Tag Archives: shallow

Death and Useless Sentiment

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This past Thursday, while many of my dearest friends were gathering in Lansing for the March for Life—a trip I genuinely wanted to make—I found myself in places far less energizing: doctors’ office waiting rooms. I was in two different locations that day. One of the appointments I’d scheduled mid-summer. And it was one of those “you’d better not reschedule this” kind of appointments. The other was one I didn’t anticipate. Regardless, I’ll admit I felt a little restless sitting beneath the fluorescent lights and watching the time tick by, all the while thinking of the better effort in Lansing. Of course, I prayed that the march would be impactful.

At the “you’d better not reschedule” appointment—a cardiologist’s office—I ended up in a conversation with someone a few seats away. We somehow wandered into the topic of death. I think I know why. At one point, I mentioned a friend from High School who had died this past Tuesday, someone I still considered relatively young, barely fifty-one. The exchange set the tone for what’s on my mind this morning. You may or may not appreciate what I’m about to write. Although it’s my keyboard, so there’s that. But more importantly, what I’m going to tell you echoes some of what we talked about.

I’ll just state the premise plainly: When death visits, it has become all too common for sentiment to replace reality. Now, let me explain.

Imagine for a moment you’re at a funeral. There, before you in the casket, is the deceased. It’s someone who had no time or inclination for faith—or maybe even denied the faith outright. Nevertheless, in death, suddenly—almost magically—the deceased is a believer. Suddenly, everyone gathered around the casket is speaking and acting as though the person had a devout (but entirely undetectable) trust in Jesus. And so, “He’s in a better place,” someone says. Or “She’s with the angels now,” another whispers.

How does this happen?

I suppose one reason people speak this way (although not the genuine point of what I intend to say) is that so many want to believe death is good. We say things like, “Death was her friend at the end.” But the Scriptures never speak of death as a friend. Death is the enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26). It is sin’s wage (Romans 6:23). And it is final (Hebrews 9:27). It is the moment when the curtain falls between time and eternity, when what a person believed—or refused to believe—is laid bare before the living God. And when death comes, this enemy reports there are no do-overs. I imagine the people hovering around the casket are secretly hoping there will be. They’re hoping that death, in its supposed kindness, will go easy on them.

But no matter how we try to recraft the moment, no matter what we do to make the moment palatable, death remains what it has always been. It is the world’s final intruder. And to pass death off as some sort of friend who comes along to take a person’s hand, in the end, is to cheapen the Lord’s war against death on the cross.

Christ did not come to make death poetic. He came to destroy it. If this is true, then the moments when death confronts us deserve a clarity that matches its seriousness. In other words, it’s no time for pretending.

Regrettably, I think some pastors, caught in the strange nether space between compassion and conviction, are pulled into this gush. I’ve experienced the pull before. Not so much anymore. But I do remember in the earlier days of my ministry the urge to choose words, not necessarily for truth’s sake, but to avoid offending onlookers during a sensitive moment. And yet, when the Church and her pastors do this—ultimately confusing comforting sentiment with truth—we’re really just betraying both.

I guess what I’m saying is that when we do this, we pave the way for so many to go wandering off into vague spirituality. And forget for a moment syrupy sentiments like the deceased is “looking down from heaven.” I’m talking more about faith-identifying descriptors that would somehow imply that an unbeliever is “at peace” or “in heaven now.” In other words, too many speak as though heaven were a natural right granted to the well-meaning with relatively respectable qualities. But again, the Bible knows nothing of such generalities. Salvation is not the automatic destination of the nice, the kind, or the merely religious. It is the gift of God through faith in Jesus Christ alone (Ephesians 2:8-9). If you are not a believer, when you die, you are not at peace. You are in terrible suffering. And that place of suffering—hell—isn’t imaginary. It’s real, and it’s eternal.

I know that’s not easy to hear. I warned you at the beginning. But I suppose that’s also why I’m writing this. God’s standards are the ones that apply. Never our own. That means faith in Jesus is no small thing. That also means that funerals become unique opportunities for the living.

