DEATH DESTROYER
Jonathan Gallagher
Bleep. Buzz buzz. A little man wanders over the flickering screen, moving
from room to room in his search. Then aargh! Gone--game over. A smart computer game in
which the man, (you the hero) collects piles of gold pieces, magic potions, scrolls,
wands, and all manner of assorted weaponry. All the while he's attacked by an endless
stream of enemies that become nastier by the minute.
You get clever. You find out how to avoid the traps. You discover ways of protecting
yourself. You amass a great fortune in gold pieces. But in the end--you die.
Whatever you do, however well you play--you die. I thought I was doing well expiring at
level sixteen with over three thousand gold pieces. Surely I was close to victory! Then I
talked to "Bwyan the Bwave" whose lisping hero had managed level forty and eight
thousand--and still he died.
There's no escape. No way of winning. No end to the relentless desperation, a battling
hero doomed to die. The only record is a tombstone with your assumed name and your
collected riches.
A game like life--at least life as seen by many. A frantic searching for something before
the curtain falls. All you're left with is a fistful of worthless paper, possessions as
useless as magic potions and spell-scrolls. And then, death. That "thing" that
never happens to you. That ugly, unspoken word. The one nobody wants to talk about.
Five-letter word
DEATH: a five-letter word in a world that seems to prefer to forget about such things...
(And before you zap this page for fear this is getting too morbid, please wait!)
In Huxley's Brave New World children are taken into wards full of dying patients to cure
this death dread, to make death seem normal. The idea is that repeated exposure to death
will somehow make it more acceptable.
Unnatural
Could that work? Never! Death is the most unnatural of all natural processes. Death was
never meant to be!
Deep inside we feel "rage against the dying of the light"; a bitter anger that
all this should be for nothing. And whatever we may say to rationalize our fears, to claim
death is natural, that death is perfectly reasonable and acceptable--we know we lie.
Yes Death:
--IS a fact of life.
--IS life's only
certainty.
--IS inescapable, it
comes to every man...and woman and child and animal and plant and bug and microbe...
But to say this is right and proper and good...?
The End?
Agatha Christie called one of her murder-thrillers Death is the End. A slogan for today's
world with its emphasis on live now, forget about the future. Eat, drink and be merry, for
tomorrow we die. After that, nothing. But a far better-informed writer (sorry Agatha!)
said very differently: "Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your
victory?"
Not just vain words of comfort doled out at funerals. Not pious platitudes of a fading
faith. Here at the cutting edge of life--death(!)--is the power of the real good news.
I've seen too many people die. Sitting at hospital bedsides as life slowly fades away...
Engraved on the face of one are lines of fearful horror, fighting desperately against the
chill hand of death. Another rests easily despite the pain, face serene, smiling in hope.
So what's the difference?
Belief. Those cynical remarks about religion go out of the window in the face of your
approaching death. In fact the realization that death is something that happens to you
makes life the more real and important. Those urgent questions about life and its meaning
have to be solved. And there's only one answer--at least only one answer that helps!
Curse
We're born under the curse of death. In the words of Bernard Shaw's chilling statistic:
"One out of one dies." In Adam we all die. Separation from the divine source of
life is death. Our sins have separated us, built up a barrier of evil, and the wage that
sin pays is death--an automatic consequence of the way we are. (1) So for us, that's it.
No escape. No alternative. No hope. Whatever we try to do, we can't change the fact of
death. Fountains of eternal youth, cryogenic chambers, miracle drugs--all failures that
could never pass the Trade Descriptions Act, for they cannot deliver what they promise.
What is life? A sparrow flying out of the darkness into the warmth and light of a
banqueting hall for a time. And then flying through a window on life's far side, to
disappear once more into the darkness. An old Anglo-Saxon picture of life, expressing a
dark and fatalistic understanding. Truly that's all we have. In ourselves, there is
nothing more. But...
And that has to be the biggest "But" in the universe! There is a way out. Death
is not the end.
How? What? Who?
