Everlasting Life: How God Answers Our Questions about Grief, Loss, and the Promise of Heaven

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Introduction

That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up—that is for young and old alike to think about.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory.

1 Corinthians 15:54

Sitting in a waiting room was about the last thing I wanted to be doing at that moment. For heaven’s sake, it was the middle of summer and I hadn’t had any time off since Christmas. I was tired and cranky and ready for some relaxation, but there I was nonetheless.

My wife and I had flown with our three children to Dallas where most of our extended family lives, including my oldest sister, Susan, a physician in that area. Susan is a wonderful person who has a persistent way of keeping an eye on my personal health. Knowing I have a rather high-stress job and that I was approaching fifty, she insisted that while we were in Dallas I go see a friend of hers for a complete executive physical. I didn’t want to be there but knew I needed to be.

That morning I discovered she had not signed me up for your average run-of-the-mill physical. Oh no, this thing lasted six hours. I had every test you can imagine. By the time I finished, I felt like a human pincushion. I had a treadmill stress test. I had blood drawn. I had a body fat analysis. I had a CT scan of my lungs. I had pictures taken of my throat and vocal chords. I had an echocardiogram of my heart. I filled out a forty-page questionnaire about my physical exercise and dietary routines as well as questions about my mental and emotional health. To say that it was a thorough exam would be the understatement of the decade.

When I finally finished, I met with the doctor for thirty minutes to go over the preliminary findings, and while he indicated I was in reasonably good shape, his comments were hardly unequivocal. He told me that after a few more test results came in, he would mail me a detailed report, including recommendations I would need to follow to maximize my personal health.

Sure enough, three weeks later the packet arrived. I opened it, expecting to find a letter that said something to the effect of, Dr. Swanson, after an extensive review of all your tests, I am thoroughly impressed by your good health and find that you have the physical stature of a man half your age. Well done! Instead, the letter informed me that while I was in reasonably good health, there were twelve things—twelve—I needed to focus on if I wanted to improve my health and eliminate some potential risk factors for future disease.

I was stunned. I knew my diet was not as healthy as it should be. I knew I needed to watch my sugar intake and exercise more, but for crying out loud, come on—twelve things—really? As I sat there scanning the exhaustive list, I realized I had a choice to make. The doctor was essentially telling me that if I wanted to live for as long as possible—if I wanted to do all I could to fend off death until the last possible moment—then I needed to change some of my behavior patterns. The question was obvious: Was I willing to make those changes? Was I willing to change my behavior to live as long as I possibly could?

As I contemplated what I was willing and not willing to do, I started thinking about the notion of eternal life. As a Christian, I believe in heaven, the afterlife, and immortality. And that’s when it all hit me right between the eyes: How should my behavior change in light of the fact that I will never die? Gulp. I know it sounds like I’ve lost my mind, but think about it. If you believe what the Bible says about eternity and heaven, then physically we may die, but spiritually we never die. The essence of who we are goes on, albeit in a different form. So if that’s true, and I stake my life on it, then the question becomes: How should my view, my perspective, of life in this world change in light of my faith in Christ, which tells me I am going to live forever?

The question rattled me. Yes, I needed to work on changing some of my personal habits for better physical health, but I was gripped by a totally different reality: through our faith in Christ, we are actually immortal. Wrap your brain around that for a second. Our being, as created by God, never dies. This is not a pleasant-sounding myth or manmade psychological crutch; it is a promised reality. Scripture reminds us of this over and over again. In Christ, we are immortal through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel (2 Tim. 1:10). That’s not a reference to the immortality of Christ, but instead it is the declaration of our immortality through the gospel of Jesus Christ. What is the gospel? It is the Good News of God revealed in Christ, the Good News that Christ has opened the door to our salvation by his death and resurrection.

Perhaps more famously, Paul, while discussing the absolute certainty of the resurrection, writes in 1 Corinthians 15:52–54:

In a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. . . . The trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory.

Paul declares that there will be a day when our greatest enemy, death, will be swallowed up in the victory of Jesus, and we will be immortal. We will enter into the glorious hope of our everlasting life. Our being, as God made us, never dies. If we are in Christ, we live forever. It may well be the most hope-inducing truth in all of Scripture, given our fear of death. It is the hope of everlasting life.