A few weeks ago, I happened to be sitting in a funeral director’s office near the facility’s front door when I heard an unfortunate conversation between a teenage girl and someone I’m guessing was her mother.

“Why are we here?” the young girl asked. “Funerals are stupid,” she continued, sounding half-annoyed, the way young people do when confronted with something they don’t understand. Her mother replied, “We’ll just stay for a little while and then go home.” I didn’t see the girl’s expression, but I’m guessing by her sigh that she rolled her eyes before adding, “I don’t want to be here. And who cares, anyway? He’s gone.”

Her words echo a world that no longer knows what to do with death. It doesn’t know what it means.

Of course, I don’t know the complexity of the girl’s relationship to the deceased. But let’s just assume the young girl meant exactly what she said. Had I been her parent, I would’ve shepherded her to a quiet corner and explained that of all places, a funeral is the time to know what’s true, not what’s comfortable. If there’s any moment when eternity should press in upon human hearts, it’s when we’re standing beside a casket. That’s when the thin veil between life and death is most real. It’s when our mortality is undeniable. Then I’d walk her to the casket. “Look in there,” I might say. “One day, that will be me. One day, that will be you. Then what?”

That’s the intrusive question no one wants to ask at a funeral, and yet it’s one of the only ones that matter. In one sense, funerals are mirrors held up to the living. They’re opportunities to strip away the noise of daily life and, if anything, to at least recall three very important things.

First, our time is unknown. Second, eternity is real. Third, what we believe—or refuse to believe—matters more than anything someone might say about us when we’re in the casket. A room full of mourners saying nice things and grasping at a hopeful but false future won’t make that future real. Not for the dead. Not for them.

I suppose that third detail brings me back around to where I started. When churches speak and act as if every soul is saved—as if everyone who dies is owed a Christian burial with Christian hymns, Christian prayers, and a Christian sermon, they teach the living that faith and its fruits don’t really matter, that repentance and trust in Christ are optional extras that can be conjured after the fact. This unclarity does not comfort the grieving. It anesthetizes them. It teaches them to believe in a sentimental fiction rather than in the Savior who conquered the cruelest enemy, death.

Plenty of folks have asked me what I like most about being a pastor. My first answer is always, “Baptizing babies!” I just love it. Next, I appreciate funerals. Funerals are where the rubber hits the road. If ever there was a time to proclaim the Law and Gospel clearly—the fact that we are sinners in need of a Savior, and that Savior is Jesus—it’s at a funeral.

At the same time, a funeral sermon is one of the heaviest burdens a pastor has to bear, especially when he somehow finds himself standing beside the casket of someone he knows was without faith. (And in case you think I’m “judging” someone’s heart, take a quick trip through the following texts: Matthew 7:16-20; Matthew 12:33-35; Luke 6:43-45; James 2:17-18; 1 John 1:6; 1 John 2:3-4; 1 John 3:9-10; Titus 1:16; Galatians 5:19-23.) Don’t get me wrong. Great care is needed when choosing one’s words in such situations. Still, there will be the temptation to believe that speaking truth in that moment is cruel and speaking falsehood is compassionate. But actually, the reverse will always be true.

To proclaim a false peace over the unbelieving dead is to rob the living of the Gospel’s urgency. It implies that Christ’s sacrifice was really no big deal—maybe even unnecessary—and that sin has no real consequences, and ultimately that heaven can be had without the narrow way of repentance and faith (Matthew 7:13-14). This kind of preaching might comfort for a moment in the funeral parlor, but in the end, it can only lead away from Christ and condemn for eternity.

A Christian pastor must lead the people to mourn honestly. He’s wasting oxygen when he points to the moral résumé of the deceased. His job is to point to the mercy of God in Christ—mercy which had been available to the one in the casket but is still available right now for the listeners. Doing this, the pastor is careful to communicate that God’s mercy is not cheap. It came at great cost to Christ. But He went into that combat supernal because He loves you, and He knew you could not defeat the last enemy, death.

