• Death and Dying,  Grief,  My Story

    Older and Wiser Words

    April 7, 2020

    It’s taken me awhile to feel ready to write about COVID-19. I still don’t feel ready. Our society—our world, really—has come face to face with our mortality. Most of us have been thinking about the reality that no matter who is considered at risk all of us are vulnerable to this illness and could die. All of us.

    You’d think that would be exciting for me, as someone who firmly believes this realization is vital to who we are as humans. 

    It is exciting, in some ways. I see so much potential for good conversations among families and friends, I’m hopeful and praying that we would see patterns of renewed and mended relationships, healthier patterns of rest, better relationships between parents and children, and hopefully a greater humility before God and gratefulness for the common graces he’s given us. There is so much of our humanity to be reclaimed in moments like these.

    But on the other hand, this is scary! Who of us doesn’t have family or friends in the “at risk” category? Who of us doesn’t shudder as the unemployment numbers rise? Who of us doesn’t weep for the children and others trapped at home with their abusers? 

    These are serious matters, and I don’t feel equipped to speak into such large-scale suffering. To write as if I have answers would minimize real suffering that’s taking place. There are others, older and wiser, who can speak into this situation. All I can do is listen and weep and pray.

    My words can’t possibly provide enough strength or comfort or grit to get anyone through a crisis of this scale. I am only slowly growing older and wiser, after all, and I don’t write about mortality because I’m good at grief. In fact, I write about it, I think, because I’m not good at it. I’ve tasted just enough suffering to hate it, to avoid it. Recognizing that there is something better for us than fear, though, I write to remind myself and whoever reads that this is, in fact, true. But right now, even though I know that Christ is near us in our suffering, and that we, in his sovereignty, were no safer a month ago than we are now, the weight of suffering feels heavy enough that I’m left mostly without words. 

    There is one word, though, that I’ve been pondering. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the term “microaggression.” Or, not about that word specifically, but about a correlated idea for which I’ve coined the term “micro-grief.” There’s surely a real word for it—I just don’t know it. So, in lieu of that real word, let me just explain that I’m “microgrieving,” and it’s not easy.

    I think a lot of us are feeling this. The fear of getting sick—of this unknown thing that could kill me and anyone I love is one thing. But perhaps even more weighty than that fear are the tiny griefs along the way. Celebrating my two oldest children’s birthdays without friends or family. My daughter missing her preschool teacher and friends. My son missing the childcare workers at the community center. Not getting to introduce my newborn to friends, or have my parents get to know him in his early weeks. Lamenting missing church for the month before lockdown because of sickness and childbirth. Even the loss two-hour grocery delivery, and instead having to wait several days so that Instacart can keep up with new demands. There’s grief in the action of disinfecting groceries, the handwashing after opening Amazon packages, the calendar reminders for cancelled events. And there’s grief in the good things, too—virtual game-nights, eating donuts while watching a sermon, and extra time for reading or hobbies. 

    All day every day I feel the small weight of these micro-griefs. And every now and then, I realize that they have become one giant, worldwide Grief, and it floors me.

    My husband and I caught up with our small group over Zoom the other night. Our time together was happy, with no imminent threats to anyone’s well-being. But after the call, Michael and I both felt exhausted. After hearing of all the little ways COVID-19 has disrupted normal patterns, those “micro-griefs” felt like a giant weight.

    I don’t mind bearing the weights of our friends and family—it’s a privilege. But, as others have pointed out, we need to acknowledge that all of this is real and heavy. Even if no one I know and love gets sick or dies, even if a vaccine is miraculously found tomorrow and not one more person dies from COVID-19 (Lord, let it be so!), these last weeks of suffering will have taken a massive toll.

    So, while creation groans like I’ve never heard it, I myself have no words. Although, happily, the days passing within the four walls of our home are mostly marked by joy, these little micro-griefs pile up and the weight is wearing. So I’m returning to the old and wise words of scripture to form my prayers. If you’re not turning to them already, now is the time. We’re only mortal, after all.

    Matthew 11:28–30

    Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

    Psalm 71:17–20

    O God, from my youth you have taught me,
    and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. 

    So even to old age and gray hairs,
    O God, do not forsake me,
    until I proclaim your might to another generation,
    your power to all those to come. 

    Your righteousness, O God,
    reaches the high heavens. 

    You who have done great things, 
    O God, who is like you? 

    You who have made me see many troubles and calamities 
    will revive me again;
    from the depths of the earth 
    you will bring me up again.

    Isaiah 40:28–31

    Have you not known? Have you not heard? 
    The LORD is the everlasting God, 
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.  He does not faint or grow weary;  his understanding is unsearchable. 

    He gives power to the faint, 
    and to him who has no might he increases strength. 

    Even youths shall faint and be weary, 
    and young men shall fall exhausted; 
    but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; 
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles; 
    they shall run and not be weary; 
    they shall walk and not faint.

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  • Death and Dying,  Dust

    Life, Death, and Limitations

    December 21, 2019

    This week, Christian Twitter has been alight with the hashtag #wakeupolive. Bethel Church leaders have been holding services pleading with, or even demanding, God to raise a little girl from the dead. Christian leaders from all the expected ministries, and a surprising number of people I wouldn’t have expected are joining in the plea that God would do this miracle.

    Meanwhile, I have been mulling over a YouTube series put out by The Guardian called Death Land for a few weeks now. In it, reporter Leah Green seeks to confront her own fear of death. For the first episode, she travels to a conference in Las Vegas called RAADfest—a conference for people who believe (or want to) that we are on the cusp of scientific breakthroughs that will allow for “radical life extension,” if not immortality. It’s both fascinating and unsettling to watch. 