The Answer
God. The difference between despair and hope for the two dying patients in hospital. Some
supposed "religious" answers do not match the truth as shown in God's book, the
Bible--re-incarnation, ghosts, nirvana and so on. But the hard facts of God's answer to
death are summed up in this:
For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a
man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive...those who belong to
him. (2)
The coming of God to this world as Jesus is his way of ending sin and its consequence,
death. For all who choose he offers life--full and happy life now, eternal life to come.
Since the children [you and me] have flesh and blood, he [God in Jesus] too shared in
their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of
death--that is, the devil--and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by
their fear of death. (3)
The fear of death. The horror at what this End means, the prospect of nothingness beyond,
of (perhaps) punishment--the whole uncertainty. The fear of the process of dying (as Woody
Allen said, "It's not death that scares me; I just don't want to be around when it
happens!") Those terrible, nameless fears that stalk the dark corners of your mind.
Death Destroyer
In Christ fears are gone. Gone because you are no longer a slave to the fear of death.
Because you know the death destroyer, you claim the promises he makes to you, you trust in
this loving God to "raise you up at the last day".
In the face of death God is undeniably real. He is the one who says: "I am the
resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies." (4)
Only in the resurrection of Jesus is there any hope for us at all. If you deny this
literal resurrection of Jesus from the grave, then there is nothing left. No spirits
floating away to some ethereal astral plane. Nothing.
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then
those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope
in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. (5)
But if you do believe in this Jesus and his resurrection from the dead (which is the heart
of the Christian message), then Jesus says to you:
I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal
life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. (6)
Not that we won't die. But we are now spiritually alive. Death will be just a brief sleep
until the trumpet call of God splits the skies as Jesus returns, "and the dead in
Christ will rise." (7)
The arrival of the destroyer of death, the conqueror of the grave.
The Reason Why
That is why we do not need to fear.
That is why we can have peace and hope in the face of death.
That is why we can safely place ourselves in God's hands.
For when the trumpet sounds, the dead will be raised, never to die again, and we shall
all be changed. For what is mortal must be changed into what is immortal; what will die
must be changed into what cannot die. So when this takes place, and the mortal has been
changed into the immortal, then the scripture will come true: "Death is destroyed;
victory is complete!"
"Where, Death, is your victory?
Where, Death, is your power to hurt?"
Death gets its power to hurt from sin, and sin gets its power from the Law. But thanks be
to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! (8)
Game Over
The computer game is over. The mad little man frantically searching for gold and potions
and magic wands is gone. Life is far more than that pointless travesty. Life is the free
and full gift of God, that begins now and extends into eternity if we want. It simply
needs our acceptance of God and what he does for us, trusting him to save us and remake
us. At the end is no tombstone simply bearing our name and the number of gold pieces we've
managed to collect in this brief existence. At the end is God, ready to welcome us into an
eternity of life with him.
So what?
"Jesus?" you say. "So what?" In the face of death he is the only
answer to those urgent questions of meaning and destiny. He is the only hope, the only
way, the only escape from eternal death to eternal life.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has
given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead. (9)
Jesus says to each of us:
"Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, and I am the living one; for I
was dead and now I am alive for evermore, and I hold the keys of Death and Death's
domain." (10)
What a wonderful hope! Incredible assurance!
But we need to respond to such a hope-filled promise. Say something like this:
All I want is to know Christ and to experience the power of his resurrection...in the
hope that I myself will be raised from death to life. (11)
Meet Jesus Christ, the death destroyer. Know the one who ends the fear of death. And trust
the God who answers the question "So what?" in the only way that gives us real
hope.
---
Footnotes:
1. 1 Corinthians 15:22; Isaiah 59:2; Romans 6:23.
2. 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 NIV.
3. Hebrews 2:14,15 NIV.
4. John 11:25 NIV
5. 1 Corinthians 15: 17-19 NIV.
6. John 5:24 NIV.
7. 1 Thessalonians 4:16.
8. 1 Corinthians 15:52-57 TEV.
9. 1 Peter 1:3 NIV.
10. Revelation 1:17,18 NEB.
11. Philippians 3:10,11 TEV.
©2001 Jonathan Gallagher