Last week I attended the funeral of a 14-year-old boy who shot himself. I didn’t know him personally, but I do know a close family member who was grieving and I wanted to be there for her.
I have been to many funerals as a pastor’s wife. Most are for elderly people who have died of heart disease, cancer, pneumonia, and other things that come with living a long life. One was for a man in his early 20s, my husband’s cousin, in fact, who had died in a car accident. But this was the first funeral I’d attended for a teenager and a victim of suicide.
I suspect many people at that very well-attended funeral were questioning. Why did he do it? Could I have done something to stop him? Where is God in all of this? Did this young man go to heaven or is suicide something that keeps us from entering heaven?
A funeral is a unique ministry opportunity. Funerals are attended by people who otherwise don’t set foot in church. A funeral like this one is attended by many young people who haven’t made up their minds yet about God. They are excellent chances to share the truth of God’s love and salvation with people who need to hear something hopeful, something good.
But these opportunities are often missed. Ministers or priests fail to take advantage of the fact that they have a room full of people who may not have an opportunity hear the Gospel until the next time someone dies. They talk about the person who died, extolling their good qualities, glossing over the bad. They might mention that God weeps with us in our pain and loss, which is true. They might talk about death as a natural part of life (which, by the way, it isn't).
But does that really, truly give us hope? No.
I left that funeral very disappointed that the priest never shared why this boy was in heaven and how the rest of us could look forward to seeing him again; that he never talked about the Christian hope, which is a bodily resurrection, not floating around on a cloud as an angel playing a harp. Were I not a believer, I could have left that church with no more hope than what I came in with, which probably wasn’t much due to the circumstances.
Then as I thought about this missed opportunity, I remembered that I miss these opportunities as well. I let the chance to share the hope I have in Jesus slide by too. I’ve mentioned church and God in a blog post here and there, but I haven’t ever taken the time to explain much.
I don’t assume that the readers of this blog are or are not Christians (or Muslims, or secular humanists, or militant atheists, or anything else). Anything I know about you is drawn from your comments, your own blogs, or, if we’re lucky enough to know each other face to face, our conversations. So I’m going to take this opportunity to explain to you, if you’ll read it, why I know I will be in heaven when I die, why I know that I will be resurrected when Christ comes to judge the world, and why I am confident and secure in my standing with God. If you’re curious, if you’re wondering if there is more to Easter than tacky decorations and rabbits and eggs, if you’re skeptical about the whole thing . . . read on.
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It is obvious to anyone with half a brain that there is a lot of bad in this world. Headlines depress us, reality TV shows us the worst that people can be, kids are mean to one another, earthquakes and tsunamis kill tens of thousands of people, wars kill even more. We experience conflict with family and coworkers, loved ones die, people say hurtful things, our expectations are not met. From the far-reaching to the mundane and everywhere in between, things are not perfect.
Where is God in all this? Why doesn’t he do something? Why won’t he cure my mother? Why won’t he keep those kids from bullying each other until suicide seems the only way out? Why has he abandoned us (if he was ever there to begin with)?
For many, this is the relationship they have with God. They are angry with him, they feel let down, abandoned.
Or we might ask why God has so many rules for us. Why does he care what I do? Why do Christians seem so exclusive and bitter and hateful? Why should I consider going to church when those people judge me and look down on me? Why would I hang around that backward, uneducated crowd of brainwashed idiots?
In my experience, these are the big concerns that keep people far from God and far from church, that keep them guarded, that make them close their minds to considering who Jesus is. Let me tell the story of the Bible for you in just a few paragraphs and then we will return to these concerns.
God is perfect. If he were imperfect, he would not be God. He created the universe from nothing (I’ve already lost a couple of you, haven’t I?) and when he created it, it was perfect. If he is perfect, he would not create an imperfect world, right?
But the people he created in his own image, with God-like capacities and a mandate to care for and populate the world, disobeyed him. They sinned. And a perfect and holy God does not overlook sins, even when they are unintentional or when they didn’t seem so bad to us. He cannot allow sin in his presence.