    Both of these cultural phenomena point to our basic fear and avoidance of death: If we can’t avoid it altogether, we want to control it. This seems natural in some ways, but it also misses what I think is a gift and provision from God to his creation.

    It’s tempting to think that the things that are truly “good” are things that are the least limited in beauty, strength, intelligence etc. But all of that seems to stem from a forgetfulness or even open rebellion against the reality that Adam and Eve were created with limitations, rules, weaknesses, and were still called “very good.” They were limited and humble in their bodies—they were created from dust. They were limited in their authority—God gave them nearly free reign in the garden, and dominion over it, but they were still asked to submit to him by not eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, or the Tree of Life. They were clearly limited from the start.  

    This seems really important for us to remember, but we seem to forget it more often than not, don’t we? I do. 

    This tendency isn’t new, though, is it? Adam and Eve, after yielding to temptation and eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, looked at their weak bodies and hid them with fig leaves. They did everything in their power to cover their weakness out of prideful shame, or even a feeling of need. Weakness and vulnerability was a problem for them—and when they had the chance to turn toward God and receive his care and protection, they instead tried to cover themselves and hid.

    Death—either our own or a loved one’s—is a sort of testing grounds for Christians. It asks us if we will submit with humility to the limitations and weakness of our dust-made bodies. Death is our greatest enemy, it is true. But it was also given as a means of protection.  

    Adam and Eve didn’t think their limitations were good, but God did. Adam and Eve probably would have eaten from the Tree of Life as well as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, presuming it would help them live happily ever after. But God saw that it would have an ultimately harmful effect and exiled Adam and Eve from the garden (Gen 3:22–23). His desire was for them to live with him forever in a restored relationship, not a broken one. So with the end in mind, he withheld what Adam and Eve would have probably thought was a good—immortality and the fruit of the Tree of Life.

    In that way, while death is a consequence of sin and a great evil, it is also a provision. Trusting God’s goodness and love for us means trusting that the limits put in place by our nature as creatures are good for us too. This includes, and I want to say this carefully and sensitively, death. Death does not feel good—for the dying or their loved ones. And these words are not a balm to those walking through raw grief. Death is an enemy, and loss should be mourned. Full Stop. 

    At the same time, death is a God-ordained weakness. So our struggle against the weaknesses of our body, including death, should not look like the shame-filled reaction that marked Adam and Eve’s response to their bodies. Can we instead respond to our limits without shame? Medicine is a gift and a tool that we should use. But when the tools start to cause more harm than good, can we accept the limits that God placed on the bodies as a good? God can certainly raise anyone he chooses to life from the grave. But shouldn’t our faith in his resurrection power recognize that his ways are not our own, and life and death come on his terms, not ours? Our hope, after all, is not immortality on this side of the grave, but in the God who, “veiled in flesh,” defeated death itself. 

    In the second segment of Death Land, the reporter follows Dr. Sunita Puri, a doctor of palliative care, as she makes rounds with patients who are dying. The contrast between Dr. Puri and the events at RAADfest and Bethel Church is glaring. At one point, Dr. Puri says something really profound: “Without mortality, I don’t know what humanity would be.” We don’t know what would come of living eternally in our fallen state, but I don’t think most of us truly want to see that. Our salvation, our eternity in right relationship with God will come through the trial of death if Christ tarries. We don’t know exactly why God ordained death as a consequence for sin. But do we believe in his goodness enough to know that if this was his plan for us it can only be for our ultimate, final good? 

    Believing this is hard—really hard. Maybe impossible in the micro, close-up view, when we see the evil of death up close. But as Christians we need to work hard to develop both macro and micro lenses—we need to somehow develop the ability see both the close-up, short-term and the long-term. Why? Because the God incarnate who wept at the death of Lazurus and his sisters’ tears, also tells us that he is working good for those who love him. The long-term view doesn’t make evil less evil in the short-term. But trusting that our limitations can be both painful and good can provide stability for us when our faith might otherwise be destroyed by the evils in this world.

    Aslan said in Prince Caspian that our existence as humans is “both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth. Be content.” Our weakness is a chance to turn, again and again, to the one who formed man from dust. Instead of striving foolishly for the removal of created limitations, let’s aim to be more like the apostle Paul, who boasted in his weakness and rested in the all-sufficient grace and power of his creator who called his creation “very good.” 

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  • Death and Dying,  Miscellany

    The Day After Halloween

    November 1, 2019

    Today is All Saints Day, according to the church calendar. As someone who grew up in low-church evangelicalism, I never quite knew what that meant. As someone who is still in a Baptist church, I still don’t know quite what it means. But I have to admit that I’m beginning to form an opinion about it. 

    Despite disagreements with Catholics regarding what happens to souls after death, I’m starting to see All Saints Day as an important and neglected part of church life. We don’t grieve well as a community, despite the fact that our mortality is a key part of both our spiritual and physical existence. We need to practice grieving together. We are fallen humanity, and death is our curse—passed down through Adam. All Saints Day is a day to remember this, and grieve it. But not just that. We have been redeemed by Christ, and even though we are “outwardly wasting away,” our spirits are being “renewed.”

    I think we often fail to sit with these two truths, and absorb what they actually mean. I think All Saints Day gives us a chance to do just this. 

    Do we think about what Christ’s death and resurrection means for our relationships? Not just our relationships with those who are living, but those who are dead in Christ? 

    Rob Moll surprised me in The Art of Dying by pointing out that “Those who have died are still with us as members of the body of Christ. Death has not severed that spiritual relationship. All is not over at our final breath, neither for the dead nor those still alive. The dead, of course, go on to a greater and fuller life with God. Those still alive, however, are not entirely severed from the great body of Christians no longer walking the earth” (Art of Dying, 166).

