Currently there is much agitation about euthanasia and a disastrous push towards legalising it under the guise of so-called assisted dying. I’ve written before on this topic. Here I would like to think about how we approach death. As Christians do we know how to ‘die well’? Such a phrase was much used by our forefathers in the faith but is rarely heard today. I fear this reflects we may have become less like our forefathers in this area and more like those in our society around us.
Our society continues to delude itself that death can be beaten. The language of conquering cancer, beating heart disease, or defeating dementia all reflects an underlying belief that we will one day be able to defeat death and achieve our own immortality independently of God. Of course, scientists and most other people know that this isn’t possible.
But the ubiquitous use of ageing creams, botox, plastic surgery, healthy eating fads, and exercise programmes are all part of a wider conviction that we can stop ageing and live young lives, if not yet quite forever, for a very long time. And all of this is in turn motivated by a powerful desire to avoid thinking about death itself and especially how to confront it when our time comes. We prefer to distract ourselves with our attempts at eternal youthfulness.
Avoiding having to think about facing death has been made much easier by the fact that most of us rarely have to encounter the dead and dying. Most people now die in hospital or care homes, out of sight of friends and family. In previous generations death was unavoidable and indeed a regular personal experience. The Puritan pastor and theologian John Owen, for example, lived through the death of all of his children, ten of them in childhood, and then his wife. Personal confrontations with the dying couldn’t be avoided.
But today, for most of us, witnessing someone dying is very rare. This makes it much easier to avoid having to think about our own death. And these societal realities affect us, don’t they? Perhaps, like those around us, we think the best way to die is suddenly. If you die suddenly then you avoid the unpleasantness and embarrassment associated in our minds with dying. This, of course, is the major driver for the assisted suicide/dying lobby.
But the Bible teaches a different approach. It gives us examples of godly men engaging in an extended farewell before they died, e.g. Jacob (to his sons), Moses (to Israel), David (to Solomon), Jesus (in the upper room to his disciples), and Paul (to the elders of Ephesus). They prepared themselves and those they were leaving behind. Surely these are given to us as examples of how to die well. What can we learn from them? They include practical elements (e.g. Jacob’s funeral arrangements) which are important – and well covered in a ET article by Stephen Rees, (Ready for your funeral? The wisdom of planning ahead). But their emphasis is elsewhere.
Although these addresses were given in vastly different circumstances, they share a focus on the future and how those addressed should live for the Lord. God’s promises are to be remembered, teaching received is to be lived out and passed on, and the addressees are encouraged in such ways to be strong in the faith. Such preparation of others for our imminent absence is the pattern they set us.
They are not about sickness and pain and suffering. They are not about self. Of course, in order to be in a position to give such God-centred advice to others, we need to be right with him ourselves first. It is reasonable to infer a prior engagement with God and ‘a settling of our accounts’. It is important when dying that we seek reconciliation with anyone from whom we may have become estranged, that we have forgiven others their sins against us and do not retain any bitterness.
But having prayerfully made our peace with God and others, then our thoughts and talk when dying should be towards those we leave behind. These Scriptural farewell addresses necessarily vary greatly in detail, just as ours will depending on who we are and whom we are addressing. The words of a grandmother to generations of her family will be different from those of a young man to his family when his life is cut short by terminal illness, and so on. We have myriad individual circumstances. But the core themes remain.
These include encouraging others to remember the wonderful promises of our salvation – expressing our own enthusiasm and confidence in them in doing so; to walk closely with the Lord Jesus and to be mighty in his service after we have departed; to maintain godly relationships with our fellow Christians; and at all times to glorify our Saviour before the world.
Such godly preparation for death will affect how we approach medical decisions. In the world around us we see a painful desperation in end-of-life decision making. People grasp after any and every putative treatment to try desperately to prolong their lives. If you think this world is all there is, then there is some sense in this – but only some. Because spending your final days and weeks in and out of hospital appointments and therapy suites isn’t the best way to depart, is it? Even on the world’s terms you miss out on time spent with friends and family.
Sadly, one occasionally sees Christians behaving in the same way. But if we have the confidence we claim to have in the Lord and so prepare for our departure, then our dying should be visibly different. Instead of frantically seeking the mirage of medical wonder-cures, we can take a calmer, assured approach. We can decline over-heroic treatments in order to spend crucial times meeting with our Christian friends and family and preparing them for our departure.
This isn’t, of course, an exhortation to abandon all the blessings of modern medicine. But in the face of death it is an exhortation to think and behave differently from the world around us.
