Last week (actually more like a week and a half ago) my stepfather (Daryl) died. It was quite sudden and unexpected and elicited a trip to Chicago for H, A and I. I've been wanting to post about this momentous event, but my thoughts are still so undeveloped. I'm not promising anything coherent here, but it has certainly caused me pause in areas of my life, some of the resulting reflections of which I'd like to share with you, our friends out there.
1. It was interesting to critique how my mind first responded to the news, and particularly, which thoughts I DID NOT think in contrast to some of those around me. I quickly noticed that my thoughts regarding Daryl directly (i.e., when I wasn't thinking about my mom, brother or his other children) were filled with such terrible sadness at the thought of a life so incomplete. He died without having dealt with some major personal issues, if I may be so bold as to make a judgement about such things (see point below). It saddened me deeply that he had not come to a place of allowing God's Spirit to change some pretty evil ways in his life. It made me wonder what he would be like in the day of the Resurrection. That, of course, caused me to reflect on Romans 6 and how we (myselfe included of course) do not take seriously enough the idea that 'the person who has died is through with sin." Something dramatic happens to the believer in death: s/he is no longer a slave to personal and societal brokeness (sin). Of course, this is exactly what is anticipated in our lives in and after baptism: we died with our
representative King, therefore, we
count ourselves as having already died, having already been finally and fully freed from the grip of our own brokeness, since all that remains is the hope of resurrection to new life in a new creation.
This line of thought is so distant from what I would have thought even 10 years ago when the following questions might have predominated: Was Daryl in Heaven? Was he really 'saved?' What is Heaven like? These thoughts presented themselves to me through others and as totally foreign to my current worldview. This brings me to my next point:
2. I was deeply disturbed by the memorial service for Daryl for many reasons. Let me share just one that is most germain to this train of thinking. The entire service proceeded without even a nod toward the Resurrection. Now, that would be totally understandable if this weren't a 'Christian' service. But that's the irony: for a service that was intended to be explicitly Christian, it promulgated a story and a hope that was more akin to Greek pagan thought than to the story about the Christ. And the sad thing is that most of those there who would consider themselves Christian didn't even notice. They/we are so used to hearing the story that Jesus died to pay for our sins so that we can go to Heaven when we die that they think this is what the Bible actually says, that this is the great Judeo-Christian hope/goal. As a corollary there is an implicit idea that we have some sort of immortal soul that is distinct from the body that is wisked off to 'home' when the body dies. Like I said, that is more pagan than Christian. The Jewish/Christian Scriptures are fairly explicit in the fact that the 'soul' is the entirety of a person who is MORTAL, and that immortality is distinctly a gift from God at some future time. Of course, not all of the blame is in a Christian subculture that has syncretic elements from pagan philosophy--it is also supported by poor Bible translations that take the Jewish concept of the Life of the Age to Come and translate it as 'eternal life', perhaps causing people to think that that life is some ethereal, nebulous substance or nature that is given, or that it must mean the future life in a place called 'heaven.'
Regardless, my point is that nobody even mentioned what is our true hope: our physical resurrection to share in God's new Creation, when he undoes all that is broken in this world through the freedom he will then give to us. And that Daryl, too, may be one that comes to share in that inheritance when justice and peace finally triumph.
3. I was torn by the judgmentalism I was feeling. I was repeatedly stung by people saying silly things like what a 'great man of God' this guy was. How ridiculous. At one point I remember thinking that if that is any reflection of how God is then I have absolutely NO desire to know that god. That was tempered by the fact that in some ways Daryl really did reflect who I know God to be in Jesus. As far as I can judge outwardly, he had a tremendous heart of compassion toward the poor and the sick. He hated the brokeness in this world that caused people to suffer in sickness and poverty and he regularly participated in actions that denounced this situation by actually doing something about it.
On the other had, I was adament that
Volf's concept of exlusion and embrace be realized, something akin to the
Truth and Reconciliation Commision in South Africa. The premise is that true reconciliation can only happen when the whole truth is confessed: that healing will only happen when we dare to call evil 'evil' and then to love the other in spite of his/her evil actions. In other words, the embrace of love cannot be real/honest if we do not first name wrongs for what they are. Well, the service is called a 'eulogy' (Greek for 'good words') and it is sort of sad because it seemed to perpetuate an illusion that Daryl was a thoroughly good guy without acknowledging how flawed he was and
then calling us to love him anyway. Because he was really far from being a thoroughly good guy and it wasn't until I was able to recognize that that is what I was thinking and was able to name his wrongs that I was finally able to forgive him and let go of the anger I had toward him.
Well, I was fortunate to have even this amount of time and even though I have lots more to write and desire to develop some of the above thoughts more, I need to get back to work (I'm on OB night float this month--5pm till 7am every day).
As for Daryl,
May he rest in peace
and one day rise in glory--
when the Creator restores all things--
in the name of King Jesus who has gone before us in death
and was raised to the new Life of the Age to come
by the power of the holy Spirit.
