How Should Christians Die?
Essays, Featured — By Brian Kiley on August 25, 2010 at 2:00 pmRecently I was riding the in the car with my dad discussing, of all things, death. My dad is a physician, and we were discussing the monumental costs and challenges that come with end of life care. I shared with him some conversations I had observed in classes at my seminary where both students and professors were suggesting that Christians need to perhaps rethink our approach to end of life care. They said that perhaps Christians should be the ones most willing to forgo expensive medical treatment that will only extend life for a few more days or weeks, so that medical resources can instead be devoted to those who have a chance to most benefit from their use. In other words, while Christians should certainly seek healing medical treatments when they are available, they should be most willing to accept death when it comes.
My dad, an agnostic, proceeded to tell me about a family friend who, as part of his job as a physician, is often responsible for determining when medical care is “futile” and should be 
stopped, with patients then transferred to hospice care or unplugged from machines. Often making such decisions requires consulting with family members and sharing their loved one’s fate with them. An unenviable job if there ever was one.
My dad told me that for this physician, who is a Roman Catholic, one people group is consistently the most difficult to deal with when these sorts of medical decisions need to be made: Christians. In his experience, Christians were the ones who refused to accept the inevitability of death, and thus made his job even more difficult than it already was. Even when a loved one had entered an entirely vegetative state, Christians would often refuse to allow that loved one to die. They often insisted that they be allowed to pray for a miracle seemingly indefinitely.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not against praying for miracles. I believe in miracles, and I believe that God heals. I believe we should pray for the sick, and I believe we should ask God to heal. I also know that end of life decisions for loved ones are among the most gut-wrenching decisions people ever have to make. This is not an issue to be discussed flippantly. But at the same time, it seems to me that there is a real theological problem if our Christian hope lies entirely in God’s ability to heal, and not in the resurrection. Hope placed entirely in God’s ability to physically heal is, in a sense, misplaced hope, because even those that are healed die eventually. True Christian hope is an eternal hope that goes beyond death.
I know that I could die tomorrow and I could die 80 years from now. More than likely, I will die somewhere in between. I hope my time will be closer to 80 years from now than tomorrow, because I enjoy living. All of my loved ones face the same fate. I know that even if I were to be stricken with a deadly disease and then healed, death would still come for me eventually. No matter how many bananas I eat, that truth is inescapable. And yet, so many of us, as Stanley Hauerwas has said, live as if we honestly believe we are going to make it out of life alive. We are terrified of death.
That is understandable for those who believe we turn into fertilizer when we die, but it ought not be that way for Christians who have resurrection hope. Yes, we ought to seek to preserve life, including our own. And we ought to seek out appropriate and competent medical care when we are ill. Furthermore, we ought to grieve death when it comes. I am in no way suggesting that the sting of death is to be ignored, nor am I seeking to minimize the grief that accompanies death. Death can be a brutally grievous event.
But to quote the words of the apostle Paul, “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep…therefore encourage one another with these words.” Yes, we grieve, but we grieve differently because we have hope. We have a promise that life does not end at death.
My wife’s grandfather was converted to Christ many years ago when his first wife was dying of cancer. He was converted not because God performed a healing miracle, but because his wife’s steadfast faith and her unceasing desire for God to be glorified in her in the midst of her disease showed him the reality of God in the most powerful of ways.
I am inclined to wonder if perhaps we should include prayers for those types of miracles when we or our loved ones are sick.
Brian is the editor of the student newspaper at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA. Visit him at www.livegenerously.wordpress.com.
Originally posted at relevantmagazine.com.
7 Comments
Great article Brian, and a subject which needs more discussion. I have had conversations with several pallitiave care health professionals who have had the same experience as your fathers family friend with people who refuse to accept that death is an option – despite the fact that as Christians, they presumably have the promise of a life after physical death.