    After all, he points out, they’re merely “asleep in Christ.”

    Christ’s death purchased our union with him as fellow heirs, brothers and sisters. And it also purchased union with our fellow humans, though perhaps in a different way.

    Most of us know the passage below, from Hebrews 12. How does it strike you now, with this in mind?

    “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

    All Saints Day gives us a chance to do two things: 

    First, remember and grieve the brothers and sisters in Christ whose presence we miss and long to enjoy. This is a good and healthy practice. Death is real, and loss is hard. Remember our losses, mourn the sin that brought death to the human race, mourn your own sin, mourn the pain of sickness and separation. We need Christ.

    Second, rejoice, knowing that the dead in Christ—some of who are listed in Hebrews 11, some of whom are our parents, our children, our friends—are not separated from us in a permanent way. We are still, in a mysterious way, through the blood of Christ, in relationship with them—a relationship that will stretch into eternity.

    Hebrews, aside from stating that these saints are “witnesses,” gives us some guidance in how we might observe All Saints Day. The author says being surrounded by these faithful saints is not just a cause for lament and rejoicing. He says that recognizing them should propel us forward into more faithful living—clamoring to get out of the grip of sin, running the hard race before us with endurance: Since we are surrounded…therefore let us run with perseverance.

    Christ, of course, is the perfect example, and we should always look to him as the firstborn of creation, and the author and perfecter of our faith. But the saints along the way were not forgotten in Hebrews. Perhaps, All Saints Day is a chance to remember the saints along our way, knowing that their faith and their endurance can encourage us as we come along behind. If remembering the saints who have come before causes me to mourn sin, love Christ, and strive for holiness, I want to do it.

    Would you join me?

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  • Death and Dying,  Dust,  Scholarship

    Dust in the Wind

    August 26, 2019

    The following is another adapted portion of my study on dust in scripture. It’s a little more academic in tone than a lot of my other writing, but I hope you’ll persevere through it!.

    The scattering effects of the fall and Adam and Eve’s exile and return to dust are seen clearly throughout the Old Testament books of prophecy and the psalms. Passages from these portions of scripture can be greatly informative regarding what scripture teaches is the appropriate response to man’s creation from dust, and the resulting relationship with his creator. The image of dust is closely tied to judgement, either the means of judgement or the result, depending on the context. This becomes particularly clear when one observes that the use of “dust” is often paired with the word “chaff” in descriptions of judgement in the Old Testament. 

    Psalm 83 serves as a good example of how chaff relates to the image of dust. The psalmist is crying out to God to bring judgement to evildoers. In the last several stanzas of the psalm he calls for God to “make them like whirling dust, like chaff before the wind. As fire consumes the forest…so may you pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your hurricane. Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O LORD. Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever…that they may know that you alone, whose name is the LORD, are the Most High over all the earth.”[1]

    The psalmist wants his enemies to be filled with shame and fear, driven like chaff by a wind. What stands out to me is the disparity of power. Chaff and dust are utterly at the whim of the “hurricane.” Man, specifically those who do not seek God’s name, could be like dust, not held together in one being, but driven before the wind. The use of shame here reveals a similarity to the account of the fall, and the association of shame with judgement, exile, and scattering, a hint that the evildoers in this passage were not properly relating to God. The reader’s attention is first drawn back to Genesis 3 from Psalm 83 by mention of shame, which is a reminder of Adam and Eve’s shame after eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve were not just banished, but God “drove out the man” from the garden in exile.[2]Adam and Eve, then, were like dust driven before the wind in judgement for their fall into sin. The pattern of images, connecting the scattering of dust and chaff to shame, like Adam and Eve’s, continues throughout the Old and New Testaments.[3] 

    For Prideful Worship

    We see that the judgement for pride in Isaiah 17:7–14 also connects the fate of dust to that of chaff. Here, judgement is tied to the pride intrinsic in worshipping man-made things instead of God. In this passage, Isaiah is prophesying against Damascus: “In that day,” Isaiah prophesies, “man will look to his Maker, and his eyes will look on the Holy One of Israel. He will not look to the altars, the work of his hands, and he will not look on what his own fingers have made, either the [idols] or the altars of incense.”[4]He continues a few verses later, “The nations will roar like the roaring of many waters, but he will rebuke them, and they will flee far away, chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind and whirling dust before the storm.”[5]

    In this passage, scattering and driving away is the consequence for having “forgotten the God of your salvation and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge.”[6]The contrast between God and dust is great, and the power of God inimitable. Dust and chaff are driven easily before the wind, and it does not bode well for those receiving judgement as chaff. But Isaiah includes an important dimension of this contrast that we have not yet discussed. It was God who created the ones who are “like chaff.” And even though he is the one who drives them away in judgement, he is also, as we saw in Genesis, their provider, the God of their salvation, a Rock. We now have two pictures for God, the Wind driving the chaff in judgement, and the Rock.[7]We can also see that when chaff strays from the Rock, it is driven before the wind. This was also evident in the account of the Fall, and is an important framework to keep in mind as we continue: when man strays from his creator through pride, judgement and scattering follows him. 

