The Mystery Continues

Dad’s funeral is over. The service was honoring to him, which was a comfort for my mom. Many nice things said about dad, some from people that knew him, many from those who had little more that a superficial acquaintance with him. The overarching theme of the day was that dad was in a better place now; released from the shackles of the physical mortal and robed in the spiritual immortal. It’s a lovely sentiment, but the mystery of death remains, at least for me. C.S. Lewis wonders aloud in A Grief Observed, if at death a person doesn’t also suffer the pain of separation. Who knows? Certainly not me, for I have yet to experience death.

My mom was telling me this week of a friend of hers whose husband has been diagnosed with cancer without hope of a cure. He sits in his chair all day crying, knowing that he is powerless against the inevitable. I have no way of knowing if this man is a follower of Christ, but whether he is or not, there is a certain haunting honesty in his response to his impending demise. Solomon, the guy reported to be the wisest man that ever lived, pondered the futility of life and the reality of death in his ancient book. His conclusion was that a man’s life is not much more than the life of a beast; that the fool and the wise, the rich and poor, the wicked and the righteous ultimately end up the same way. Since we only know life and death with its obvious outward signs of a lifeless corpse, why shouldn’t we be afraid? The valley of the shadow of death, as Lewis puts it, is often more like a circular trench.

All religions, functionally, are the same when it comes to trying to explain the great mystery. Some suggest the soul goes to paradise, others propose that a mans soul goes through a process of rebirth in physical form for cleansing until we reach perfection that leads to nothingness; we become a thought in a cosmic abyss. Christian theologians teach that our souls go to God to await the end time when our spirit will be joined to a new body. All conjuncture of course, based on centuries of interpretation. We rest our hope on these “faiths,” as it is the only thing we can hang our mortal hats on. In the end, we will spend our days crying until there are on more tears to shed or rejoice in the hope we have in Christ until there is no longer breath in our bodies. Meanwhile, the mystery continues.