Death Anxiety, the Abnormality of Death, and the Resurrection

Fear of death is universal, but not something that comports well with the secularized societies of the West. This fear and the hope that Christians have in Christ was discussed by Clarke Scheibe, director the Canadian branch of the L’Abri Fellowship at the annual L’Abri Conference on February 13.

Scheibe said that people in the affluent West are uncomfortable talking or thinking about death. But Biblically, we should “number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). Although the Bible admonishes us to think seriously about death, Christians in fact seem to fear it as well as people in the general culture. They should have firmly in mind that “death is the last enemy” (I Cor. 15:26) and “the hope that the Christian has through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” He observed, however, that Christian philosopher Dallas Willard said that for many Christians, the death of a loved one seems to be the greatest trauma, and for many, any future existence beyond the grave does not make “intuitive sense.”

When confronted with a terminal diagnosis, denial, disbelief, and dazed withdrawal from immediate reality are a common first response. Spouse and close relatives may react in the same way, followed by fear of being without the loved one, regret about one’s life, fear of thinking of the world without one’s presence, and fear of what one faces after death. This, according to David Kuhl, a doctor who worked in palliative care, is “death anxiety.” Scheibe proposed to address death anxiety and the proper Christian response.

Secular Answers to Death Anxiety

Scheibe first turned to adversary secular views, and in particular to the ideas expressed by Greek materialist philosophers. Their admonition was not to worry about death. He quoted Epicurus saying “death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us, for while we exist, death is not present, and when death is present, we no longer exist.” While Epicurus was trying to get rid of death anxiety, Scheibe said many would consider it “cold comfort.” But others have held death to be “natural, necessary, and even good.” Fear of death rather should be considered something we should get over, “like childhood fears.” Lucretius said that we do not care about our lack of memory or nonexistence in the world before we were born. This is a “mirror” of what it will be like after we die, and we shouldn’t worry about that either. Death is also necessary to make space for those who will follow us, and in the modern world a secular viewpoint might observe danger of overpopulation, finite resources, and the need for death in driving biological evolution forward. Death is held to be good for these reasons, and also to end suffering.

Another secular viewpoint is that the finality of death gives closure to life, making us more concerned about how we use the time that we have. He referred to The Floating Opera , a novel by John Barth, in which the protagonist, after having decided to commit suicide due to the meaninglessness of life, changes his mind after realizing that suicide is as meaningless as life, seeing part of a play on a barge floating down a river, realizing he does not know its beginning or end, and thus how each moment becomes meaningful with the thought that it might be his last.

Scheibe said that these secular views are “insufficient” because death is “not sentimental, but an enemy, …and death nullifies any significance or justice beyond the grave.” Death, in fact, “degrades us.” He referred to another film, “ Wit ,” in which the protagonist, a scholar of John Donne’s holy sonnets, has terminal cancer, holds onto her wit and intelligence for much of the ordeal, but loses it toward the end, as “she is reduced to simple and vulgar language.” But at the very end she sees “the beauty of what it is to be human, alongside the horrors of what death does to our skill, grace, dignity, and humanity.” He also noted that the loss of a loved one is hard, especially the loss of a child. It is cruel, Scheibe said, to quote Lucretius’ admonition to “take these tears of yours somewhere away from here, cut out the whining” in view of this.

The Bible acknowledges death as an insatiable enemy. “Death has climbed in through our windows, and has entered our fortresses, it has removed the children from the streets, and the young men from the public squares” (Jer. 9:21), and “before I go to the place of no return, to the land of gloom and utter darkness, to the land of deepest night, of utter darkness and disorder, where even the light is like darkness” (Job 10:21-22). In the Biblical view, death is an enemy, and it “stirs up the fear of divine judgment.”