    Isaiah 17 sets up an apt contrast to the Israelites in the account of the Golden Calf, found in Exodus 32 and Deuteronomy 9. These passages are a good narrative pairing to Isaiah 17 because they tell the story of a people who chose to worship the work of their hands, in contrast to those mentioned in Isaiah 17. The Israelites, recently freed from slavery in Egypt, had turned their back on their rescuer and creator, and instead began worshipping an idol of a golden calf. In their pride, they worshipped “the work of [their] hands,” an idol. Moses returned from his forty days with God on the mountain to find that the people had, like Adam and Eve, rejected their creator and sustainer. God shared his plans to destroy them with Moses.[8]Moses pled with God to spare the people.[9]In this case, God does so, and Moses returns down the mountain. When Moses made his way back to the people, he was angry; fearful of the judgement of Yahweh. His action, however, was a display of the humility the Israelite people lacked. He “lay prostrate before the LORD…for forty days and forty nights.”[10]The author of Deuteronomy tells us that Moses then “took the sinful thing, the calf…, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust. And [Moses] threw the dust of it into the brook that ran down from the mountain.”[11]The Exodus account shares that Moses scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it.[12]In this event, it is as if God delegated a share of his wrath to Moses to give a reminder of their composition of dust as a statement against their pride. As this dust was incorporated into their bodies, they received a tangible sign that they were made of dust,[13]and were subject to the winds of judgement. 

    Moses’ work reenacted the work of God in Eden in scattering and reminded the people of their origin. God’s judgement came in yet another way, however. He sent the people away from the mountain where they had nearness to God. Here, after the Exodus, the people were already wandering, homeless for the time. After they worshipped the work of their own hands, God commanded them to leave the mountain. God would remain faithful to fulfill his promise and lead them to the Promised Land, but he would no longer be among them. Not only was their relationship fundamentally changed, but they were reminded, painfully, of their humble stature before their God. The consequence for their prideful idolatry, the act of trusting in their own work instead of the work of the true creator, was like that enacted in Eden—a geographic, bodily, and relational return to dust. They were scattered like dust, driven away and humbled, from the mountain where God their Rock had been near them. When their pride caused them to forget that they were but dust, formed and held together by God the Rock, they rediscovered their true nature through the judgement of God.

    [1]Ps 83:13–18

    [2]Gen 3:24

    [3]This isn’t to indicate that the prophets or psalmists were intentionally reminding their readers of the Fall, only that there is a pattern to the way these events are described. 

    [4]Isa 17:8

    [5]Isa 17:13

    [6]Isa 17:10

    [7]It is interesting to consider the Rock as creator of dust. Humans become “a chip off the old block” in a literal sense—made of dust, but bearing the image of our creator.

    [8]Note the similarity to Genesis 18, when God shares his plans to destroy Sodom with Abraham. 

    [9]Augustine says in a sermon on Exodus that his prayer was maternal: “What sure maternal and paternal instincts, how sure his reliance…on the justice and mercy of God!” This interpretation implies similarities to Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 1, which we will discuss later (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, ed. Joseph T. Lienhard in vol 3 of Ancient Christian Commentary: Old Testament, ed. Thomas C. Oden [Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press], 142).

    [10]Deut 9:18

    [11]Deut 9:21

    [12]Ex 32:20

    [13]One should not miss the similarity of this event to the eucharist here.

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  • Death and Dying

    When Death Enters Life

    July 25, 2019

    A better version of this post is due to be published at Fathom Magazine August 2019. I’m grateful for their support!

    This weekend my husband and I attended a conference on Trauma, hosted at our church by CCEF, a Christian counseling organization. It was a helpful conference in a number of ways. But one thing one of the speakers, Ed Welch, said stuck out. 

    He kept defining trauma as death entering into life—either in a physical sense, or an emotional or spiritual sense.

    It reminded me of a text I got from a friend awhile ago when we were talking about some of the losses we’ve experienced.

    “I think about death every day,” she said.

    I responded, “Me too.” 

    Does this sound strange to you? 

    It’s such an everyday part of my life that it doesn’t phase me. It’s not even accompanied always by dread or fear. But still, it felt good to have someone else acknowledge experiencing the same thing.

    I think about death in physical ways. When my husband leaves for work, I almost always think about what could happen on his commute. I double check my kids’ car seat buckles and avoid stopping in traffic on a bridge or under an overpass (thanks for that, 35W bridge collapse). 

    I think about death in spiritual ways. I’m fairly certain I tear up every time we sing about heaven in church—to be free from sin and see the lovely face of Jesus (Come Thou Fount), to feast in the house of Zion with our hearts restored (We Will Feast, Sandra McCracken), and the list goes on. Heaven is real and near to me because of my losses. I remember death. My own, and my friends’ and neighbors.

    The chapter I just finished in the history book I’m reading, Facing the ‘King of Terrors‘, was titled “Thy Death.” In it, Wells tells of a period that was was marked, literally, on tombstones and death announcements and funeral sermons (generally, with some exceptions and changing trends), in a way that signaled to the observer, “Pay Attention: You Too Will Die. Maybe Soon.” The goal, of course, was that the mourners, or anyone who happened to see the memento mori skull on a tombstone, would remember their death, and live accordingly in their remaining days.

    We all experience trauma on some level in our lifetimes. Some has greater negative impact than others, some trauma is simply beyond imagination. In my case, the trauma associated with the losses in my life has been minor, compared to more serious instances of trauma. But it does serve as a continual reminder to remember death—it entered my life, and will continue its parade through my life in the form of sin and suffering until the day when my flesh fails utterly. And in the meantime I want those moments when death has entered my life, to remind me of that final entrance of death, when my life on earth will end and I step into eternity. 

    When Augustine was confronted with loss, his impulse was to run.[1] He described the loss of his friend in vivid, and violent imagery—he says that his soul was left “tattered” and “bleeding.” He didn’t want to, he couldn’t face this intrusion, the weight, of death into his life. The presence of his friend was as good as a blindfold to him; his loss made Augustine’s weakness clear. He wandered, literally and spiritually, restless until, as we know, he found his rest in Christ.