That sits at the heart of the Gospel. When the Church loses this clarity, it loses its reason to exist. To be clear about these things is not cruel. It’s love. Real love.

Of course, Christians do not gloat over judgment. We grieve for the lost. But it’s a strange kind of grieving. It’s strange because we do it as ones who have hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13), but we know better than to hope in ourselves. Our hope is in Christ, who died for sinners. Holding to this hope, we are careful not to rewrite God’s Word to make the Gospel cheap, punching holes in it and then wiggling to fit every opinion through faith’s narrow gate.

The task of the Church is to proclaim what Christ has done, not to invent an easier gospel when death makes us uncomfortable. The world may prefer gentle lies. The Church must love her listeners enough to tell the truth.

Peeling Back the Layers

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Maybe I should share it and maybe I shouldn’t, but Jennifer asked me recently if I’d ever thought about using a content subscription service like Patreon. I know why she asked. Because as it may also be for you, the need to make ends meet is never far from us. Thinking creatively, she knows that I put out thousands of words a week across various platforms, and I do all of it pretty much because I can, without personal benefit. I’ve said before, I often consider my writing proclivity to be more of an affliction. I’m stricken with the need to observe and then scribble into words what I’ve observed. Most folks with the same disease use it to make a living. I can’t even imagine writing for a living, other than to consider the basics of what I’m already doing as a pastor in service to the Gospel.

Either way, Jen’s questioning prompted at least two thoughts worth considering this morning.

The conversation continued with me saying, essentially, no, I haven’t thought of using Patreon. Although, my response was more, “I’ll look into it when things slow down a bit.” That’s my default reply. It’s not a lie. I’m always hoping for things to slow down. But she and I know they never do. She went on to ask if I sometimes feel like I’ll look back on my life with regret, concerned that I’ll have spent too much time running myself ragged. I didn’t tiptoe around that question. Yes, that thought has crossed my mind. I’ll bet it has crossed yours, too. I do my best to be honest when it does, admitting I’m sometimes to blame for my own busyness. Not always. But sometimes. And I say that with a caveat.

For one, the simple truth is that pastors are often treated like genies in bottles. (By the way, I wrote about this in my book Ten Ways to Kill a Pastor.) No matter the relevance of the need, people rub the pastoral lamp through an email, text, phone call, private message, or whatever (at any given moment at any particular hour of the day) with the expectation the pastor will immediately pop out with a willingness to do whatever is needed. Like other pastors, I struggle with this. But before you take offense at this, let me explain.

For me, the struggle comes because I have a tendency to look at everything as an opportunity for ministry, and as a result, I have a hard time saying no. A real-world instance of how this gets me into trouble could be, for example, those moments when a non-member who just so happens to know me—or is referred by someone—reaches out to ask me to come and pray with a dying friend or a sick relative. As it relates to my official duties, this is not necessarily my responsibility. As it relates to my calling as a Christian, it is. I know this, and so, I wrestle with what to do. More often than not, I find myself willing to commit to just one more thing (on top of an already overwhelming stack of things in a bustling congregation and school requiring a lot of attention) because I’m hoping there’s a chance the Gospel will be heard and take root. I do this fully aware that if I say yes, it’ll be an overtax on my family, my actual duties, and my health. If I say no, it’s likely I’ll be interpreted as cold, ultimately representing the congregation as uncaring, and possibly seeing an extended relationship come undone.

Believe it or not, these types of situations happen more than you might think. I get requests like this regularly. If you don’t believe me, just ask our office administrator, Georgine.

Still, even when I say no, admittedly, I’m more than capable of making bad choices with the limited free time I do have. I almost always fill it with something I hope will be productive. Perhaps it’s inherent to pastors to be as Longfellow described, which is “up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing….” There’s always something that needs doing in any congregation. Personally, I’d argue that if the pastor isn’t relatively tempted by countless opportunities for service, it’s likely he’s not all that attuned to his role and its surroundings.

