Worse than death? IV

Death is not the focus of life
I asked recently how do you want to die? and received a large number of very interesting responses.

As Christopher pointed out, Stanley Hauerwas likes to ask this question in order to point out that our common answers as Westerners (quick, painless, sudden/in sleep) are basically the opposite of what Christians of an earlier age might have answered.* Indeed, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer includes a petition asking for deliverance from a sudden death. They feared what we crave, because they wanted time to prepare for death, to ensure they were reconciled with God and neighbour. While this might partially be attributed to a medieval Roman Catholic lack of assurance and the importance placed on the sacrament of Last Rites, the modern desire to avoid death - or rather dying - by all means possible reveals a deep fault line in our culture. We are petrified of death and either obsess over it, or (more commonly) simply avoid all mention and thought of it.
*For those interested in chasing up this thought from Hauerwas (and many others he offers on Western attitudes to illness, dying and medicine), check out this podcast. Skip the first five minutes of intro if you already know who he is. If you're new to his work, he can be difficult to listen to and moves around quickly, but there are many gems in this hour-long talk to make it worth the effort. Much of the rest of this post is indebted to thoughts from this talk.

We have medicalised death so that physical health becomes the primary paradigm through which we understand it; the hospital the primary location of death; the doctor takes the role of priest and research our hope in the face of death.

Fear of death dominates our culture, either explicitly, or implicitly. This is what drives the present fear of terrorism: the idea that dying at the hands of a suicide bomber is the worst possible outcome, justifying the erosion of well-established social institutions and freedoms.

But if Christ is Lord of the living and the dead, if Christians hope for life to come again to our mortal bodies by the Spirit, if death's sting is drawn, then it is possible to live and die without death dominating our existence. Life is a good gift and every breath is a reason to rejoice, but we are not to let the task of staying alive take centre stage. If there are things worse than death, there are things better than life:

Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.

- Psalm 63.2

Series: I, II, III, IV, V, VI.