Page 3 of 3Century after century Christians rehearsed and applied their beliefs about death; throughout their lives they envisioned dying so that at the moment of death they would be prepared. They sought to die reconciled to God and their human brothers and sisters. They gave evidence of their faith in the life to come, either by professing it or by describing their deathbed visions of the heavenly places, often both. They offered comfort to surviving loved ones who desired to hear the last words of the dying who were so close to the eternal enjoyment of life with God.
Death, Christians believed, was not just a medical battle to be fought, though they did use medicine for healing. Nor was death simply about the loss of precious relationships to be mourned. Instead, this was a spiritual event that required preparation. The dying performed it in public as evidence of their faith and to provide instruction to others. Rather than waiting for illness to overtake them, these Christians were actively involved in their own dying, in control to the extent possible of the dying process. Injured at the death of a fellow Christian, the church community then rallied together to grieve and to express once again their faith and knit themselves together in a new way.
As dying in the late 20th century became a drawn out process, I also discovered an immense opportunity to relearn and reteach these values. While the question of when or whether to withdraw a feeding tube is still difficult to answer, there are at least certain values we can apply. As we assist others through the process of treating a terminal illness or as we contemplate our own answers to such questions, we can seek to perform these elements of the good death. Whatever the medical decisions made, under any circumstances we can express our faith in God, our love for one another, our hope in the resurrection. Having done this, we will have been faithful, in the eyes of fellow believers throughout history, to God and our neighbor. In the culmination of our lives, we will have said and done what was most important.
We avoid death or even fear it because death is an evil, the horrible rending of a person from her body and from loved ones. Jesus wept at Lazarus's death. The apostle Paul called death the last enemy. Death is indeed evil.
Yet death is also a mercy; it is the final affliction of life's miseries. It is the entrance to life with God. Life's passing can be a beautiful gift of God. This riddle of death's evil and its blessing is not difficult to solve. We enact it every Good Friday as we recall the evil of Christ's death to be followed on Easter Sunday with the joy of his resurrection. We do not rejoice in Christ's death or Judas's betrayal. Yet there is no evil so great that God cannot bring joy and goodness from it. That is why death deserves our attention in life. Because we instinctively want to avoid it, to turn our face away, it is good to look death in the eye and constantly remind ourselves that our hope is in God, who defeated death.
Adapted from The Art of Dying, by Rob Moll, chapter 2, copyright(c) 2010. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press PO Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515.www.ivpress.com.
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