The End of Time, Part 2
Jesus wept.
The shortest verse in the Bible has been the subject of many sermons, but the consensus seems to be that Jesus wept not because Lazarus was dead, but he wept at the misery which death causes even among the faithful. Jesus was scolded twice, once by Martha and then again by Mary, because He was not at hand when Lazarus became ill.
Why do believers cry at funerals?
If we take our faith both seriously and literally, we should only be crying when an unbeliever dies. If a believer dies, we should celebrate. No one celebrates. Whether you are a behavioral psychologist with cold detachment, or a devout Christian with your eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, you will weep at the death of someone you love. Not because they have suffered. Nor because they were "taken too soon", for what is too soon in eternity?
Neither atheists nor Christians want to look at the core of existential fear. In my previous post on David Horowitz book, The End of Time, I wrote:
Something deep within our soul hungers for immortality. We do not want to cease to be, so the approaching end of our time brings sadness. Yes, we can be noble, we can find dignity, or honor, or we can even pretend that life's worthiness issues from transience, but in our honest, deepest and most fearful heart, death is very, very ugly.
In Matthew 16:25-26, Jesus says:
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
What makes an Islamic suicide bomber so repulsive to the Western mind? In a way, Christians should understand completely the logic behind blowing yourself and others to smithereens in order to launch yourself into Heaven for presumably serving God. Jonestown and Heaven's Gate make perfect sense if they are seen as passages to eternal life. If you were convinced that your death would take you to eternal paradise, what would stop you from killing yourself? Our thinking is inconsistent and incomplete, so when we are confronted with this philosophy, we call it madness. It is madness, but not because it is inconsistent, but because it is self serving.
True madness is the human condition. The secularist clings to a life without objective purpose while a believer clings to a life without eternal value. We remain sane by not taking things to their logical extremes. Regardless of our choice of intellectual tightrope, we live our life as though it has purpose and value, almost in denial of our adopted beliefs. Our beliefs degenerate into tradition and ritual, and the messages from our prophets don't penetrate our instinctive desire to live a good life.
Did Jesus weep because Lazarus' life was cut short? Was he too young to die, or had his years been fulfilling? What exactly was the tragedy of a man who had lived a good and holy life, who had been friends with the very Son of God, and who was now in Paradise, and why was he called back to this lesser existence, filled with suffering and sin? What must Lazarus have thought when he awoke in his graveclothes, and what stories did he tell to his family? Who would want to return to this life after tasting Paradise?
Francis Schaeffer wrote about this tension between how I live my life and the logical extension of my worldview. A secularist cannot live consistently with his belief because the good life requires some standard of goodness which a secularist cannot accept. He thinks he knows the standard, but when he is asked to objectively define it, he says that it is only convention. Schaeffer draws a horizontal line to represent the tension between how I live my life and what I believe. The two extremes on this line represent the secular world view and the Gospel, and a person finds a place on the line with which he is comfortable. Schaeffer suggests that the secularist will not hear the Gospel message unless he is pushed to the logical conclusion of his belief system. He calls this "taking the roof off", that is, exposing the individual to the consequences of absurdity. This is why we cry at funerals and in hospitals. The proximity of death removes our roof and exposes us to the absurdity of temporal existence. But wait a minute, if I have been saved then what is death except a doorway to Heaven? I have come full circle.
If I weep, it is from the weariness of fighting the enemy. I weep because I see the weakness in myself and my neighbors. I weep because they are weeping. Jesus either rose from the dead or He is a big lie. If He is a lie, then I will cry at the cruelty of a life without hope, and I will cry because life is absurd without eternity.
On this Easter morning, there is only one needful thing. I have visited both ends of the line of tension which Schaeffer describes. On one end is a tomb filled with bones and filth. On the other end is an empty tomb.
The shortest verse in the Bible has been the subject of many sermons, but the consensus seems to be that Jesus wept not because Lazarus was dead, but he wept at the misery which death causes even among the faithful. Jesus was scolded twice, once by Martha and then again by Mary, because He was not at hand when Lazarus became ill.
Why do believers cry at funerals?
If we take our faith both seriously and literally, we should only be crying when an unbeliever dies. If a believer dies, we should celebrate. No one celebrates. Whether you are a behavioral psychologist with cold detachment, or a devout Christian with your eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, you will weep at the death of someone you love. Not because they have suffered. Nor because they were "taken too soon", for what is too soon in eternity?
Neither atheists nor Christians want to look at the core of existential fear. In my previous post on David Horowitz book, The End of Time, I wrote:
Something deep within our soul hungers for immortality. We do not want to cease to be, so the approaching end of our time brings sadness. Yes, we can be noble, we can find dignity, or honor, or we can even pretend that life's worthiness issues from transience, but in our honest, deepest and most fearful heart, death is very, very ugly.
In Matthew 16:25-26, Jesus says:
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
What makes an Islamic suicide bomber so repulsive to the Western mind? In a way, Christians should understand completely the logic behind blowing yourself and others to smithereens in order to launch yourself into Heaven for presumably serving God. Jonestown and Heaven's Gate make perfect sense if they are seen as passages to eternal life. If you were convinced that your death would take you to eternal paradise, what would stop you from killing yourself? Our thinking is inconsistent and incomplete, so when we are confronted with this philosophy, we call it madness. It is madness, but not because it is inconsistent, but because it is self serving.
True madness is the human condition. The secularist clings to a life without objective purpose while a believer clings to a life without eternal value. We remain sane by not taking things to their logical extremes. Regardless of our choice of intellectual tightrope, we live our life as though it has purpose and value, almost in denial of our adopted beliefs. Our beliefs degenerate into tradition and ritual, and the messages from our prophets don't penetrate our instinctive desire to live a good life.
Did Jesus weep because Lazarus' life was cut short? Was he too young to die, or had his years been fulfilling? What exactly was the tragedy of a man who had lived a good and holy life, who had been friends with the very Son of God, and who was now in Paradise, and why was he called back to this lesser existence, filled with suffering and sin? What must Lazarus have thought when he awoke in his graveclothes, and what stories did he tell to his family? Who would want to return to this life after tasting Paradise?
Francis Schaeffer wrote about this tension between how I live my life and the logical extension of my worldview. A secularist cannot live consistently with his belief because the good life requires some standard of goodness which a secularist cannot accept. He thinks he knows the standard, but when he is asked to objectively define it, he says that it is only convention. Schaeffer draws a horizontal line to represent the tension between how I live my life and what I believe. The two extremes on this line represent the secular world view and the Gospel, and a person finds a place on the line with which he is comfortable. Schaeffer suggests that the secularist will not hear the Gospel message unless he is pushed to the logical conclusion of his belief system. He calls this "taking the roof off", that is, exposing the individual to the consequences of absurdity. This is why we cry at funerals and in hospitals. The proximity of death removes our roof and exposes us to the absurdity of temporal existence. But wait a minute, if I have been saved then what is death except a doorway to Heaven? I have come full circle.
If I weep, it is from the weariness of fighting the enemy. I weep because I see the weakness in myself and my neighbors. I weep because they are weeping. Jesus either rose from the dead or He is a big lie. If He is a lie, then I will cry at the cruelty of a life without hope, and I will cry because life is absurd without eternity.
On this Easter morning, there is only one needful thing. I have visited both ends of the line of tension which Schaeffer describes. On one end is a tomb filled with bones and filth. On the other end is an empty tomb.
posted by moleses | 4:42 AM
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