I got an e-mail today from a very dear friend who just learned that his brother-in-law had a day or two to live. He is in his 50’s with cancer. He asked me how to go about trying to comfort his wife, who is taking her brother’s imminent death in a very hard way.
I shared with him some general thoughts about death that had the most universal application, as this family does not have a strong Christian foundation, although they are all hard working people of wonderful character.
I thought I would pass these along:
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Wow; that’s a tough one. Here a few things that I would say — not to say that this is anywhere near a complete answer in a time like this. You know the family, of course, so you can go through these & see if you feel like anything may be worth sharing.
• Nobody’s life is permanent. When someone who is 50 passes away, they didn’t really “lose their life.” They lost a portion of it. It was cut short, but it had richness and meaning, and some wonderful and precious memories were left behind for others to treasure. In the end, we all can leave only that regardless of our lifespan. You find comfort by placing real value on those things, and that lets the person “live” beyond their time in your life.
• Life does not end with death; it merely transitions. Life is too wonderful and amazing for its Inventor to make us hit a brick wall at the end. Most religions teach that life is a preparation for eternity. There there is no pain, no disease, no suffering and no goodbyes. For now, our bridge to that time & place is faith and doing all that the Bible teaches to achieve atonement for our sins.
• In the end, God knows best & does not owe us an explanation for how He governs human life. We can only trust in His innate goodness and come to the conclusion that what He does is in our best interest, like any loving parent.
• Really in the end, it is very challenging to comfort someone in a time like this. You can only convey God’s comfort. Like I said a while ago, I always go to the Psalms to find that.
You can see what a challenge it is to lead a funeral service. Everybody is looking at you with one message in their eyes: make it right! That is a pretty unbelievable challenge, but it comes with the territory. That’s when you have to know right where to reach inside yourself to come up with the goods. I never feel adequate for a responsibility like that.
Hope that helps, my friend. My heart honestly & truly goes out to you guys.
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a few more thoughts on death . . . .
Death brings sadness for many reasons. A person we love has been taken out of lives. Before the world became such a small place, I remember airports and the great passenger liner docks of New York City being like that. Goodbyes had a different meaning then. Separations were much longer.
One of the most difficult things about facing death, especially our own, is its mystery. What lies on the other side? Many people do not know. Some would say that this is the province of faith to know. I would not entirely agree that it is.
So many of the important questions of life are to me based on how we answer one basic question. It is a rational, empirical, unemotional and non-religious question: Is the Bible a reliable text? You cannot move forward with the other important questions of life until you deal honestly and rationally with that vitally important question.
I have personally found the Bible to be a reliable book. It has over 55,000 verifications from the field of Archaeology alone. My personal life experience also confirms its reliability: I have applied its principles to my life and they have delivered as promised. This has been reinforced for me in the lives of thousands of others.
So when a person categorically refuses to accept these basic components of my life view, I almost always conclude that they are operating under a personal bias against religion or God. I have always found that that bias is only designed to protect their moral autonomy: they do not want a moral code governing their lives that they cannot be free to conform to their personal behavior. In the end, these are the people who have the greatest fear of death and the most difficulty in facing their own.
The Bible teaches that death can be a wonderful transition to an inexpressibly joyous and spectacular eternal existence in a place called Heaven. We see in the pages of this book a most interesting fact: there is no scale of innate or expressed virtue on which our position determines our access to this paradise. Rather, we are each and every one of us accepted or rejected on the basis of how we have dealt with our own sin. If we have atoned for our sins in the manner prescribed by God, the Atonement (at-one-ment), then we are accepted in Heaven when we die, for “nothing that defileth shall enter therein.” It is not about how we compare to our neighbor, it is about how we compare to perfection. We shrink from that divine standard at our own spiritual peril.
When that principle has been understood, and the personal commitment to God’s atonement has been accomplished through understanding and plying the biblical path of atonement, people begin to experience a whole new perspective on death. An inner transformation of spirit takes place that you will immediately know is bigger than yourself . . . . much bigger.
The Bible is crystal clear on the details: Jesus died in your place on the cross to atone for your sins. This act was the perfect expression of God’s righteousness (He couldn’t give us a pass on our sin) and His unfathomable love: He secured a place for us in Heaven for all eternity because of His great love for each and every one of us.
Having been through the process of atonement and having made a personal commitment to it based on the principles above, I no longer fear death; neither is there any great mystery in it for me. I understand perfectly how the Apostle Paul could even taunt death with the immortal words, “Oh death, where is thy sting?” This is not only a good place for heart and soul to live, but a position that I maintain should make a great deal of sense to the analytical mind as well.
One has no less daunting a task than to disprove the Bible before dismissing the empirical validity of the biblical atonement. That is quite a task, and one at which men smarter than many of us combined have failed to accomplish, though they surely have tried. Most who do try will grade their own paper, so to speak, and dishonestly give themselves a passing grade. Sadly, the closer they get to their own life’s end, the more daunting the realization becomes that their grade is undeserved, and that their failure comes with consequences beyond what they have imagined. That is a sad, tragic, and unnecessary fate. There will be no peace in their death.
Perhaps the mystery of how man must come to his God is somehow contained in the words of Jesus: “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.”
Jerry D. Kaifetz, Ph.D.
