Death and other long-term projects

I promise not every post will be morose

The other day I was grateful to make coffee for my friend John and sit in my slightly overgrown back yard with him, chatting for a couple hours while flies and ants attempted to join the party. At some point, we got to talking about topics we’re writing on, or ought to be writing on, or hope one day to be writing on, and I mentioned that I’ve had a bit of a fascination with the topic of death. This cropped up well before my cancer diagnosis, but I’ve only just begun to consider how my own attitude toward death is being affected.

A while back, my friend wrote on his experience with quadruple bypass surgery in the context of reading Andy Crouch’s Strong and Weak. The premise of the book is essentially how and when humans flourish along axes of authority and vulnerability. I haven’t read the book, and let’s be honest—you can imagine how large The Pile is getting. John’s reflection is more impactful for me, and I commend it to you.

Ironically, my friend Seumas quite literally just posted something about death as well. You should see a neat box below this paragraph that’ll take you to it.

A long defeat between two victories

It’s worth reading in its entirety. Seumas is reading things that are causing him to reflect on his father’s death, and death in general. Here I am giving you all homework! You just came to read my post, and now I’m sending you off hither and yon. Apologies.

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My own reflection on death, and the thing I want to actually carefully write about at some point, is not about death itself, but about our fear of death. And I know things have been written about this before. There are plenty of sermons. Lucretius wrote an epic poem about it, but I’m not an Epicurean. And there are certainly many clinical, psychological perspectives.

Kyle MacLachlan will always be my Paul Atreides.

Part of my own interest is in grappling with how death is characterized in the New Testament. Another part is situated in thinking about the nature of control. That’s where John’s piece really got me going—authority is related to control, and certainly authority influences outcomes; but it’s not quite the same thing. Though, interestingly, one might argue that death itself is given authority by fearing it.

The sentiment that stuck out to me most from Seumas’s post is: “Living the Christian life in the shadow of death means this: a long series of 'defeats' in which hope is sustained by the sure knowledge of the victory first won, and the clear vision of the victory yet to come.” I think this is true. And it makes it even more odd that hope and fear are bedfellows in, I would wager, the vast majority of our subconsciouses. (Someone will surely come along to correct me and say that these are unconscious affectations rather than sub, but I don’t care to look up the difference.)

Both hope and fear are, at their roots, about control. In hope, we look to an authority who can change an outcome. In fear, we may be resigned that either the present or the future cannot change. It’s always fascinated me that the author of the letter to the Hebrews approached the humanity of Jesus this way by emphasizing that his death did not undo death for the rest of us, but “free[s] those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death” (2:15). Hebrews uses the language of “pioneer” to describe Jesus’ experiences; I like that.

So: what is a more proper disposition toward life and death? Here I think I’m more heavily influenced by my doctoral supervisor, Ephraim Radner. He and I don’t agree on everything, but I think he has profoundly articulated that our lives are a gift. As such, death is not to be feared—but God’s judgment is. Again, he and I probably have different ideas about what that means. But it is comforting to hold that I am not my own authority.

All of this needs to percolate a bit more, of course. And it doesn’t distract me at the moment from my other more looming projects. One of which is not a writing endeavour, but contemplation on how death, whenever it comes, will not strip my life of meaning. I’m not playing in some sort of ethereal stoppage time, as if life were a soccer match. It’s a gift that I’m on the pitch at all.