Austin's Blog

“Death is natural.” This is one of the most pernicious and devilish lies of our current reality. Just because we are surrounded by it, even engulfed by it, does not mean there’s anything natural about death. In that hospital room early on January 21st, the very presence of the risen Christ was in the room when my sweet boy took his last breath. Yet, there was an outrage. There was a deep sense that this is not the way things are supposed to be. Everything within me was screaming that this should not be so just as a flood of peace surrounded us.

Tim Keller writes, “The ‘rage at the dying of the light’ is our intuition that we were not meant for mortality, for the loss of love, or for the triumph of darkness. In order to help people face death and grief we often tell people that death is a perfectly natural part of life. But that asks them to repress a very right and profound human intuition—that we were not meant to simply go to dust, and that love was meant to last.”

Love is meant to last. If you read the first three chapters of Genesis, you will quickly understand that death was not God’s original intent for this world. We were meant to live forever, to not fade away, to not be put in boxes in the cold ground. Folks will say, “Look around the world. Everything dies. Plants. Animals. Even the sun will one day die.” But, we also know even more profoundly that we are not mere animals, plants, or stars. A child who is born severely deformed and will only live for five minutes outside of the safety of their mother’s womb is worth more than the whole Milky Way galaxy full of stars. That child is not meant to die and we all know it.

Again, Tim Keller writes, “To say, ‘Oh, death is just natural,’ is to harden and perhaps kill a part of your heart’s hope that makes you human. We know deep down that we are not like trees. We are not like grass. We were created to last. We don’t want to be ephemeral, to be inconsequential. We don’t want to just be a wave upon the sand. The deepest desires of our hearts are for love that lasts.”

There’s a reason Paul the Apostle calls death “the last Enemy” who will be undone by the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:26). Even death will one day die (Rev. 21:4). It is appropriate and fitting to be angry at death, righteously incensed against that last Enemy, that old fox, that ancient slow-working poison. Jesus experienced outrage, indignation, and fury at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:33). Perhaps he was angry over what death had done, over the state of the world, and over their unbelief that he loved them and could fix death. B.B. Warfield writes in The Emotional Life of Our Lord, “…natural suggestion of the word ‘groan’ is…pain or sorrow, not [disapproval]; and this rendering…is misleading…What John tells us, in point of fact, is that Jesus approached the grave of Lazarus, in a state, not of uncontrollable grief, but of irrepressible anger. He did respond…with quiet, sympathetic tears: ‘Jesus wept’ (verse 36). But the emotion which tore his breast and clamored for utterance was just rage.”

What does this mean for me? It is appropriate to rage against death. It is not wrong to hate it. D.A. Carson warns, “Our rage is better directed at the ugliness of death, the wretchedness of sin, our sense of betrayal and self-betrayal. It may be a venting of our profound loss and frustration. But thoughtful Christians will never lose sight of the origins of death, and therefore will not, at least on this ground, rage against God himself.” More can and will be said about death, but nothing less should be said. Christ’s boot will one day crush the neck of death. Until then, we should not make peace with it. It isn’t natural and we all know it.