As you try to grasp the magnitude of that, let me ask you a question: If this is true, then shouldn’t that also shape an enormous part of how we think and behave in this life? Shouldn’t it give us a completely different lens through which we view life on this planet? Think about it. Our culture today invests enormous resources, not to mention huge amounts of time and energy, in health care, medicine, and fitness. It’s almost impossible not to think about our physical health and all that we need to do to prolong our earthly life. But comparatively, do we spend any time considering the alternate reality that we will never die spiritually?

At the core of our investment in health and fitness is our deep desire to fend off physical death. Yet at some point we must acknowledge we will never succeed. Eventually our number comes up. Therefore, if we are going to be spiritually and emotionally healthy people, we need to consider what happens beyond this life. We need to spend some time wrestling with those questions instead of just the questions motivated by our physical existence. We need to face the prospect of our demise and all that is associated with it; thus, my purpose in this book is to help you do just that. I want to help you bring the subject to the surface and walk around it, see it, touch it, and feel it, and in so doing, grow comfortable in the truths that God has revealed about our physical lives and our spiritual immortality through Christ. I believe those truths can have life-changing consequences for both this life and the next.

Acknowledging the Inevitable

In spite of the cultural emphasis on this physical life, the specter of our death and what may lie beyond it is always there. Sometimes quiet, sometimes roaring, sometimes lurking just beyond the grasp of conscious thought—death waits.

Still, most people do everything they can to avoid it. In my twenty-three years as a pastor, I have spent innumerable days immersed in matters of life and death. I have prayed at the beds of the dying, held the hands of family members as they coped with crushing loss, visited funeral homes with grieving spouses to help them pick out caskets and burial plots, anointed foreheads, wiped tears, written eulogies, and watched many take their last breath. Even so, as I move and minister among my congregation and in our community, I find this odd reluctance to talk about death and dying, at least among those not readily facing it. When’s the last time you were at a social gathering and heard someone say, Well, I’ve really been giving some thought to the end of my life, and here’s what I think . . .? It just never happens, does it?

At times, however, we do hear people at social gatherings muster the courage to share a recent loss. Someone will say, Yeah, I’ve been out of town for a few weeks taking care of my mother. She finally died last Tuesday. In spite of the enormous vulnerability that person most surely feels, what happens? Eyes immediately drop to the floor. No one quite knows what to do next. I’m so sorry, we say. Uncomfortable shuffling of feet follows. All involved are trying to think of a deft way to change the subject. It’s awkward because no one wants to go there. It puts a huge damper on the conversation. The subject of death is a big wet blanket, smothering people with feelings and thoughts they would much rather avoid. We are more comfortable keeping death in the shadows. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. It’s value-neutral. I think it’s just a very basic part of our human nature.

Several years ago, John Cloud, a senior writer for Time magazine, wrote a marvelous piece for that publication entitled A Kinder, Gentler Death. It appeared on the cover with the subhead, Dying on Our Own Terms. It was a poignant examination of end-of-life issues in which he wrote:

Dying is one of the few events certain to occur in life and yet Americans as a whole have a hard time discussing it. Although many Americans legally designate someone else to make medical decisions after they are unable to, 30 percent of those designated do not know they have been picked.[1]

That statistic doesn’t surprise me. They don’t know they were designated because so many people don’t want to bring up the subject. Most of us want to avoid it as much as we can, mainly because we view it as a one-dimensional conversation that’s always about death, never about life, and that always contains seemingly unanswerable questions. Because we are not acquainted with the God-given answers available to us in Scripture, we don’t want to bring up the questions. And if, by chance, the question does sneak into a conversation, we’ll throw out a perfunctory comment and change the subject as quickly as we can, retreating into our psychological defenses that remind us, I’m healthy. That’s not going to happen to me, at least not for a long time.

Another of our favorite defense mechanisms is to mock death, as though somehow by thumbing our nose at it, we can prevent it from touching us. I remember reading about an annual celebration in a tiny mountain community in Colorado that really caught me off guard. Since 2001 the town of Nederland has hosted Frozen Dead Guy Days. I know. Seems strange to me too, but I am not making this up. It started when Grandpa Bredo Morstoel died in 1989 in Norway, and a family member, hoping to start her own cryogenics business, brought his frozen body to Nederland, Colorado. When local authorities found out about it, the practice of storing bodies was outlawed, but Mr. Morstoel was grandfathered in and allowed to stay in town. The town, seeing its opportunity to laugh in the face of death, started the festival. There was a frozen dead guy in their town, so why not?

