, especially as physician assisted suicide becomes more and more accepted in our world.

If, as I argued last week, there is a created order to all things and therefore the way we think about and live out all things matters, then it matters how we think about death and dying.

If we do not, our culture will.

And we may not like our culture’s decisions.

As life becomes more individualistic, so does death.

Most of us, when asked our preferred manner of dying, would say that we would rather slip away peacefully in our sleep without any warning.

For most of Christian history, the answer would have been different.

A common prayer was A subitanea morte, liber nos, Domine – From a sudden death, deliver us, O Lord.

Why? Christians understood that they existed in community. They understood that they were interwoven with the people around them and they wanted the chance to say their goodbyes, to make right any lingering feuds.

We seem to have become more frightened of death.

There are two extremes in our culture, neither of which seem to fall within the confines of our Christian faith.

The first is to preserve life at all costs.

The quality of that life receives no consideration; doctors are asked to keep people alive regardless of the misery in which they may be existing.

It is a fear of death that keeps people clinging to a pale semblance of life.

The second is to end life prematurely.

It is autonomy run amok, autonomy that says I have the right to do whatever I wish with my life, including the right to end it, autonomy that rejects our creatureliness, our dependence on God.

It is a fear of a life that is “less than” that sends people seeking the oblivion of death.

We, as Christians, can accept death. We can recognize that God holds all times in His hands, that there is a time to live and a time to die, and when it is our time to die we are held close in those hands.

I have watched one I love recognize this and choose quality of his last days over the miserable clinging to a side-effect filled life that might have gained him a few months in the span of a full life well lived.

We, as Christians, can resist death. We can use the power of medicine to heal and see it as a gift of God for gaining more time to love those around us and to do His work, to bring His kingdom rule here on earth.

I have watched many I love fight for life while there was still hope and accept whatever was given to them by the hands of God.

What we, as Christians, cannot do is to accept either extreme of avoiding death at all costs or aiming at death with all purpose.

Death

We must all consider it.

Does the manner of our death matter?

Culture is making its decisions.

Will we make ours?

Thanks to Dr. Todd Daly for his research and thoughts on this topic.

all photographs are copyright Made Sacred 2018