Israel Steinmetz, Dean of Church of God Seventh Day's Lifespring School of Theology, shares an important perspective on grieving over departed loved ones. This is part of a series of blogs encouraging good mental health in Tauranga among Christians and whoever is willing to look at mental health from a christian point of view. www.churchofgodslove.com
Grieve…but grieve with hope.
By Israel Steinmetz
https://secure.lifespringschool.org/grievebut-grieve-with-hope/
Death has been trending on Facebook.
Most the articles on LifeSpring’s Weekday Christianity blog are sparked by trends on Facebook. This one is no different, but it feels different. Usually those trends are about something in the news or pop culture. This one is about people I know. This one is about death.
Last week, two young men—friends and relatives of people I know—died, one from cancer, another from a motorcycle accident. And there were others, some I knew, and others that were strangers to me. People, young and old, passed from this life between heartbeats leaving a wake of grief behind.
The posts about these deaths have been heartrending. They reveal the tear in our existence, the ambivalence in our feeling, and the ambiguity in our thoughts created by death.
What do we do with death? What does death do to us?
I’m no stranger to death. I first encountered it at about four years old when my mother delivered my little brother, full term and stillborn, the umbilical cord around his neck. I remember the funeral service where we laid his body in the rain soaked dirt of southern Oregon. And this year marks the twentieth anniversary of my eighteen year old brother’s suicide and my father’s death after seven years of illness. Their remains lay in that same patch of rain soaked earth in Oregon. My wife and I lost our second baby to miscarriage; I delivered that child in our bedroom and held its lifeless body—the baby fit in the palm of my hand—until the ambulance arrived. Not long after, as I prepared to take my first pastorate, both of my pastoral mentors died in the span of three months. I had lived in their homes. I had considered them fathers.
And these are just a few. Hundreds of people I know have died. Hundreds. Of people.
Every death hurts. Every death raises questions we struggle to answer. And these answers seldom bring healing.
As Christians, we look to Scripture to hear words of comfort and clarity in the face of death. Sadly, some of those words have been misunderstood and misapplied. For instance, in Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians he writes, “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.” 1
Some of us have been told that Paul is telling Christians not to grieve. That grieving is for people with no hope; people who don’t believe in Jesus. We’ve been told that death is a “good” thing, and that it should only be celebrated as a memory of a life well-lived, rather than mourned as an awful tragedy. We’ve been told that death is simply a necessary part of the journey toward real life.
I want to say, gently, that all of this is nonsense.
When Paul wrote to the Thessalonians he wasn’t telling them not to grieve. Rather, he was distinguishing between two types of grief. There’s grief without hope and there’s grief with hope.
Christians should grieve death with hope.
We should grieve death because death is unnatural. Humans weren’t created to die; they were created to live. Human death wasn’t part of God’s good creation. Rather, it was one of the terrible consequences of sin. 2 And so, when people die, it is a reminder that evil is real, that creation is broken, and that in death, humanity has been thrust into an unnatural state that is tragic and awful and devastating. Jesus Christ himself, when faced with the death of his close friend—a man he was minutes away from restoring to life—wept openly and was overcome with anger in the face of death. 3
And yet, we should grieve death with hope. This hope is not based on the empty promises of myth or the illusions of artwork. Our lost loved ones are not additions to God’s collection of angels or omniscient viewers in heaven’s gallery overlooking earth. They are not stars twinkling in the sky or guardian angels saving us from car wrecks. Now, if all I did was dis-illusion those who are grieving by challenging these fantasies, that would be cruelty. But I’m interested in much more than debunking nonsense. I’m interested in offering real hope to those who have come to new life in Jesus Christ.
What Paul goes on to say in his letter to the Thessalonians is that we have hope because Jesus Christ has conquered death. What’s more, he is on his way back to earth to redeem all of creation, restoring all that was lost through sin and death. Those who have died with faith in Christ will be resurrected from death and given new, eternal bodies to live in for eternity. Sin and death and everything connected with them, including grief, will be forever done away with. Paul ends that section of the letter with these words, “…and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.” 4
We grieve with hope because we believe that we will be resurrected to spend eternity with God. This brings comfort. When the person who has died shared our faith in Christ we have the added comfort of knowing we will spend eternity with them too.
So to my friends who lost people they love this past week and to all of us who will continue losing people we love, I want to say something. Go ahead and grieve. Grieve openly and bitterly and genuinely. Don’t repress the pain, or put up a “spiritual” front, or deny that it hurts.
But grieve with hope. Remember that Jesus has already conquered death and he is on his way back to set up his kingdom. You are part of that kingdom already and you have the promise of living in it eternally. God is greater than sin and death. Creation will be restored, life will be eternal and you and I will be with the Lord forever. Comfort yourselves, and others, with these words.
Notes:
1. 1 Thessalonians 4:13.
2. Genesis 2:17, Romans 5:12.
3. You can read the incredible story in John 11:1-45.
4. 1 Thessalonians 4:17b-18.
