Fear of Death

The passengers boarded the Ethiopian Air jet as they do anywhere. Parents with small children were clamoring aboard, excited at the prospect of seeing other family in Nairobi, Kenya. Others were diplomats or business people who were leaving Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to accomplish specific missions in Nairobi; still others were simply returning home. It was only a two-hour flight. Even for those who hated to fly, the trip would not be bad.

Half way to Nairobi, three men suddenly stood up brandishing fireaxes and broken whiskey bottles. They commandeered the jet and demanded safe passage to Australia. The pilot informed them that they could not possibly get there with the fuel they had on board, but the hijackers would not be deterred. The jet charted a course over the Indian Ocean, all the time the pilot warning that fuel was low and that they must head to Nairobi if the plane were to land safely. The crew prepared the passengers for a crash landing, and for a full twenty minutes all aboard faced possible impending death. Twenty minutes of uncertainty, anxiety, fear. Questions raced, then lingered hauntingly in their minds. “What will become of my family?” “Have I lived life to the fullest?” “Am I ready to die?” “Will it hurt?” “What if I really have to face a God? Will he accept me?” Twenty minutes is too long to have to think about impending doom.

Finally, the fuel was depleted. The pilot tried mightily to reach an island formation just in view, but the jet was plummeting like a skydiver in freefall. It was not a smooth descent. For four minutes they fell. For four minutes, they fell. Four minutes is too long to have to think about almost certain doom. People screamed. They shrieked as they looked death full in its hideous face. The jet’s wing tipped slightly, dipped into the water, and then the whole jet cartwheeled over and over again.

There were only twenty survivors. They told the stories of at least two men who were able to face death with serenity and equanimity. One of them spent the last twenty minutes of the flight telling the other pallid, sweating, fear-paralyzed passengers how to prepare to meet God. Another, a father with three small children, was calm and spent his time comforting his beloved little ones with words of hope and peace, and the assurance to them that they would meet God if they had to pass through death that day.

Consider another scene, this time closer to home. A routine day. She was a college student heading off to class. She stopped at the railroad crossing; the gates were down, the lights were flashing, and the bells were ringing. She heard the roar of the oncoming train. No big deal. But then she felt the bump from behind, and then the agonizing realization that she was being pushed forward; the guy in her mirror had just rear-ended her. Her forward motion quickly turned into lateral motion as the train caught the front of her car and began to drag her down the tracks. She thought fast and called 911 on her cell phone, but no one could understand her, much less help her. For the next four miles, the train dragged her. Four miles of panic and fear. Four miles of facing death. The train with its extra cargo then hit a bump and the car and driver were jolted free. She was safe, but not before a harrowing few minutes with death riding shot-gun.

Imagine yourself as a student at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, April, 1999. The two gunmen, armed to the teeth with weapons and armed in their hearts with bitter and sadistic hatred, march into school, shooting at will. Students are massacred without mercy and without reason. How would you have faced death?

Finally, remember September 11, 2001. The Twin Towers at the World Trade Center are destroyed by those hate the United States, and over 3000 perish. There are countless acts of heroism, self-sacrifice, and compassion. But, over 3000 die. How would you or I have looked into the eyes of death? Think about those who faced the choices between death by fire, death by suffocation, death by the collapse of the structure, or death by a leap from the building to the streets hundreds of feet below. Think of the fear, no, the sheer terror many must have felt. How would you have felt? What would you have thought?

YOU WILL DIE

These scenarios are true. I present them to make the point that you could have been in any of these events. Life is strange. Things happen. Surprises often overtake us, but death is not one of them. You may be surprised at how you die or when you die, but you will die someday. You will die. Death may come to you after a long and chronic illness and thus provide you with much time for preparation. It may come as you sleep. It may come in old age after a full life. And it may come suddenly. But, it will come. The Bible tells us, “It is appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment”(Hebrew 9:27). You have an appointment with death. Will you be ready? Are you ready now to face God and judgment?

