The Shadow of Death

With the recent deaths in the celebrity world this past week, it is not surprising that we are bombarded by so much media coverage of their lives. While I’ve always been out of touch with popular culture, I, myself, can’t help but get sucked into the stories. Not so much because of the drama or the hype that’s been in the air waves—but because I find it intriguing that, in a society where people pride themselves in being able to successfully and happily live their lives free of a God, when Death comes, people are scrambling to make meaning out of the lives of the deceased, they are scrambling for the truth.

We have to know how MJ died. As if, by knowing, his ending would somehow become less tragic. As if, by knowing, Death—especially when it catches us off guard—would somehow be more acceptable to us. (But doesn’t Death always catch us off guard?)

We have to make sense of his weaknesses. We have to make sense of the choices he made: we glorify his good; we try to give an account for or excuse his bad. Because, in the end, when it is all over, deep inside of us, we can’t be at peace until we feel he has been absolved of all that had gone wrong with him, until we can reach far back into the past and revive the good, as if it had been there all along, and never left, as if it had never been forgotten.

We see this in the papers. Old photos of him, with that childlike innocence seen in the glimmer of his big, hopeful eyes. We hear it on the radio. Familiar tunes that make us travel back in time (I remember performing with my class “We Are the World” in an assembly in primary school.) We watch it on television. The powers of video editing to slap together clips, fill in the gaps—to construct a story that appeases the viewer, “You see? It’s all right. He was a good person after all. He went wrong at this point… and this point… but here’s why…” We read it on the Internet—people’s responses pouring in, paying tribute to his life. We always, always need to highlight the good. Deep in our gut, we can’t go on, we can’t let go, until we’ve done it.

In the Christian faith, we call “bad choices”—Sin—and nobody is without it. We look for Meaning in life because that is how God has designed it. We yearn for absolution from our transgressions because we were created to seek Redemption.

As real as Death is, so is our bewilderment every time it hits us. We refuse to believe that it’s the end. We can’t. Either we immortalize him in this life (just look at his current record sales). Or we nonchalantly declare, “At last, he’s at peace”—meaning that we do hope that, on the other side of this life, there is indeed a better place, a place of peace, a place where everything is right or as it ought to be.

C.S. Lewis, in his essay, “The Weight of Glory,” wrote:

“A man's physical hunger does not prove that that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man's hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist. In the same way, though I do not believe (I wish I did) that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it a pretty good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will. A man may love a woman and not win her; but it would be very odd if the phenomenon called 'falling in love' occurred in a sexless world. Here, then, is the desire, still wandering and uncertain of its object and still largely unable to see that object in the direction where it really lies.”

In times of death and tragedy, why do those who live like there is no God resort to using such words as—“Prayer,” “Miracle,” “Heaven”—that belong to the Eternal sphere?

Living under a pluralistic system where everyone’s religious beliefs (or absence of) are accepted is great practically speaking—we get to live life how we want, we don’t have to justify our choices, we don’t have to give an account to anyone about our actions—good or bad, no one has the right to judge us, we don’t tread on anyone else’s territory, we respect everyone by not saying a peep about what they ought to believe—but worthless when it comes to dying, or facing our mortality. When someone is dying of a sickness and needs a cure, the last thing he wants is for one to courteously open a large cabinet of medicine, and say, “Here you go, take your pick.” We want the remedy, the treatment, the sure thing.

“And after that, you may come (some do) to believe that that voice- like the rest, I must speak symbolically- that voice which speaks in your conscience and in some of your intensest joys, which is sometimes so obstinately silent, sometimes so easily silenced, and then at other times so loud and emphatic, is in fact the closest contact you have with the mystery; and therefore finally to be trusted, obeyed, feared and desired more than all other things. But still, if you are a different sort of person, you will not come to this conclusion.”
—C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections, "The Seeing Eye"