    This wandering, purposelessness is not what Psalm 90 models for us when we’re confronted with the transience of mortal life. And what a better way it offers. Verse 12 says “So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Do you see? The value of remembering our death is wisdom for the days ahead. The last section of this psalm is really instructive, I think. 

    After crying out for mercy and relief in verse 13 (a good thing to ask for!) the psalmist asks for the joy of the Lord in his remaining days. He asks to see God’s glory while he is still on earth, and then, finally, boldly, asks twice for God to establish his work on earth—for his work on earth to not be in vain. The wisdom gained by numbering his days caused first, awareness of the transience of his work on earth, and second, the desire for God to extend the value of his life’s work beyond his own short days. He wants to finish his days with direction and purpose, and God is the one who can grant that.

    This is a great example to follow, isn’t it? It’s a tall order, though. Sometimes, like Augustine says, the weight of loss feels crushing. But even so, I want my memories of my death, and its intrusions into my life to cause me to number my days, and then I want to spend the rest of them working hard and praising God. 

    So teach us to number our days
    that we may get a heart of wisdom.
    13 Return, O LORD! How long?
    Have pity on your servants!
    14 Satisfy us in the smorning with your steadfast love,
    that we may     trejoice and be glad all our days.
    15 Make us glad for as many days as you have uafflicted us,
    and for as many years as we have seen evil.
    16 Let your vwork be shown to your servants,
    and your glorious power to their children.
    17 Let the xfavor4 of the Lord our God be upon us,
    and establish     ythe work of our hands upon us;
    yes, establish the work of our hands!

    [1]Confessions, Book IV

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  • Death and Dying

    Keeping Ourselves Alive

    July 10, 2019

    There’s this joke that I’ve heard among moms that’s something along the lines of “Did you keep the kids alive today? Yes? Great! You’re doing just fine.” It’s a joke that’s meant to acknowledge the challenges of being a parent, and remind us of the main goal: keep your kids alive.” You can still be a good mom despite messy houses, arm-length to-dos, and missing last week’s swim lessons because you forgot until it was too late to pack up as long as you’ve fulfilled the primary objective of keeping the kids alive.

    Now, this joke has a hurtful side: our children’s lives are not the measure of our success as a parent—there are plenty of wonderful, successful parents who have lost children. But it reminds me of something profound and simple that a woman at my Bible study table mentioned.

    She said: Everything we do is meant to keep us alive. We literally spend our whole lives avoiding death. Our whole goal in eating healthy, exercising, even working, building houses, etc., is meant to help us avoid discomfort and, ultimately, death.

    And as people who spend their lives avoiding death, we sure don’t think about it very much.

    It doesn’t make very much sense, does it?

    Does anyone watch Doctor Who? There are creatures that appear several times throughout the show that have infested Earth. But their nature is such that the minute a human turns away from them, they immediately forget that they were there. The creatures are everywhere, in great number, ready to take over the planet. And yet despite the fact that they’re not hidden, humans have no idea that they’re there.

    I think that’s what we do with death. We stare it in the face time after time after time—only to look away and forget what we saw.

    But what if, by looking, and remembering what we see when we look at death, we can understand it, and learn from it?

    That’s sort of what I want to do here. Memento mori—remember death. Because looking the enemy in the face takes the power of surprise and dread away, and we can more clearly see the hope given in Christ for what it is.

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  • Death and Dying,  Dust,  Scholarship,  Scripture

    Creation, Fall, and Dust-made Man: Part 2

    July 8, 2019

    Part of my thesis focused on the creation of man from dust, and the curse that Adam and Eve received when they sinned—the promise that they would return to dust. I’m sharing adapted pieces of that study here with you in a two part series, Part 1 focuses on Creation, and Part 2 on the Fall. I don’t think I’m saying much that’s new here—at least I hope not. Church fathers and modern commentators alike all have similar things to say. But hopefully I can present it in a way that’s new to some of you, as a helpful reminder of our relationship to our Creator.

    St. John Chrysostom stated that living as dust under the care of a Creator God ought to cause a sort of awe and child-like affection for the one who creates and provides care for one so lowly.[1]But almost from the very first, this is not what we see in Adam and Eve. Rather than relating to their Creator in a joyful, awe-filled way, the interaction we see between the first humans and God is marked by shame.

    Shame is a perversion of humility. The difference between humility and shame could be described as fear. Whereas humility could be defined as a measured, even joyful, acceptance of one’s own lowly station, shame is that same acknowledgement laced with a feeling that one’s lowliness is a failure, or a falling short—something that others would point out or recognize as reprehensible or embarrassing. Being ashamed, then, seems to be closely tied to a feeling of fear. Do you see this in the creation account?

    Adam and Eve were “naked and were not ashamed” when they were created.[2] However, when they sinned after the serpent’s deception, they “knew that they were naked” and made clothes of fig leaves.[3] Their reaction, when they heard God in the garden, was not, like we see with children, a fear that cause them to run to the authority figure they trust most. Instead, they became afraid and hid. The pairing here between “naked and not ashamed” and “afraid” hints that they were now ashamed of their nakedness.[4] Many early commentators propose that their sin was pride.[5]

    Perhaps, in becoming puffed up in pride (which is, of course, the opposite of humility), they became ashamed of their body of dust. Since their first action, at least that we’re told about, was to create clothes for themselves, it seems likely that their perception of their body was significantly changed in the Fall. These feelings of fear and shame related to their body seem to indicate that they no longer felt the closeness for which they had been created. If their bodies of dust were to have made them joyfully humble before their creator, their provider, they now became a source of fear and embarrassment before him because they wanted to be like him and were very aware of and dissatisfied with their lowly frame. They did not run to God in their sin but ran away. Shame, then, is a manifestation of a faulty, or at least incomplete understanding of what it means to be made of dust. The result was the loss of intimacy with one’s creator, and exile.