Again, he quoted Lucretius dismissing the fear of punishment beyond the grave: “the furies, and the dark, and the grim jaws of Tartarus, belching blasts … do not exist at all and never could, but here on earth we do fear punishment for wickedness, and in proportion dread our dreadful deeds, imagining all too well being cast down from the Tarpeian rock. Jail, flogging, hangmen, brands, the rack, the knout. And even though these never touch us, still the guilty mind is its own torturer … we can see no end at all to suffering and punishment and fear these will be more than doubled after death. Hell does exist on earth in the life of fools.” Our fear, according to Lucretius, “is simply an illusion of less enlightened minds.”

Yet despite this, Scheibe noted that David Kuhl observed that “majority of people have tremendous regret and pangs of remorse for how they have lived.” This is because they have wronged others, and even God whom “they are not sure exists.” People approaching death “speak about the spiritual, the transcendent as though it were real.” Yet remarkably, despite approaching death giving life sharp focus, Scheibe said that “death is the very thing that causes people to feel that life is absurd.” He quoted Ecclesiastes about the common end of all, both good and evil (Eccl. 9:2-3). Scheibe said of death anxiety that “this great weight on our hearts throughout our lives is but the wrath of God laid on our shoulders. It is the result of human rebellion against the creator.” In fact, “death anxiety is the experience of the wrath of God.”

Death Anxiety and the Cross

Scheibe observed that “the purpose of the incarnation was to break the power of death.” Jesus died “not just to die our death … [but] in order to taste death anxiety and to take it from us.” Through the resurrection, Jesus “has victory over death.” Nevertheless, Jesus’ resurrection “was unexpected and confounding.” The early Christians struggled to understand it, Scheibe said, even as the vaguely grasped fulfillment of Biblical prophecy in the Old Testament.

Showing his substitution for others, Jesus died “the lowest death possible in history, a slave’s death on a cross in weakness and humiliation and in shame.” Scheibe said that “this is critical, because this victory revealed that death does not nullify God’s power of justice.” This means that for Christians, “death is secondary to our existence.” This is shown by “the blood of the martyrs.” People died “in confidence of God’s justice.” That there will be absolute justice beyond this life “gave rise to the idea of the dignity of the individual” in Western civilization.

Assurance of eternal life is not to be regarded as “a golden ticket to paradise,” although this is the way salvation in Jesus is ridiculed in modern times. Rather, it “sets us squarely in the here and now, no longer worried about whatever end we may face.” Although we may face trials, we have the power of Jesus’ resurrection regardless of any adversity. Christ’s resurrection therefore is the answer to death anxiety.

Yet Christians do experience death anxiety. “Regret for the life we have lived, loss of our significance in society,” etc. are things that Christians do experience. Those who argue that death is natural, necessary, and good are, he said “simply putting makeup on a corpse.” It is rather “a thief, it’s a destroyer, it’s the last enemy.” It has been overcome by Christ and will not be a reality for Christians in eternity.

The Fall of Man, Death, and Natural History

A questioner suggested that death existed before the fall, that our modern knowledge of biological life shows that death is natural to life, and that only the human relationship to and regard for death changed at the fall of man. But Scheibe said that if we accept the idea of death before the fall, it “re-interprets what the cross was for.” The cross and salvation become simply a matter of “evolutionary completion,” rather than overcoming the fatal effects of the fall. But Biblically Jesus through his death and resurrection was “overcoming the effects of the fall.” Scheibe said that “if we look at the human body and natural processes … it seems that death is natural; no one lives forever.”

He made two points in response to the apparent naturalness of death in the current human condition. First, Adam and Eve “had access to the tree of life.” They were either sustained by the tree of life, or else God made them physically able to live endlessly. “But then he severed them from his eternal life in him.” Thus, “the experience of death and death anxiety, is … being separated from significance. It’s the image of God in despair, because eternity is set in our hearts; this is not the way it’s supposed to be.” That Adam and Eve were hominids, mortal creatures who “then became aware of God and then fear death later on” amounts to saying that the fall of man was the first human awareness of existence. They became aware of God, of death, and that they live “in a world of terror.” The fall then becomes an “existential” fall, not a moral fall, in which Adam and Eve actually rebel against God, and the resulting change from a paradisical condition to a wretched condition. Such an “existential” fall is something which Scheibe believes is not Biblical.