Today 20,000 people attend. There are coffin races and lots of beer, and for a mere $150 you get a personal visit to the remains of Mr. Morstoel. Festival director Amanda MacDonald says the goal is to drink a convivial toast to the grim specter of death or to spit in death’s eye.[2] This gleefully macabre weekend built around a frozen corpse—a frozen dead guy!—is yet another example of how we finite human beings try to cope with our pending physical demise.

Why do we avoid and mock death? Aside from the obvious reasons, I think its mystery is a large factor. I love it when the apostle Paul, beginning a discourse on our immortality, says, Listen, I tell you a mystery (1 Cor. 15:51). Before he launches into some of the specifics of what God wants to reveal about our journey from this life to the next, he says, "Hey, pay attention! Listen up! I am going to tell you some things about death and dying and the life that is to come. But the first point I need to make is this: it’s a mystery. You will never, in your finite minds, grasp this fully."

Death is the great and vast unknown, and like it or not, things that are deeply mysterious or beyond our mental reach usually frighten us. Statistics from a 2003 national survey show that while 92 percent of Americans believe in God and 85 percent believe in heaven, their beliefs bring them little solace in regard to their fear of death.[3] The hope of our faith in Christ is somehow not getting through. Thus, in our fear, we deny its reality.

Finding the Answers to the Mystery

Like most mysteries, death leaves us asking questions. While we’d like to figure it out, it is so unpleasant to us that we don’t make any real effort to find answers. As I said, we avoid it, at least until we realize it’s not going away. While this realization comes on us at different times and in different ways, at some point it does come. Anna Quindlen says death becomes an enduring thing called loss.[4] We do not get over it. The actual death may pass, but then we are left with something larger—an abyss called loss that endures. Emily Dickinson described our dance with death as an awful leisure.[5] It is awful, and it seems to be in no hurry. Death lingers in an almost leisurely way in spite of our best efforts to elude it. Thus, if death endures and lingers long, then the only way we can hope to ever find relief from our fears and anxieties on this subject is to find answers. If it’s not going away, then we need to find hope. Well, here’s the good news: God does provide answers. God is not going to tell us everything, but he does give us insights and glimpses into the mystery of death such that we can find peace and security.

Here’s the thing: when we have questions in this life and we go to God, God wants to answer. He delights in revealing himself to us. Throughout the Scriptures, God is not trying to remain hidden. He wants to be known.[6] That is most clearly seen in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. If God did not want to be known, then Jesus would never have come. God further affirms in Matthew 7:8, The one who seeks finds. God tells us in James 1:5, If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously. If we feel we lack understanding on something, God says ask. He’s not trying to keep us in the dark, and my hope is that in this book you will discover the wonder of how God answers most of our questions on death and dying through himself. Ultimately, God is the answer.

This is never more evident than in the moments when Jesus faced death. In that awful, horrific scene, Matthew 27:46 reminds us that Jesus asked a question. It was not a question rising out of some gentle curiosity. It was a question that welled up from a place deep within him—a question that was literally shouted from the depths of his being. Jesus cried out in a loud voice, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As piercing as that moment is for us to consider, it should also bring us great freedom and confidence.

If as Jesus faced death and all its mysteries, he asked God a question, then we have been set free to do so as well. And we have been set free to ask God with all the emotion and earnestness that we may be feeling at any given time. We don’t have to whimper the questions. If we are hurting and lost, we can cry out to the living God, and he promises to hear us—and to bring us his presence. In the agony of death, Jesus turned to the Father for answers and relief, and that should be our plan too. Answers to these questions are found nowhere else.

We should also remember that two others died along with Jesus that day, and one of them asked a question of Jesus. In Luke 23:39, one of the thieves asked, Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us! I think it was mainly a rhetorical question, a command of sorts more than an honest question. The thief was essentially asking, If you are God, then get me down from here and I’ll believe you! The thief wanted Jesus to get him out of his current situation. But before