A Long Walk to Death

Facing the necessary "evil" with courage

Photo by Jakub Kriz on Unsplash

A no-man definition of life

Everyone has an opinion about life, and that’s possibly 8 billion-plus definitions of what life is or ought to be. Let’s begin by stretching our definition of life, long enough to make it thin as wires. We’ll keep stretching for the next twenty or more years and see what’s on the other end of that stretched-thin wire.

Most definition of life is the accumulation of years of experience, growing up. We love the idea of growing up (except for Peter Pan) until that point where we realise what growing up was doing to us. Life sparkles with excitement like a newborn; full of adventure. We enjoy its juice-heavy pulps, all nice and easy. The teen years are filled with treats. We sucked those juices, stretched those wires and realised we were spending what was ours. What followed is the hard-to-end struggle of conserving depleting resources. Some get to the end only to say “Years I spent in vanity and pride…”. Today we’ll leave off dissecting your definition of life, after all, it’ll change as the years go by.

No one is setting you up for melancholic. You’re probably good and have figured out everything. That’s where we all want to be. We want to live a fulfilled life. That dream life wouldn’t come by chance. Yes, you work for it and that means you have to constantly be in charge. Wait a minute, who told you have to be in charge to make your life work? That’s what everyone has been doing: ‘be in control’. All our civilization is the same, people want to be in control. But here is the question, how well have you fared being in control? The template may have ‘worked’ for some of which it’s too early to tell, but is it working for you? We hold onto life with every love in us even to the inner cells of our being.

At last, we come to the point where life becomes less attractive. The urge and hormones of the youthful years are gone. Our path is painted with tough and thoughtful experiences. Somehow, we begin to possess eternal wisdom and are deemed to be more stable and quiet. It’s not peculiar to humans. Every living species travels this road: from the tall tree, resisting the urge to dance to a boisterous wind, to the aged parent watching their energetic youth, and to the lioness watching her young hunt. It’s the cycle of life.

Here is a surprise: “He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life”. John 12:25. So what is stopping you from choosing eternal life over life in this world?

We must die an appointed way

Christ came all the way to die at Golgotha — what a precise way to die! His death was ordained by God who rejected the ways of fallen man, all our ways, even the way we die. First, He said we must be born again. That means something is wrong with the way we were born. And certainly, something is wrong with the ways of man. The way of man is the way of the flesh. Does it come as a surprise that nothing of the flesh pleases God? A life that must glorify God has to first die (the appointed way). This dying is the hardest part of living for God.

Some fainted, in an attempt to die. After some days of lifelessness, they regain consciousness. Things that weren’t appealing to them started appealing to them. They begin to see what they wouldn’t see. They relapse: fainting but not dying.

The pain of dying

Certain decisions leave us only in the hands of God. “The hand of God is safe” - True, but not easily acquiesce to (even when you know it’s the answer). Man wants to be in control. Having Plan A and B is safer than just A alone. And the best plans are the ones with a great deal of certainty. We can’t leave our best plan in the hand of God, the hand of God seems too unpredictable and we do not like that. We go for the ‘best’ option, and nothing can dissuade us from it, forgetting the ‘best’ does not connotate His best. We prefer to preach it rather than do it. We’re not to be blamed, it’s in man to survive. Not being in charge and doing it our way is excruciating. We love the idea of God's way but it must not block our way. The reality is, we’re cloth with self.

For a seed to die it first has to decay (strip of its essence) and shred off certain coverings. It has to be buried deep down in the earth, left alone and unseen for days: the pain is real.

Dying to Live

“Verily, verily I say unto you, unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit”. John 12:24

To die is to be rid of the adamic nature. An event that involves, first, falling into the ground. Christ led the way when he first was buried. The flesh had to decay and extirpate. Death must happen before there is a resurrection to life. There is no other way.

It is sad that many, with good intentions, want to skip death. Many years into the Christian faith and we haven’t yet put the world behind us. Sad but the reality. If we must be glorified then we must be buried and walk the path to death, only then can we bring forth fruit.

There is no better way to put it than the Bible: “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it”. Mathew 16:24 - 25