The Bible is equally clear when it tells us that after death each of us has only one of two destinations: heaven or hell. Heaven is a real place God has prepared for his followers where they will experience the very Presence of God forever, and will live on in eternal pleasure and joy. Hell is just as real; Jesus warned of hell many times in his teachings. Many people relegate hell to being a concept held only by the unsophisticated; others joke about it, and say they look forward to it because they will be with all their friends. Rock groups sing about it (for example, “Highway to Hell”). Yet, hell is real and no one will enjoy it. It is a place of eternal, complete isolation from God and his goodness, of isolation from other humans, of conscious torment and agonizing memories of missed opportunities. The regretful lament repeating itself over and over in the mind of hell’s prisoner will be “if only I had listened to the voice and God”, but it will be too late forever, and there will be no escape forever. It is a place of absolute darkness and ultimate, unrestrained evil; its inhabitants will be forever without peace, rest, or joy. It is no joke, and you do not want to go there.

I mean to arouse your fear of death. My intention is to provoke your deepest anxiety and fear. Why? I’m not into horror movies or books. Fear is not for entertainment. I’m not being cruel and I don’t want to alarm you unnecessarily. I speak of death and fear of death because I care enough about you to tell you the truth. I’m a physician, and I want you to live, not just now, but forever. Fear of death is given to us by God as a motivation to see things as they are: the realities of the brevity of life, the sureness of death, and judgment by Almighty and Holy God.

COPING MECHANISMS

We can respond to the fear of death in one of several ways. Many who are young believe they are invincible, invulnerable, and immortal. Nothing can or will hurt them, they think, at least not until they are in their 40’s or 50’s. That’s why we see so much risk taking in the teens and twenties. This attitude is false bravado and self-deceiving; it does not change the reality. Even babies, children, and teenagers can die; it’s obvious that those who make it through their teen years will die at some point in the future.

Others try to overcome fear of death by attempting to crowd out the idea of death by a breathless schedule of activity. They don’t have time to think about it, and they make certain that if there is any possibility of time for quiet thought, they drown the moment with noise via television, radio, music, books, magazines, etc. This is anesthesia of the thought life, a kind of numbing of the soul. The line of reasoning is that if they don’t think about it, maybe death will go away.

Still others attempt to sanitize the idea of death. In our advanced culture, they reason, people are not supposed to die. In fact, the cure for death must be waiting to be discovered in some scientist’s laboratory, and thus, we are on the threshold of human immortality. For this reason, many times, physicians are sued when in spite of their valiant, competent, and compassionate efforts, a person dies. “Death is not supposed to happen in America,” these people say to themselves. “It must be the doctor’s fault.” We are fairly good at dressing up death, keeping it away from our consciousness, and keeping it in the realm of only happening to someone else. It happens to others, not to us, we reason. In the United States, we have such a high standard of living that we don’t experience the daily struggle to survive that others face in developing countries, and thus, the reality of death is somehow softened in our thinking; yet, that doesn’t change the facts.

Finally, others glorify death. They convince themselves of one of several things. Some believe that if they die for some great and glorious cause, their death will be worth it; in part, they may be correct, but in full, they are only correct if they die ready to face God. Others have written of people with near-death experiences who relate feelings of warmth and light as they linger between life and death; these depictions are used to comfort those who are near death, but they do not give assurance of one’s readiness to see God. A fairly new (at least to the American scene) philosophy of life is really a philosophy of death, and here is the final stage of a person or people group which has turned its back on its Maker. By writing God out of the script, we have produced a “culture of death” where despair, cruelty, and hatred are the logical fruit. Death is presented as a great, desirable experience and life is seen as worthless, so suicide is rampant. The lives of others are also seen as without value, so we witness gratuitous violence and killing. The abortion industry has led the way here, but euthanasia cannot be far behind (witness the supporters of “Dr. Death”, Jack Kevorkian) and killing of students by other students is now a gruesome reminder of the terrible harvest we reap. The glorification of death in any of these ways is perversion.

We can ignore death, we can deceive ourselves into believing it will never come, we can anesthetize our lives to keep us from feeling the fear of death, or we can give ourselves over to it in the ultimate lie in convincing ourselves that it is our friend. These mental maneuvers do nothing to change the reality of death for each of us.

My intention is to violently rip the façade of lies and self-deception from our thinking and to bring each of us face to face with the reality deeply implanted in each of our hearts: each of us will die and each will face God for his judgment.

REALISTIC FEAR–NOT A NEUROTIC PHOBIA

Hebrews 2:14,15 tells us:

14 Since then the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death he might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil;

15 and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.

