Near Emmaus

Category Archives: Death


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“I will live just so…supposing I live to an old age.”

gravestone of Jonathan Edwards

Several years ago my pastor preached a short series of sermons asking the church what kind of “legacy” they would like to leave. I remember being quite moved as I was reminded of my temporality. Sometimes I am reminded that I have a timer that began ticking as soon as I breathed my first breath. I will die. When this crosses my mind I am reminded of the gist of those sermons and I reevaluate whether or not I am living the type of life that will leave the legacy I seek.

Legacy may seem like a big word, but it isn’t. I am not speaking of a legacy like that of Kings and Popes. Rather, I speak of that which I might leave behind to any children I may father, or to my wife is she outlives me, to students if I teach, and to all those who share life with me for any extended period of time. As I was grading a paper on the famous New England theologian Jonathan Edwards I came to a point where the student quoted one of Edwards’ famous “resolutions” (see here) that stated the following:

“I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live, if they were to live their lives over again: Resolved, that I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age. “

I find that these words echo in my heart. I have seen plenty of people resolve to live “their life” for themselves, and that is not what Edwards meant and that is not what I mean. I don’t want people to remember me as embodying the song popularized by Frank Sinatra. I’ve seen that type of life lived and it ends ugly. Rather, I want to live a life that will allow me to say when I am older that I used my years for Christ in such a way that he willingly says, “Well done, though good and faithful servant.” When I die and someone etches an epithet into my gravestone I hope that like the Beloved Disciple of the Fourth Gospel people will remember me as someone who knew he was “a disciple whom Jesus loves.” I want people to have been moved to find hope in the day when we will be resurrected to be with Christ. I want to be remembered as a great husband and father. If after this people say something about my career, my academics, my writing, sermons or lessons, mentorship, or any other such thing that will be nice, but it means nothing lest people remember me as someone who sought to live in the love of Christ. I have a long way to go to establish that legacy, but that is my aim.

Resolved, that I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age.

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Ageing in the Shadow of Death.

This year I will turn thirty years old. I know this is quite young. I think I have most of my life in front of me, though who knows, today could be my last. When I awake I have stiffness in my neck and back. Sometimes certain foods bother me that I used to eat in bulk. On the other side, I eat things like vegetables now. There are several gray strands in my beard and my hairline has crept back far enough to remind me of my father when I look at it. Another area that is like my father is my little belly that remains protruded no matter how thin the best of my body may be at a given state. I am ageing.

Ageing is dying. This is a simple matter. Every year moves you closer to the end. You cannot go back. You cannot run away. You aren’t different or special when it comes to ageing. Some may look better than others over the years, but you’re still ageing.

At this stage many people renew their love for exercise and right eating. In part it is because it makes them feel better. I think for some there is this wrongheaded idea that it helps them avoid ageing. While it may prevent you from experiencing certain effects of ageing it doesn’t prevent ageing and there is no guarantee that it will prevent the effects. Treadmills don’t prevent cancer.

As we move closer to death we reevaluate our priorities and our worldview determines this process. We pity men and women in their thirties that act like teens, or in their fifties that think they are twenty, or in their seventies that deny their age. Why? Well, we assume there is a stage to be selfish: to party, to buy new clothes all the time, go to do this for myself and that for myself. Then we expect the circle of life to demand we begin preparing show the way for the next generation.

If death is final this instinct doesn’t make sense to me. If ageing is a sign that your days are few then those who live as if this world was made for their pleasure are the wise and those who give are fools. If I have seventy years on this planet why spend forty on kids and grandkids, students, and those who we see worthy of investment? Our only investment should be ourselves, because we die, and the world moves on without us.

Resurrection provides the rational for ageing in grace and for giving of one’s self. It is the hope that these seventy years are not all there is to life. It is a glimpse of another life that energizes us to use this one not for ourselves, but for others.

Some may say that truly good people don’t need resurrection or afterlife discussion to do good. Pragmatically, sure. Does it make sense? Not to me. If we live only a few years to disappear forever then we may as well live for ourselves, completely.

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See also:

Youth in the Shadow of Death

Birth in the Shadow of Death

Lent in the Shadow of Death


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Youth in the Shadow of Death.