    I think this is interesting for a lot of reasons. One reason it’s interesting personally is because I previously would not have connected body image this directly to what we’re told of Adam and Eve’s fall into sin.

    Secondarily, it’s interesting because it makes so much sense why now, in our western culture, body image is such a struggle for so many of us. We’ve made our bodies of dust an idol, and when they fall short of the godlikeness we’ve assigned to them, it’s a big flashing neon sign in the mirror screaming, “YOU ARE MADE OF DUST!” And, for many of us, we, like Adam and Eve, do not run to God in joyful, childlike humility. Instead, we fashion ourselves modern fig-leave garments with make-up and designer labels and Instagram filters to fool ourselves and those around us. We live in fear that the fig leaves might just slip and reveal our dust-made frames.

    But as we see throughout the rest of Adam and Eve’s stories, and the rest of scripture, it is only through finding refuge in the cleft of Rock that our dust is secured, made fast, and built up into something beautiful. If those of us who are made of dust do not find refuge here in our Creator and Sustainer, we will find, like Adam and Eve, that our Creator God is not just their Creator and Sustainer, but also the Scatterer. 

    There is much more we could say about this. Does this connection between the body and the Fall trigger any more connections for you? I’d love to hear about them!

    This is clearly not the end. God is the Scatterer, but he loves his creation and longs to live with us in harmony—we can clearly see that in his intentions for Adam and Eve. Psalm 103:13–14 is a helpful reminder:

    “As a father shows compassion to his children,
    so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.
    For he knows our frame;
    he remembers that we are dust.
    Ps 103:13–14

    [1]Chrysostom, Homily 17 in Homilies on Genesis, 245

    [2]Gen 2:25

    [3]Gen 3:7

    [4]Gen 3:10

    [5]See Chrysostom, Homily 16 in Homilies on Genesis, 214; Augustine, “On Nature and Grace” in Four Anti-Pelagian Writings, trans. John A. Mourant and William J. Collinge in vol 86 of Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament, ed. Thomas C. Oden (Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2001), 47.

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  • Death and Dying,  Scholarship,  Scripture

    Creation, Fall, and Dust-made Man: Part 1

    July 2, 2019

    Part of my thesis focused on the creation of man from dust, and the curse that Adam and Eve received when they sinned—the promise that they would return to dust. I’m sharing adapted pieces of that study here with you in a two part series, Part 1 focuses on Creation, and Part 2 on the Fall. I don’t think I’m saying much that’s new here—at least I hope not. Church fathers and modern commentators alike all have similar things to say. But hopefully I can present it in a way that’s new to some of you, as a helpful reminder of our relationship to our Creator.

    Most of us who have been raised in church are familiar with God’s role in the beginning of the world as we know it: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”[1] In Genesis 1, the author (commonly thought to be Moses) uses repetitive sentences to tell how the world came to be. The phrase “Let there be…” is repeated on nearly every day of creation, with breaks in the pattern coming only when God is adding a new creation to something already created (i.e. “let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures”).[2]

    The pattern only breaks altogether with the creation of man in Genesis 1:26. Instead of “Let there be,” the author says “Let us make.” In the Genesis 2, more poetic telling, the creation of man is even more distinct from the rest of creation. Here, all that is said about the creation of the heavens and the earth is that “they were created.” But we are told of man that “the LORD God formed the man of dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and [he] became a living creature.”[3] 

    Instead of simply being created with a mere word, God “forms” man. This is remarkably intimate, compared to the rest of the created order. And while his intimacy with God through his formation shows man’s dignity and stature, his origin was of the dust. This seems to be the model for right relation to God. God made a fundamental humility implicit in man’s design, and yet he is imbued with dignity by the care of and nearness to his Creator. This, then, seems to be the balance that man seems to be meant to hold in his regard for his body. The disruption of this balance seems to have occurred at the Fall, which caused a break in the relationship between God and Man. Fittingly, then, Adam and Eve were promised a return to dust: Adam, particularly, because he was formed from it.[4]

    Genesis 2 gives a more detailed explanation of the dust that made Adam a basically humble creature. He was created outside of the garden, in a place that seems to have been barren. The passage states, “when no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up…then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground.”[5]The author of Genesis gives two reasons for the absence of plant growth in this region. First, the ground had not yet been rained on. Second, “there was no man to work the ground.”[6]By this description, the land seems to be lacking both the natural qualities needed to grow plants, and the secondary requirement of someone to tend the land. It was infertile and of no use. The dust that man was formed from, then, was worthless.

    The author of Genesis seems to go out of his way to make sure his audience understood that it is God who was withholding fertility from this land, solidifying the contrast between creation and creator. It was not simply that it had not yet rained, but that God himself “had not caused it to rain on the land.”[7]The second reason given for its infertility was also because of God’s inaction. As the creator, God is the responsible party when it comes to things existing or not existing in every place and time. And here, there was no man to work the ground. Why? Because God has not created one. This is an example of God’s control over life and death—there is no life where God does not act. 

    Additionally, we see in the creation account of Genesis 2 that even when God created man out of barren soil, he did not intend for him to work that ground, but to tend the ground in Eden: “And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.”[8]Yahweh placed man in a garden full of everything he would need, including, eventually, companionship. It was there, in the place that God had provided for Adam and Eve, that he was to tend and keep the land. God’s care for man indicates that even though he was made of dust, he related to God in a uniquely intimate way among the rest of creation. 