Death was the penalty Adam and Eve received for disobedience to God, and each of us as their descendant has inherited sin and death. Death has permeated every aspect of existence and sin has become our birthright. God’s mercy and love were shown in at least three ways when death came into the world.

1. Physical death itself is a gift from God. Would you want to live forever as you are, with all your limitations, sufferings, and failures? Would you really want to keep living life as it is, forever? Is this all there is? Physical death is the end of this very imperfect present life, which is only a faint shadow of the true life God intended and intends for those who trust Jesus. Death is their entrance into heaven. Thus, this present life is not ultimate, only preparatory.

2. God promised freedom from sin and death when the future Savior came; his name is Jesus.

3. God did not allow sin to numb our hearts to the fear of death. Fear of death is itself a gift from God which gives us motivation to seek the cure for death, and the ultimate cure is not to be found in any human solutions, medical or otherwise.

The verses from Hebrews above tell us that fear of death keeps us in slavery all our lives. If you strip away all the mental gymnastics and think honestly about death, it will strike the deepest fear into your heart, and the fear is debilitating. Fear of death keeps us from the performance of heroic, loving, and noble deeds. It causes us to preserve self at all costs, even if it means selfish destruction of others. It keeps us prisoner to anxiety, restlessness, cowardice, and hatred. We are slaves to anger and impatience, and we are petty. We are slaves to habits that we hate but cannot break. And because of our fear of death and the many vices that naturally accompany the fear, we are often disgusted with ourselves. Even those who are self-righteous know in their hearts that they are afraid to die, and their good deeds done to impress others and themselves will not take away the fear.

This is depressing stuff. Sorry, but it’s necessary. If you fear death, realize that everyone else does too, and that your fear is not unfounded. You must face God after death. Life at death does not dissolve into nothingness. God has made you eternal. His intention is for you to live forever with him. And he has provided the solution to your problem of death and, therefore, fear of death. If he were simply to take away your fear, what would that accomplish? Suppose a physician has a patient who fears a fatal disease; upon examination, the illness is discovered. If the physician simply reassures the patient that all is well, and relieves the fear of the patient, but does nothing to cure the disease, he has done his patient no service at all. God does not tell us all is well, yet he also provides the radical cure for our lives of sin, misery, fear, and death. We fear death because it is real, and God uses that fear to cause us to seek God himself.

THE CURE FOR FEAR

God provided the answer, the solution, the cure in Jesus Christ. He took on flesh and blood to enter death for us, as the verses in Hebrews above state. His purpose was to conquer the power of death and remove our fear of death. Jesus offers us life that begins now and will last forever. It is life with purpose and meaning. It is a life of fulfillment, for you and I are able to know the God who created us for himself. We were made to know and enjoy God. Jesus rendered death powerless so that when we know Jesus, our physical death is only the door to life with God forever. We do not need to fear it because Jesus overcame death when he rose from the dead. If he rose from the dead, and he promises to give us the same life, then he is not only able to give it but willing and trustworthy to deliver; after all, he died to purchase this life for us.

Imagine for a moment how you would be if you no longer feared death because you were free from death’s power over you? You would live with confidence, joy, and peace. Your heart would be at rest. You would be free of slavery to cowardice, self-preservation, and habits that you despise but cannot break. You would be free of the resulting self-hatred. Do you want to live a life of self-deception in which you must always lie to yourself about death or guard yourself from facing the prospect of death? Or do you want to be able to live with the certainty that no matter what happens or when death occurs, you will be ready to die and enter the presence of God? This certainty allows us to live with freedom and a certain abandon; we can do the right thing without worrying about the consequences. Jesus came to die for sins and misdeeds and to save people from them. He offers us life now and forever; it is free to us because he gives it to us. He has paid the price to deliver us from sin, death, and the fear of death. We cannot earn this life; we can only receive and accept his offer, the free gift.

Do you want to live in fear all your life? Do you enjoy running scared? Do you enjoy what this fear does to you? It doesn’t have to be this way. God provides a better way; he provides the only way. God has the solution and the cure that each of us needs. His name is Jesus.

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You may go to “The Ultimate Solution” if you are ready to discover how Jesus is the radical cure each of us needs.