Youth is something you want to discard while you have it and recapture once you don’t. Is it not one of the great ironies of life that many of us begged for the day we could drive a car, or earn a paycheck, or drink a beer only to reach that place and find it unfulfilling. Suddenly, we want our parents to pay the bills again. We miss going to school and playing basketball with our friends in the afternoon. We miss how our bodies did not ache and how they seemed so much better looking back then, even though at that time we noticed all their flaws.

When we lose our youth we realize something scary has happened. We have entered the stage where suddenly we are not the one being protected. Now we are on our own. The next stage is that we become the protectors and providers. Death is coming.

The end of youth is reminder of aging. That back pain, that headache, the fading eyesight, the difficulty we have hearing, all these things signify the temporality of our bodies. These things expose the fact that we are so very finite.

Once we envied adults. As adults we envy youth. We are never satisfied.

Resurrection doesn’t promise us youth, but it does seem to promise an aspect of youth that we’d like to retain. If resurrection is to occur it is the day we resume the type of bodily existence that though constrained seems free. It is not that Jesus’ resurrection brought him back to us as an adolescent. Rather, he seems have the energy and strength that we see in youth, except it would never depart again. Youth reminds us of death as age, but it can remind us of resurrection as well. It reminds us that bodily existence can be wonderful, and beautiful, and relatively painless.

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See also:

Birth in the Shadow of Death

Lent in the Shadow of Death


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Birth in the Shadow of Death.

This week two different co-workers announced to our office that they are pregnant. I have never had the experience of expecting to be a parent. I imagine that it is a mixture of joy, anticipation, anxiety, and doubt. We sense a deep responsibility as humans for our infants. We know their survival, well-being, health, security, growth, and future maturity depends on us. At those early stages parents awake at any hint that their baby is in danger. They become accustom to the language of a baby signifying peace or distress.

In the modern, industrialized world the moment of birth is not associated with death as it is for many in the underdeveloped world or peoples of by-gone eras. Infant mortality has been a common misfortune for many. Likewise, there have been many women who have died in the process of trying to bring life into this world. It is a scary reminder that we humans are in a continual cycle of “passing the baton” from one generation to another. That people are born at all is a reminder of temporarily to those of us who are alive. We do not come into existence to roam this planet for ever. We come, we see, we may bring others into this world, and then we leave them for the great unknown.

As we ponder birth through the lens of death we are faced with the melancholy thought that in a very real sense your first breath is the beginning of your last series of breaths on this planet. Some live a few moments and others decades, but we start the race to finish it. We are not born to live forever, at least not forever in this state of being.

If death has the final word then birth is somewhat depressing. We gain a sense of self-reflection and personal awareness that seems foreign to the animal kingdom. We fall in love for more reasons that reproduction. We find value and purpose in our vocations. We establish relationships. We create. We discover. We find meaning in the cosmos. Then we die.

The season of Lent reminds us of this horrid fact. It screams “to dust you will return.” What is amazing about the final days of the season is that they bring us to Easter. Easter is the time when we entertain the possibility that death does not have the final word. If Jesus Christ has risen then at least one person in history faced death and emerged alive, more alive than before he died.

If resurrection is true then birth makes sense. We enter into this world not to die, but to prepare to live again. Our short time on stage is given meaning in the context of God’s huge, cosmic drama. Yes, for some, birth leads to a life engulfed in death, but that is no condemnation of birth itself. Instead, every birth signifies potential of life everlasting in the age to come. Every human is a potential son and daughter of God. Each one of us is given some sort of opportunity to experience the gift of existence, a gift that must be given for anyone to know God.

As these two co-workers bring children into the world they offer them the first necessary requirement for knowing God: life.

Once I was talking to a depressed young woman who was saying she wished she had never been born. I understand the sentiment. Jesus said the same of Judas, but what makes sense rhetorically lacks the same punch philosophically. Is there any sense in which we can say non-existence is better than existence? Can we speak of non-existence in any meaningful way? I don’t know that we can, at least when it comes to humanity. Our sense of existence is superior to non-existence by default because it has some value. We cannot say something that doesn’t exist has any value. Our lives may end in utter ruin, but that is not the fault of our birth and it is not our existence we should blame. Our existence gave us our only shot at potential and without potential there is no reason to speak of good and evil, value and loss.

Birth and death are the bookends of each person’s story. You can’t escape it. If you are here you were born. If you were born you are going to die. This is the framework of your narrative. We who are living cannot ask, “What if I wasn’t born.” We can ask one question: “What does everything between birth and death mean and what is my role in it?”