Secondly, when we look at the human body, and death seems natural to it, we should realize that while the Garden of Eden was continuous with the rest of nature, it is also supernatural, and we were cut off from that. Thus, we cannot find the garden in our world today. When we look at the human body, we can only look at it naturally. Thus, Scheibe said he stands against a strictly scientific account of human nature, “as if it has never been otherwise, and if it can never be otherwise.” Humans recover their true natures’ partially, when we turn to Christ for salvation, “and one day fully, when we’re restored to him.” He said that “when Jesus is healing, he is not overcoming” the natural order but is fulfilling “it in a way that we cannot yet imagine.”

As to the Garden of Eden, he said that it was indeed part of creation, but that there was “something distinct about it that we cannot access now.” He agrees that modern science has shown the world to be the age conventional science claims it to be, but we need to think deeply about the “major changes” an originally mortal humanity makes to the gospel account, and consider how to understand the fall in conjunction with modern science, but assuming that the Bible indeed means what it says about human origins.

It was also asked whether or not seeds (mentioned in Genesis chapter 1) imply death (since they imply a need for reproduction). Scheibe distinguished between human and non-human death. Here he seemed to concede non-human death before the fall. But human death, he said, is seen in the Bible as something of great significance. From this standpoint, human reproduction was necessary at the creation to populate the earth from the original couple.

In response to a further question, Scheibe speculated that if Adam and Eve had not sinned, the world would exist in “a perfect permaculture.” In our current sinful condition, we don’t know how to relate to nature, “and so we bring death and decay to creation itself as well, as death bearers.”

Otherworldliness and Life on Earth

Does the hope of heaven makes Christians too other-worldly to be concerned about suffering in this world, it was asked. Scheibe said that the early Christian martyrs did not become “detached” from this world; they were engaged with the world (helping the poor, etc.) but accepted persecution for following Christ as part of Christian discipleship. Thus we have hope for this world and engage it with the Word of God. But this should not become utopian. Rather, it allows us to serve Christ even in “small things.”

Also, what about Christian political participation in a highly and increasingly polarized society? Scheibe said that the early Christians prevailed through nearly three centuries of persecution by their love for one another and others. They lived quiet and peaceable lives (I Tim. 2:1-4), not seeking martyrdom, but not fearing any death that would result from their obedience to God. They expected to be raised at the last day if they followed him. He noted that even some non-Christians today notice the “radical changes that happened” in the general culture in the first Christian centuries.

Finally, a questioner wanted to know how we answer people who ask, “how could God create such a messed-up world,” in the sense that God knew the great evil that would exist in his creation. Scheibe responded that with equal force we must insist that God is sovereign over creation, knowing what would come to pass, but also that his creatures have freedom. Adam and Eve were not forced to sin in the Garden of Eden, even if God foreknew their choice.

With the many “imponderable questions” about death and the fall, Scheibe suggested an analogy of “negative art.” In executing negative art, one does not draw the object to be depicted, and but blackens all the background. The object remains in the picture. So it is with the account of the fall, in understanding it, we must eliminate the things incompatible with it (such as the fall as evolutionary completion rather than immoral act of rebellion against God) to arrive at the true Biblical picture of the fall of man, which is that of the original human sin, resulting in a sinful humanity.

Scheibe observed that even Christian, the protagonist of The Pilgrim’s Progress feared the waters of death and had to have Hopeful help him through his death anxiety. And likewise some Christians require others to help them through the fear of death. But all Christians should trust God’s promises. We will never know all things, even in our eternal state. “But we will no longer be distrusting what we do not know.”

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