Death

“Hades, the place of shadows of which the pagan poets sang, is not our state after death; it is simply death itself, the instant of transition and dissolution. In the end, the dim beneficent powers will take the cosmos to pieces all round me, as my house is being taken to pieces now.” 

This above is an excerpt from G.K. Chesterton’s essay “On Being Moved”. As human beings, we are perfectly content to ignore death, to push it further down the line, so to speak. Death belongs to the distant future, and we often chant the creed of the procrastinator: “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” Yet sometimes death confronts us in ways which cannot be ignored, forcing us to wrestle with the ugly truth of our mortality.  

Death is not merely an event that occurs at the end of our lives. Rather, it permeates every aspect of this world. In his book “For the Life of the World”, Fr. Alexander Schmemann writes: “Through time…, all future is dissolved in death and annihilation. Time is the only reality of life, yet it is a strangely nonexistent reality: it constantly dissolves in a past which no longer is, and in a future which always leads to death. By itself time is nothing but a line of telegraph poles strung out into the distance and at some point along the way is our death.” Life itself is ultimately the experience of death. We are born under the shadow of death; it is always on the horizon. Death has been so deeply ingrained, so tragically normalized, that we see mortality as a distinguishing characteristic of what it means to be human. The Christian ought to recognize this as a lie. Death robs life of its purpose. It is not a regrettable yet inevitable end. It is not a fulfillment or a peace. It is violent and abhorrent and it tears apart the very fabric of the universe.  

But what is death? In the ‘Phaedo’, Socrates reasons that death is the separation of body and soul. This is a very good definition. Whatever else it may be, we can indeed reasonably say that, for the living, it is first and foremost separation, a wall erected between the living and the dead. Through death, the relationships that we form are broken; we are cut off from those whom we love. Insofar as “it is not good that man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18), we can say that death is an evil. And it is the greatest of evils because it deprives us of the greatest good: God Himself. We know that God is life. He is the source and sustainer of all existence. “In Him, we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Everything is made by Him and for Him and consummates ultimately in communion with Him. In death, everything is torn apart because death has its source in the rejection of God as the center of reality and thus rejection of life itself. “Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). 

Time is often viewed as something that we move through. My experience of moving to college has given me a different perspective. Time moves through us, whether we would like it to or not. The past is always fading away into memory. The present is transitory. The future is a great unknown. Time is separation and (for much of the unbelieving world) the only certainty is death. Albus Dumbledore aptly puts it when he says, “It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more” (and for the Christian who does know what lies beyond that veil, there is no cause to fear, for “perfect love casts out fear” [1 John 4:18]). Yet it is precisely this unknown that is such a threat. It completely upends our illusion of control and throws us into disarray. Ancient Mesopotamia was right to understand chaos as the sea. It is vast, unknown, and dangerous (sea monsters included). To travel the sea was to risk death. Pagan worship was largely centered around appeasing the proper deity to get something that you wanted (i.e. control, power, or safe passage across the sea). The modern world has hardly changed. We sacrifice our time, money, and even humanity to ensure our relative safety and self-preservation. Ultimately, such efforts are futile. We have not found a way to stop the future from approaching. We cannot permanently stave off death.  

For the Christian, the reign of death over reality is unnatural. It is a captivity. Death is a tyrant and a usurper. Death ruled the world because the world rejected the love and life of God, isolating and condemning itself. Yet it is through Christ’s death and entrance into Hades (death itself) that death is overthrown. Not only are the dead raised but the dead world itself is filled with life. Time, which had previously been an agent of separation, is given a new fulfillment: the Kingdom of God. The light has shone upon the dark unknown “and the darkness comprehended it not” (John 1:5). Death remains a tragedy, but it has been robbed of its power. Death still comes, but it has no more power. The transition is not one of dissolution but one of consummation, not into a state of separation, but of perfect and unmediated communion. Death doesn’t separate us from the ones we love; rather, it unites us to Him who loves us perfectly and beyond measure.  It is no longer the waters of chaos and separation and death that rush toward us. Rather, it is the One who walks upon the waters, who says, “It is I. Do not be afraid.”