Hope When Death Surrounds

I didn't grow up with death.

My dad's father passed away when I was relatively young, but I did not know him very well. Nobody else I was remotely close to died or even suffered from a major illness.  However, in the past two years, death has been a regularly repeated refrain.  My grandmother passed away late in 2017 after a stroke.  In the summer of 2018, a beloved uncle passed away suddenly, likely from a heart attack caused by a biologically pre-determined bad heart.  Earlier this year, a best friend of my wife lost her battle with cancer after a life of fighting with cystic fibrosis.  A month later, my mom's dad, a man who hiked mountains and scoured beaches well into his old age, passed away; he could hardly move in his final days.  We recently learned that the mom of another best friend of my wife, a woman we both know, was diagnosed with stage four cancer and given 3 months to live.

I meet with a group of men regularly throughout the year.  These men are mostly older and retired.  The concerns and struggles they share increasingly involve illness and death of loved ones.  A few I have known have also passed away.  I have reached the age when many of the people I know and love are increasingly facing illness and death.  The adults I have looked up to and continue to seek guidance from are closer to the end than the beginning, and it is starting to show.

For all the wonders that humankind has created, for all the achievements and improvements in quality and length of life we have achieved, we still have not conquered death and ultimate bodily degradation.  It is the irresolute fact that threatens to destroy and erase any meaning we find or have created here.  And if nothing lasts, if everything we have done in our lives will someday be forgotten, if everything the human race has accomplished will ultimately be wiped away through environmental destruction, the expansion and death of the sun, or the heat death of the universe, what was the point?

Some Philosophy

It seems that for something to have ultimate meaning, it has to last, be permanent, and endure. Forever.

If that is true, then we are faced with two possibilities.

• The first possibility: nothing ultimately has meaning or matters, because there is no life after death.  Nothing endures or is permanent.  What we do in this life will be forgotten or destroyed. Life has no ultimate meaning.  We have no ultimate meaning.  
• The second possibility: something ultimately has meaning.  Something will survive.  If that something includes us, then we have ultimate meaning too.

I would bet that most people feel that there is meaning and purpose to life in general and to their life specifically.  We may not know how to express it or account for it, but we know it and feel it.  We do ultimately matter.  Our lives ultimately matter.  What we do matters and is meaningful in some ultimate and enduring way.  If so, by a simple modus ponens, then we have to last, endure, be permanent.

Some Theology

Such an argument can be used to argue for an afterlife of some sort.  But of what sort?  Most people, if they believe in an afterlife, might imagine being up in "heaven" in a sort of disembodied immaterial state.  But if this is what actually happens in a permanent way, then notice what this implies about our bodies: if our bodies have ultimate meaning, then they will last; they do not last; therefore, they do not have ultimate meaning.  A similar argument could be made for all of material existence.

This sort of soul escapism has similarities to Gnosticism or Manichaeism, in which the material world and our bodies are something to escape.  And wouldn't it follow that, since we are escaping our bodies and this world, which will not last, we can use our bodies or this world in any manner we choose?  There might be some restrictions insofar as this impacts what will last (our souls), but any respect for bodies or the material world would derive from this relationship and not in virtue of what our bodies or this world are for their own sake, that is, in virtue of their own intrinsic value.  And wouldn't it follow that there is a lack of ultimate meaning for our bodies except in a derivative sense?  What then should we make of our bodily sufferings or the environmental destruction and material chaos that surrounds us?  Doesn't that matter, have importance, for its own sake?

On the contrary, our bodies do matter.  What happens to our bodies, our world, matters.  We don't just need salvation for our souls.  Our bodies, indeed, the whole world, needs and requires redemption and renewal.

This is what the Christian tradition advocates.  Not an escape from our bodies or material reality, but a redemption of them.  Not that the material reality will ultimately be destroyed, but that it will be renewed and endure.  The Apostle's Creed proclaims a belief in "the resurrection of the body" and the "life everlasting".  The Nicene Creed states that "we look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come."  The Christian belief professes that after death, souls will be reunited with healed, restored, and redeemed bodies (see here),  and the material world itself will be freed from corruption and renewed (see here).   Our bodies, and all of created reality, will endure forever, having been healed and restored from all material degradation and decay.

Death will not have the final word.

A Hope

What if spring never came?  What if after the flowers bloomed in summer and the trees dazzled us with their many colors in the fall, they would slowly die or be reduced to skeletons of bark and wood alone, never to return to fullness of life?  We might remember what once was, but what did it matter if that was the end?  However, we know that spring will come, and new life will shoot up from the ground in a burst of sights and smells.  The earth will be fresh, healthy, and alive once more.

The resurrection of the body is the hope for spring.  It is the hope that a winter of death is not the end, but a never ending spring of new and restored life will come.  It is the hope that my wife's friend will breathe fully and freely for the first time. It is the hope that my mom's dad  will have the youthful and outdoor vigor I remember him for.  It is the hope that I may carve another bowl from wood by my uncle's side.  It is the hope that all will ultimately follow in the footsteps of He who did in fact conquer death.

“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”

(1 Corinthians 15:55)