• 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,  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,  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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