Carrying this back around to Jennifer’s question about Patreon, a second thought comes to mind.

I suppose when it comes to using something like Patreon, I also mentioned to Jennifer that I’m not so sure people would subscribe. I say this because the kind of writing I do is far different than what’s popular.

Just look at what’s in front of you right now. My content is rarely brief.

I know, I know. Countless people would say less is more. Mindful of this, I try to be as crisp as I can. It’s just that when I start thinking about something I want to say, I often get lost in the layers, feeling the need to share with the reader what I’ve discovered—or at least pondered—and then fill any potential holes. As a result, a paragraph turns into two, followed by a free-thinking examination of those first two paragraphs that becomes two more, and so on.

I can’t just give a little. I want to be thorough. Remember, everything is an opportunity for ministry. This includes everything I write.

Digging deeper, I’m not sure people would pay a couple of bucks a month to read that deeply. As a society, we no longer exist in an age designed for that kind of content. We’re living in a time of memes, mic-drop soundbites, and pithy Tik-Tok videos created and uploaded while driving. Unfortunately, people aren’t just being entertained by these things. They’re being trained by them, too. They’re learning that life’s important things can be received and understood in 15-second intervals.

In short, the exchange of humanity’s thoughts seems to have become little more than an ever-streaming attempt at witty succinctness that really has no handles, nothing to grab onto. People think what they’re hearing is a truth bomb. But it really isn’t. It’s a superficial statement filled with gigantic holes. Its hook is more emotional than substantial. I suppose folks working at genius levels can accomplish hole-less truth bombs that do both. Admittedly, Jordan Peterson seems capable of such things. Ben Shapiro, too. But that’s two people. Last I heard, there were almost five billion people using social media on any given day. The best any of the rest of us non-geniuses can do is to be as lucid as possible—to take a chance at presenting an intelligible case made from the best words in the best order and sent along with the best of intentions. That takes work on both sides of the digital screen. Most people don’t want to work in this way. They want to be spoon fed the sweeter things. In our internet age, anyone willing to work—whether it be a person wishing to write substantially for public consumption or someone eager to be taught and then employ what they’ve learned in the surrounding world—nowadays, these people risk vicious cancellation. And why? Because sinful human beings prefer what pads the throne upon which they’re already sitting. Soundbite communications are designed to be that padding—to be emotionally comfortable, and ultimately, subjectively moldable to almost anyone’s closely-held ideology.

I don’t recall who said it, but someone once observed that few people would bother speaking at all if they actually knew how much of what they were saying was being misunderstood. To overcome this—to actually understand other people and their ideas in a way that benefits society—we must be working from points of origin that are far more than witty posts from our favorite influencers. It takes deeper levels of interaction, concentration, and contemplation—far more than what Tik-Tok videos and Facebook stories can provide.

Saint Paul wrote in Colossians 4:6 that Christians should be capable of giving an answer to anyone who asks. Saint Peter said something similar in 1 Peter 3:15. He noted the need for “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you….” Giving an answer and making a thorough defense means being equipped for conversation with content. It means study. Study takes work. It understands that being able to answer one question is possible with a little work. But it’ll take more to answer a second and third, or a fourth and fifth. Normal human conversations are rarely one or two sentences in length. They’re dialogues. They require content.

Mindful of people’s New Year’s resolutions, maybe a worthy exercise would be to start thinking through and then challenging (if necessary) your friends’ one-sentence social media posts before clicking “like.” After a little more thought, you might realize the foolishness in the meme I stumbled upon this morning which reads, “You don’t need a lot of friends to be happy, just a few real ones who appreciate you for who you are.”

Neat picture. Very moving. Two women toasting with a bottle of wine between them. However, these emotional hooks don’t change how stupid the meme is. It sounds nice, but it’s foolishly shallow. And it’s inviting moral disaster. I won’t tell you how. Take a minute to think about it. Just know there are a gazillion of these narcissistic messages feeding the egos of billions. I think folks will need to dig deeper to avoid becoming one of the billions.