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See also:

Lent in the Shadow of Death


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Whitney Houston, celebrity deaths, and the multitudes that perish.

Yes, it is OK to mourn the death of Whitney Houston.

When Michael Jackson died I was a bit surprised by the emotional responses of so many people. It baffled me to see how invested they were in someone many of them never met. My pietist side questioned their love for such an “idol”. Why didn’t they care about the man who died homeless in their town, or the hundreds dying in wars in the Middle East, or the thousands dying of HIV/AIDS in Africa?

I’ve changed my position on this now.

One could argue that it is objectively worse than one thousand people die than if your own spouse or one of your children were to die, but we know that the impact of someone’s death is relative. If a man lost his wife on September 11th, 2001, of a heart attack in Dallas, Texas, we would not be offended that he felt more grief for her than for all the combined lives of the terrorist attacks that same day. We understand intuitively that the familiarity and influence of someone upon us often determines how we feel about their death. We mourn death because we lose something/someone, not simply because “people die.”

Whitney Houston died today. Personally, I am saddened by it, but she wasn’t a huge part of my life like she was for so many. While I realize I am not as bummed as others I don’t judge those who mourn her passing even if they never met her. I understand death’s impact is subjective.

As silly as it may sound to some I know I will mourn the day Michael Jordan dies. Why? Because as a teenager I watched Michael Jordan for inspiration. No, I could not do what he could do on the basketball court, but when I was failing high school I mimicked that “I will not lose” look in his eyes and applied it to life’s challenges. My senior year in high school began with me far behind what I needed to graduate. It became a type of “fourth quarter” for me and I made it.

For some Whitney Houston sang the song that they heard the night they met their future spouse or she was the one whose voice made them dance with their best friends after a break-up. Some may say, “All she did is sing and act, what about people who do A, B, and C?” Well, first of all, our world is a sad, hard place. We need those people who make us sing and dance, who give us stories, who take our minds off reality for a little while. Now this may not be the same as the work of Mother Theresa, but again, the impact is subjective.

We humans cannot handle giving equal value to every death of every humans. Our psyche would melt. So when someone says, “Who cares that she died, did you know [insert # here] died of [insert disease, natural disaster, war fatalities, et cetera here] [insert day, days, week, weeks, or other time span here].” it doesn’t matter. Maybe it should, but it can’t, because we aren’t God and we can’t comprehend numbers like that.

So no, I don’t think it is wrong for people to be sad by the death of one named person than the report of  a large number of unnamed people. Yes, the multitudes that perish matter, but let’s be honest, millions die every day because of various things and we know it is not possible to give them equal attention.

So go ahead, feel sad that Whitney Houston died, this is how we humans grieve the people that mattered to us.


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Steve Jobs died. Why do you mourn?

Steve Jobs: 1955-2011.

Yesterday Steve Jobs died. He was fifty-six years old. While he fought cancer toward the end of his life we will remember him for his genius and innovation, not the evil disease that overcame him. I own an iMac and an iPhone, so in a way Jobs’ life impacts mine many times each day.

Yet some may wonder why we mourn someone we don’t know. Why did so many mourn the recent death of someone like Amy Winehouse, or someone like Michael Jackson a few years ago, when people die every second all over the planet. Why do they matter more than other humans to us?

We cannot categorize it the same way we would spouse or child, mother or father, best friend or mentor. Most of us never met Jobs in person. Yet we sense loss, why?

I think it has to do with three things: (1) We see a lot of bad people, and a lot of people who waste their lives, so some times it gives us hope to see someone who is successful who benefits the world. They remind us there is potential for humans. (2) They changed our lives. For some, people like Winehouse and Jackson gave them a voice and a tune. For others, like myself, Jobs changed the way I live life and he did it for the better. (3) I think the death of icons like Jobs reminds us that everyone dies. Sometimes we’d like to think icons like Jobs are immune to reality, that he’d be with us forever creating brilliant gadgets that make our lives better, but he has died. If he dies then I will die. No one avoids death.

Why do you think we mourn the death of celebrated public figures like singers, actors, CEOs and former Presidents? Why do we feel a sense of loss when they are gone? Is it justified considering millions died yesterday from starvation, or AIDS, or war? What are your thoughts? I’d appreciate hearing what you have to say.

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See also: Lex Friedman, “Why Steve Jobs’ death feels so sad”.