But he did not abandon his image bearers and condemn them. He immediately put into action his plan to redeem his people, to give them a way to be forgiven and be holy again, and to come back into his presence.
For millennia he revealed more and more of this plan to his people, showing them how to be holy and to be reconciled to him. Ultimately, when the time was right, God sent his son Jesus. The sins that we should have paid for, and that all those who lived before us and who will live after us should have paid for, our debt, Christ bore on his own shoulders so that God’s righteous judgment would be satisfied. God cannot ignore sin; sin must be punished. And that punishment that was meant for me and you and everyone else (because we have all sinned) was meted out on Jesus, who lived a sinless and perfect life, so that we could be forgiven.
Jesus was crucified and died and was buried. But, and here’s the important part, he didn’t stay dead. He rose from the dead, not as a ghost but as a whole person with a body and a soul, and in that act he conquered death. Whoever believes in him will be saved. Saved from the punishment we deserve, saved from eternal separation from God, saved from Hell. Not only are we forgiven our sins, we are adopted into God’s family, we have the power to live ever more holy lives that are pleasing to God and helpful to each other, and we too will be raised from the dead when Christ returns to earth to judge us all.
I believe this. And I’m not backward. I’m not brainwashed. I’m not an idiot. I’m actually a highly educated, intelligent, and generally skeptical person. I try my best not to be judgmental, and by the grace of God I’m getting better at it. I don’t always take advantage of the opportunities to do good that I am presented with, but I’m trying to do better. I’m not perfect, but I am being made more holy each day by God’s grace alone.
I know, without a doubt, where I am going when I die. I know that I will see my dead loved ones again if they too were believers. I know that I will rise from the dead one day with a new body and that I will live on a new earth in which there is no pain, no war, no fear, no disaster.
I don’t just hope. I know.
If you think that sounds crazy but still intriguing, I hope you will find a good, Bible-teaching local church to start attending and a Bible to start reading. The whole story of God's love for his people is much richer and more amazing than the one I’ve summarized here, but it’s sometimes a little bewildering if you don’t have other people around to bounce ideas off of and ask questions. You don’t have to believe any of it to start going to a church and just hear more about it. I hope you’ll find one that welcomes you with open arms and that you won’t stop looking if the first one just doesn’t work out.
God does not want anyone to perish. He does not want you to live a life apart from him or to die apart from him. He wants you to live fully and abundantly now and he wants you to be with him after you die. He does not glory in natural disasters or war or discord or tragedy. He does truly weep that the perfect world he created has fallen to such a state. But he doesn’t mean for us to go it alone.
Here’s what that priest should have said: It is absolutely tragic that a 14-year-old would feel so hopeless that he took his own life. We in the church should be ashamed that it came to this because we are charged with encouraging each other and building each other up. We should have been there for him and reminded him that God loves him even when other kids at school may not. We should have told him that he was worth something because he was a child of God.
But as tragic as his death is, it is a wake-up call to the living that we will also die one day. What happens then? If you can’t answer that question with confidence, you have a big problem, my friend. And because death comes when it will, it is a question you can’t afford to leave unanswered. Because some day it will be too late.
Why doesn’t God just intervene in our sufferings? Why doesn’t he stop the earthquake or the bullet? If Christ is coming again and his coming will end all this suffering, why doesn’t he just come already? He tarries because he is giving you a chance to come in before he judges you. He is allowing us more time so that more people might be saved. His seeming tardiness is actually merciful.
And as we come upon the days of Good Friday and Easter, it is a perfect time to reflect upon this. Why did Christ have to die? What does it mean that he now lives? Is he calling me to a new life?
There is a
church in Lansing, Michigan, called Judson Memorial Baptist Church where my husband is the pastor. If you’re nervous about trying out a church or just don’t know where to start, you can
listen online to nearly every sermon he’s ever preached. I encourage you to check it out. Get a Bible in a readable translation like the ESV or NASB or NIV or GW. You can even
read online. Start with the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which are found at the very beginning of the New Testament. Then keep reading. It may change your life—and your death.
