The Write Place

Death has haunted human existence throughout the centuries. It has marked human experience, our culture and our stories. In all this it still stands through the ages that the resurrection of the body is a uniquely Christian hope, one given from the garden itself.

Without hope against this intruder, we pretend it’s a hero. Perhaps the man most responsible for reintroducing the idea of death as a hero is Charle’s Darwin in his particular rendition of the theory of evolution. Darwin’s book is titled

“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life“


Not only can one see the implicit racism and embrace of Hegelian struggle, but death is integral as the means of creation and progress. Death is not an intruder or an enemy. Death is the hero of the story.

The Bible tells us a different history.

By the sweat of your face
    you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
    for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
    and to dust you shall return.”

Genesis 3:19

We don’t have such a cruel hope or a cruel God. Death is an intruder, wrought by the presence of sin into a once perfect world. Death is our enemy, and it is defeated.

²⁵ For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. ²⁶ The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 

1 Corinthians 5:25-26

But today you see death treated as the hero. Euthanasia is praised in Europe as a “dignified way to die” prescribed for passing depression, because apparently, we care.

Even our use of sex is lifeless, avoiding the design right down to it’s components.

Abortion saves a woman from being a woman, and contributing in unique ways that a man cannot at the cost of the life she created in her body. Death here plays the hero, even if we pretend the child has never lived.

Or if you have a political opponent and an opportunity, death becomes your glory, both yours and his.

We live in a culture of death, where death in a million different ways is the hero. You only have two options, death is an intruder into the world God made, or a natural part of the world that self-exists. Death is the hero or the villain, the main character or the antagonist to be overcome.

Civilizations throughout history have known death as a hero one way or another. Ancient pagans used death as a means for appeasing the gods, gaining what they wanted (how little things change), and setting things right. They never tried to destroy death, even if they tried like epic heroes as Gilgamesh to escape it. Humanity always tried to use death as a means of setting the world right, all the while holding onto it as a natural hero.

For us Christians, the work of a sacrificial son is done for Christ has declared from the cross “it is finished.” You may miss it in English, you cannot in the Greek, where it is Τετέλεσται, meaning it is finished in a deeper sense. It is perfected, nothing can be added to the work on the cross. Christ in his perfect life and substitutionary death took our place, then rose again.

The resurrection means the defeat of death and Christ’s vindication and with it, our own secured as we are joined to him (Colossians 3:3).

The perfect sacrificial lamb has died, and he lives and reigns to set the world aright. He is removing death, that horrid intruder from the world he created.

Our culture no longer observes funerals but celebrates “celebration of life” ceremonies. Novel after novel praises death as a natural good. This is the cry of a coping creature seeking a better world, unwilling to find it, because that perfect world remains found in Christ alone.

 “Fear not, I am the first and the last, ¹⁸ and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. 

Revelation 1:17-18 (my selection)

Christians live differently, and when we left the culture all it could be was dead. Therefore, strive to live the life that Christ has given you, dying to the dead things of this world around you and live to Christ.

³ For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ who is your^[a] life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

⁵ Put to death therefore what is earthly in you:^[b] sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Colossians 3:3-5