I think this springs from a lack of address in Christian teaching and doctrine about how the Good Death is part of the Good Life – the mindset seems to be that death in any form for a Christian is an anomaly, evidence of some kind of failure. However, the only precurser for physical death is physical life.
There needs to be a shift away from Christian teaching emphasis on this abundant life we are apparently entitled to and toward a more wholistic acceptance of death, however it somes to us. Death is not an anomaly; and it is possible to have a good death as part of the Good Life.
Amen and amen. I have the unfortunate burden of reading essays like this to see how the resurrection is treated. (But I did catch a number of other good thoughts—I wasn’t an inattentive reader. I hope.)
The point of the resurrection is very sharp to me: we get our life back. At the risk of Paul slapping me with the back of his hand, I’ll note that I think NT Wright’s reading of Jesus and Paul on the resurrection is most faithful to what they meant. I contend that our world would be different if the church (particularly in America) taught and lived the resurrection. The end of physical life, while the exit should be graceful and hopeful, is merely humanity’s enemy’s last futile stab at destroying God’s good creation. We are in a position to give real hope to a really hurting world. We could stand up for the downtrodden. What’s the worst that could happen? Kill me? Give me a break. The resurrection of Jesus trumps that. In the age to come, I’ll be able to love and serve God and others fully without impediment. As for you, if you choose to opt out of the new creation, I would be grieved.
Jo, I did read your comment attentively, and i must respectfully disagree. I agree with the spirit of your comment (as I see it), that we should age and die gracefully. We know it is inevitable. But theologically, death is the greatest anomaly anywhere. Death and sin have ganged up on creation, trying to unmake it. Through prayer, loving service, and the power of Jesus, we can push back this enemy. But when we die, we do it hopefully, expectantly. We will be raised to new life in a restored creation.
Great article and wonderful point of view. I think Christians, and all people, are really afraid of the unknown. I am talking about the events leading up to their death, not being dead. No one knows how they are going to die, and that is a frightening thought for most. We also want to cling to life because God wired our brains to want to live forever. He did that so we would crave His Kingdom and take comfort in the fact that there is more “life to live” with Him when we die. This is why we want all measures taken to save ourselves if we are to fall ill or end up in a coma or something of that nature.
You are also spot on when you said “there is a real theological problem if our Christian hope lies entirely in God’s ability to heal, and not in the resurrection. Hope placed entirely in God’s ability to physically heal is, in a sense, misplaced hope, because even those that are healed die eventually. True Christian hope is an eternal hope that goes beyond death”. We need to rely on God as our Father and Savior and not place all our faith on His ability to heal.
To sum it all up, we need to just focus on where He wants us to join Him in His work right now and make sure that our heart is right with Him. If we put all our focus on the future and what is to come, then we will miss what He wants us to do right now. We will die eventually, but right now we need to focus on living for Him.
Again, great article!!
Brian,
I find your article extremely insightful. I left my dad in the hospital ER at 11:00 PM and he seemed to be doing ok. I told him I would bring his slippers the next morning. At 3AM the doctor called me an said dad’s heart had stopped and he worked on him for 35 minutes to get him stabilized again. I asked him what the odds were that dad had suffered brain damage. He said it was a distinct possibility. I told him if dad’s heart stopped again to let him go. He said “That’s what I hoped you’d say.” Thirty minutes later he called me again. Dad was with Jesus. I loved my dad, I have never felt sorry for my decision.
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Brian,
I appreciated how you concluded the article. I often struggle to “pray for healing” when I hear of someone being diagnosed with something serious. I watched my Father-in-law, who remained steadfast in his faith (at least outwardly), slowly die of cancer in a quite painful and unpleasant way. So often we want to ask God to heal, becuase we don’t want to deal with pain, don’t want to deal with suffering, and certainly don’t want to deal with death. Perhaps you’re on to something with the suggestion that we pray for the miracle of God being glorified in our sickness more than we should pray for healing. Or maybe it should be closer to Jesus’ “take this cup from me, but not my will by Your’s be done”.
Cheers.