A long defeat between two victories
through the valley of the shadow of death
Preaching on James 5 twice, with an interval punctuated by my father's death, didn't so much change what I thought of that passage, but it did highlight for me the tension inherent in 5:15 and the prayer of faith will make the sick person whole, and the Lord will raise them; and if they have sinned, it will be forgiven them.
Shortly thereafter, I read these two posts by Richard Beck which I think elegantly sum up prayer in the face of death and destruction. And then, I chanced upon a book review of As Long as you Need, a book on grief by J.S. Park, who has been a chaplain at a major hospital for a decade. I keep trying to read things that aren't simply the product of my narrow range of regular recommendations, and this came from outside them, so I decided to pick it up.1
All of which is a preamble to say that life in Christ is indeed a long defeat between two victories. That doesn't sound very 'triumphal Christian life', does it? No, it shouldn't. I think Beck nails this - as soon as we invite people to pray for healing and to pray against the tragedies and evils of this world (Gaza and Ukraine loom still on my mind), we invite them to an experience that is disconsolate them and rock their faith. Does God heal in response to prayer? Yes. Will everyone you pray for eventually die? Yes. Just like everyone that Jesus healed in Galilee still died. Just like Lazarus got up from the grave, only to one day go back there. There is a grim bleakness to life under the sun, and that is the cold, hard fact that everyone you know, everyone you love, will die. And so either you will end up bereft of every loved one, or you will precede them into the icy grave.
We don't like to think about this, talk about this. And, honestly, that's okay too. We don't need to live every moment of every day with this hanging over our heads. Indeed, I don't think we could; I think that weight of death would crush the hope and joy out of daily life. Nor do I think we should. There is more to life than just the endless reminder of death's oblivion. I'm also aware that I trend morose, and sorry if sometimes this substack is too much on the downside!
But we do need to wrestle with it at least sometimes. Especially since we have a culture that institutionalises and compartmentalises death, seeks to push it to the margins, out of our minds. Death (and often birth) is something that happens off-stage, makes us uncomfortable, and is best dealt with by ignoring it as long and as much as possible.
Christianity has as its historic centre, and philosophical centre of mass, the death-and-resurrection of Jesus. In that paradoxical event Jesus dies the death we deserve to die, and for those who trust in him they also died with him. Conversely, Jesus gets raised to life, and similarly believers are raised with him. Which sets up a weird thing because on the one hand I have already died and been raised, and yet I also will die and then will be raised again. Because if death was defeated at the cross, or the empty tomb, we nonetheless live in a world of death, awaiting the second victory (which is just the first victory). This is what I mean by living between two victories.
The first victory secures the second, and changes the whole landscape of life under the sun. Yes, we do live in a bleak world where forces of evil, sin, death, and destruction sweep across our lands, where the rich and powerful and wicked often triumph, where many 'get away with it' all their lives, where sickness and accident and tragedy steal the lives of young and old and deserving and undeserving, where we lose and lose and lose until we have nothing left to lose. But if that were all there is to life, then Paul's words in 1 Cor 15:19 are truer than ever, if in this life only we have placed our expectation in the Messiah, we are more pitiable than all people. That is true of Christians if their hope is false. But if there is no resurrection, no horizon of a new reality, then I think all of humanity and human life is a short, meaningless scrabble before an endless non-being.2
It is hope that is the antidote to despair, but not to grief. Because hope casts light on life under the darkness of death, but it doesn't cure grief because grief isn't a thing to be cured, it's a thing to be carried. It's the wounds and the scars of the losses we have suffered. I happen to subscribe to a newsletter that sends me Cicero's letters each day on the day they are dated (yes, this is fun), and the other day Cicero wrote to Brutus to console him on the death of his wife. It's not the most consoling letter, but in its midst:
So: you have been struck by grief; you have lost something unlike anything else on earth. For a wound this serious, you must grieve, so that the absence of any sensation of grief does not make you more upset than simply grieving. Doing so in moderation is of use to others, but for you it is a necessity. (Cicero, Ad Brut. 1.9)
Even those Stoics, and Cicero is a stoic at least as far as death and grief goes, recognise the reality, nay the necessity, of some grief. Cicero's concern is that Brutus' mourn publicly, but not too much. We are his heirs in many ways - we're okay with people grieving just not too much thanks. Public, excessive, emotive grief makes us uncomfortable and we don't know what to do with it.
I've said before that lament is a trendy topic these days, and to lament the fact that we don't have more lament in church. I think that's right, but I also feel the force of the critique that notes that well-to-do, upper class, wealthier, whiter, churches tend to have a lack of lament and need it, whereas churches in lower socio-economic demographics, for whom life is hard, actually don't sing, and don't really want to sing, more lament songs. Because they already know life sucks. It's people who are in denial about life sucking, who need reminding. Or maybe not reminding, so much as acknowledging.
That's (one of the) problem(s) with those rivulets of Christianity committed to a view that Christian life in the here and now is meant to be all glorious victorious claiming the promises and you can live in (earthly) blessing all your days. Besides misreading the Bible grossly and negligently, it will always come up against the brick wall of reality, when circumstances don't go your way. When job loss, unexpected death, the spectre of cancer, the betrayal of family or friends, or just 'the economy' mean that you aren't succeeding the way you thought you would, the 'interpretive options' are limited - either God is the problem or you are. If God is the problem, you have to junk God. If you are the problem, which is the answer from the stage, then you are to blame for all your troubles. You didn't pray enough, or have enough faith, or follow the spiritual laws to secular success. That view of God and faith is not very far (if at all) from Job's friends.
This isn't to say there is no 'victory' in the Christian life. But that victory is... paradoxical. It's upside-down and back-to-front and inside-out. Want to become great in the kingdom of God? You will, by learning how to be least of all. To go up is to go down; to become truly humble, is to be great indeed. By the time anyone gets to the end of Matthew 5:12, their view of "the good life" should be so utterly discombobulated, that the idea of worldly success should be in smithereens around them.
Living the Christian life in the shadow of death means this: a long series of 'defeats' in which hope is sustained by the sure knowledge of the victory first won, and the clear vision of the victory yet to come. It's carrying a lifetime of griefs, stored in a vessel that beams with the hope of resurrection, and the renewal and reversal of all ills. It's knowing that you can lose it all, because you have gained the one thing that can never be lost.
Park says in his introduction that it’s probably not a book to read if you are currently grieving, and gives you permission to throw it across the room. That’s probably fair. Which is to say I couldn’t get past page two without crying. Every chapter after that starts with a content warning, and justly so. I'ĺl have more to say on this book in a few weeks’ time.
This, of course, is what I mean by nihilism seeming like the only real alternative.