    Remarkable, isn’t it? Made of dust, formed in the image of God. What a beautiful tension we hold in our bodies. But it’s easy to see how Adam and Eve fell, isn’t it? It’s not an easy balance to maintain—we either puff ourselves up and inflate our value, or we beat ourselves down and let the “dust” of our nature take precedence without recalling the dignity given to us by our Creator.

    In Part 2 we can talk more about this, and what role I think this tension may have played in the Fall.

    [1]Gen 1:1

    [2]Gen 1:20

    [3]Gen 2:7

    [4]Gen 3:19

    [5]Gen 2:5–7

    [6]Gen 2:5

    [7]Gen 2:5

    [8]Gen 2:8–9a

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  • Grief,  More Stories,  Stories and Songs,  Uncategorized

    Your Redeemer Will Keep You—Part 2

    June 17, 2019

    This post is the second part of a presentation I had the opportunity to give on Ruth 1 at a women’s Bible study at my church. If you’d like to catch up, this link will take you to Part 1. The last post left Naomi destitute and alone, after her husband and two sons had died in Moab, far away from her home, Bethlehem. Finally, after famine and loss, she has reached a breaking point. The section below covers Ruth 1:6–13, from Naomi’s breaking point to where we see the Redeemer break through.

    The Breaking Point (1:6–13)

    It’s surprising, actually, that her breaking point didn’t come sooner, considering her plight. Being a single woman, abandoned, in a way, through the death of her husband and sons, she decides to return to the land which seems to have been abandoned by the God who had promised much and, in Naomi’s mind, failed to follow through. Her womb was empty, and she had no hope of producing an heir who would be able to provide for her physical needs and be a sign of the continuing covenant with God.

    The narrator slows the story down here so that this point really soaks into the readers—we can just feel the tension rising in the story, can’t we? If you look at the passage, you can see that he pulls out a different literary tool in this section than he’s used to this point, and describes the whole conversation between Naomi and her daughters-in-law in detail.

    So perhaps this is her biggest problem—she has no heir. Her line will end with her death. In scripture, this problem was not unique to Naomi. Sarah, Abraham’s wife, an old woman like Naomi, laughed at the prophecy that she would become pregnant and have a son. In this section, Naomi is acting a lot like Sarah! It was true that her body was too old to bear another son, and it was true that her daughters-in-law would not be able to give her an heir even if she did have another son. And so, like Sarah, she took matters into her own hands. Unlike Sarah, however, her move was not to finagle a way to work things out. Instead, she simply gave up, assuming that God would not continue working when the odds were seemingly stacked against him. 

    She did what she probably believed to be the kindest and reasonable thing, under the circumstances. She sent her daughters-in-law, her only hopes for an heir, back to their Moabite families. 

    This is an incredibly bleak point of the story. Naomi is utterly hopeless; vulnerable at every point. She is a woman, alone in a foreign land, facing the options of staying there, or returning to a home that she has not seen in over ten years with the meagre hope of finding pity among her distant family in a place rife with violence, perhaps especially against women. To be a woman, alone or even a group of women, would have been fraught with risk, and terribly frightening. So here is Naomi, drowning in sorrow and bitterness, empty of hope that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who brought them out of slavery through the parted waters of the Red Sea into the Promised Land, might yet have good things—the fulfillment of promises—waiting for her. 

    Can you see yourself here? There are so many circumstances that might lead us to this point. 

    What do you feel when you read that one third of the homeless population in Minneapolis are children? What happens when see or experience abuse? We lose loved ones to death. We fail at our jobs and people look down at us. Spouses leave us, and children reject us and everything we have tried to teach them to love. Sometimes even things as simple as reading the headlines in our newsfeeds or momentary rejection from someone we respect can cause us to despair. Can any of us read about the abuse in some of the Sovereign Grace, Southern Baptist, or Catholic churches and not feel a little twinge of despair? Can we read about the murder of babies in the womb, or terrorist groups, or the persecuted church, or injustice in our streets without wondering what God could possibly have in mind?  Do these cause you to spiral into despair and doubt? 

    Naomi felt not only grief, but physical deprivation, and hunger. She felt displacement and loneliness. She felt grief and loss, and the disappointment of shattered hopes and dreams. Has your faith ever faltered or failed in the face of your own suffering?

    Mine has. I remember several times in my life where I could, at least in some ways, relate to Naomi. I remember the last week of March during my freshman year of college, when I spent the week jumping at every phone call, waiting to hear who had died. I lost five peers in four years of high school, two of my classmates just two months before graduation, and all but one in the last week of March. I was jumpy the next March, scared to believe that another loss wasn’t just around the corner. I would imagine Naomi felt like this too. I also remember a few years ago, after my second miscarriage (the first of which occurred in the last week of March), I felt utterly betrayed by my body and even by God. I remember opening my Bible and just looking at it—letting my eyes skim the pages. I don’t say read, because I wasn’t really reading—I was just looking, devoid of feeling or understanding. To use Naomi’s word, I felt utterly, completely “empty”—when I read, when I prayed… My vision of the good things in my life was crowded out by hurt, and loss, and grief. I knew I was blind, and hoped my vision would return, but despite my desire for hope and joy, I was just simply…numb, empty. Can you relate?

    Maybe, when I felt like that I should have spent more time reading Ruth. Because it is here, in verses 16–17, the climax of the chapter, God shows Naomi his faithfulness in the deepest, darkest of places. We, looking back, can see God working where Naomi saw only doom and gloom. One of her daughters-in-laws, Ruth, refuses to go home.

    Instead, she pledges to remain with her, live with her, worship with her, and die with her. In Ruth 1:16–17, we see the part of the story I’ve titled The Redeemer Breaks Through. Ruth’s words here are beautiful, and often quoted. She gives Naomi a strong declaration of love and intent. She says in 1:16–17: “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

    Right under Naomi’s nose, before her bitter, sorrowful eyes, Ruth was demonstrating the faithfulness and love of God to Naomi. She had not been abandoned, she was not alone. Like a ray of light through a cloud, like a laser beam sent to break up the crusty cataracts on her doubt-clouded eyes, God had provided Ruth to show Naomi his steadfast love for her and his faithful, covenant-keeping intentions. 

    But Naomi doesn’t see clearly just yet. Despite Ruth’s act of immense self-sacrifice and deep love, Naomi remains focused on the bitterness of her circumstances, and, the narrator tells us that she simply “said no more.” She remains chained to her grief and bitterness at the God she believed failed her in every way.

    This, however, is simply not true. The next section, as we will see, will show us how God was continuing to work through Ruth in Naomi’s story, and the story of Israel, and even our stories. We will see the foreshadowing of the coming Messiah.

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  • Book Reviews,  Books,  Death and Dying

    Book Review: The Art of Dying

    April 30, 2019

    Anyone reading this review probably knows what this blog is about: death, dying, and the Christian. So it will be no surprise to you that my favorite book of the year so far is a book about just that. The Art of Dying: Living Fully Into the Life to Come by Rob Moll is a book that I’ve been telling people I wish I had written. I found myself either nodding in agreement with the author on topics I’ve already come to conclusions on, or totally engrossed as I learned new information. It’s a book I fully intend to buy and give away. I think everyone should read it. 

    Now, if that glowing recommendation alone doesn’t convince you to read it, I guess I will have to endeavor to entice you with a little more information.

    Rob Moll is a journalist, formerly editor-at-large at Christianity Today. Inspired, at least in part, by the story of Terry Schiavo, he wrote The Art of Dying because of an awareness that Christians, surprisingly, did not seem to have an appropriate response to questions of life and death. More particularly, they did not appear to have a set of ethics or principles, informed by their faith, that could adequately inform their decisions regarding death—their own or a loved one’s. His argument is that Christians, like the rest of our Western culture, wrongly avoid all thought of death. “Death is indeed evil.” He says, “Yet there is no evil so great that God cannot bring joy and goodness from it. That is why death deserves our attention in life. Because we want to avoid it, to turn our face away, it is good to look death in the eye and constantly remind ourselves that our hope is in God, who defeated death.” His goal, it seems, is to offer a deeply Christian understanding of death as both encouragement and corrective. I think he succeeds.

    The first few chapters of the book articulate our current problem of avoiding death in our daily lives, as well as the medicalization of death—a sort of “how we got here” look at our current state. He then explains what has been lost in our Christian traditions surrounding death by giving a brief and broad history of Christian death up through the end of the 19thcentury. Leading his readers gently toward the boots-on-the-ground questions about death and dying, he includes a chapter entitled “The Spirituality of Death,” making a convincing argument for why death is a monumental occasion in the life of a believer, requiring preparation. Moll then takes his reader through the dying process from start to finish, answering practical questions interspersed with interviews and personal stories related to preparing for your own or your parents’ death, caring for dying people, questions of funeral practices and traditions. He ends the book with chapters on grief, the resurrection, and what understanding death means for life. 

    Every chapter of this book has the potential to be life-changing for someone. There were several things, though, that come to mind from this book without even having to skim the pages. I’ll try to share them, briefly, with you here. 

    • The first was the effect of death on a community. Moll shares that as we lost the traditions of mourning, grief has become more and more isolating. By marking houses and clothes with signs of mourning, the community helped bear the weight of grief. Describing C.S. Lewis’ experience of isolation described in A Grief Observed, Moll says “As if the burdens of the griever weren’t enough, society gave Lewis another responsibility—the cruel job of forcing a man in mourning to help those around him feel better about their awkwardness in his presence” (129). This resonates with me, and makes me wonder what sort of steps I can take to ease this load off of the grieving around me. Along with this, I was so glad to read Moll’s exhortation to not use the hope of resurrection as a bludgeon to those in the midst of grief: “those in mourning and their comforters may make grieving more difficult when our Christian hope is used to discourage public mourning” (131).
    • Secondly, I noticed lack of training in seminaries and the overall neglect of the elderly in churches. I know my church tries to care for the widows and the elderly, and as far as I know they do okay at it. I also know that it’s one of the quietest ministries in the church. Along with caring for the elderly better in life, I wonder if we should somehow try to bring the “business” of death back to our churches—can we recruit any seminarians to become funeral directors, or church-based morticians?   
    • Third, I was struck by his accounts of supernatural experiences as the hour of death approaches. I was convinced that we have over-medicalized death before reading The Art of Dying, mostly for practical reasons. But reading his numerous accounts of people being guided from this life to the next by spiritual beings has made me even more convinced. Moll says of previous periods of Christian history that “No one assumed that the difficult physical work of dying would leave a person spiritually unable to participate” (62). It seems clear to me that, whenever possible, we should not rob people of the spiritual experience of dying. Moll argues that this is not just for their benefit, but for ours: “Even Alzheimer’s can’t touch the life of the spirit. When a dying person gives physical evidence that his or her spirit is entering a new life, it can be spiritually encouraging to onlookers and emotionally comforting to those who will grieve the loss of the person. And as we support the dying spiritually, we help them to die well” (72).

    Aside from loving the content, I loved the structure of Moll’s book. It seemed very well suited to convince the reader that there is a problem, provide its context, and then offer a solution—or at least a launching point for better thought and practice. And I know I’m maybe hyper-aware, but I see such a great need for resources like this that I’m very grateful to have read it. I think you will be too.

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