Our fascination with death

Death. The news reports are full of it. Nearly every day we receive reports of death from the war in Iraq. A young husband murders his wife and unborn son and the nation sits transfixed in front of their televisions. A nine-year-old girl is taken from her own bed in Florida, brutalized, and murdered. A teenager kills his grandfather and another woman then goes to his high school where he commits the worst mass murder in his state's history. This past week, millions tuned in to watch a Congress and a President get involved in a life and death struggle of a young woman named Terri in Florida. Pope John Paul II has indicated that we live in a "culture of death." If the popular movies, television programs, and video games are any indication, he is correct.

Much of our social consciousness and discussion centers on the subject of death. Should people who commit heinous crimes be put to death? Should society execute juveniles who have committed capital crimes? What about those like Terri Schiavo, those who have been declared to be in a "persistent vegetative state?" Should they be allowed to live or should they be put to death? What about retarded people, sick people, and old people? In some nations there is already conversation about "quality of life" and whether these people should be euthanized. And, in America alone, some 4,000 unwanted children perish every single day in abortion clinics without any protection of the state or of their parents. Death. It’s all around us.

This weekend, however, the focus is not on death but on life. Throughout the western world, Christians will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It will be Easter Sunday. Life trumps death. This Sunday, and, indeed, every Sunday, is a powerful reminder of the words of Jesus who said, "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly" (John 10:10 NASB). Into the midst of this culture obsessed with death comes the declaration that "?God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16 NASB). Jesus said that "God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him" (John 3:17 NASB).

The world is full of bitter, hateful, angry people. News reports reveal the suspect in the worst U.S. school shooting since Columbine smiled and waved as he gunned down five students, a teacher and a guard, asking one of his victims whether he believed in God. Then, in a nearby classroom, a student, Reggie Graves, heard the gunman say something to his friend Ryan: “He asked Ryan if he believed in God,” Graves said. “And then he shot him.” The teen's grandfather and his grandfather's wife also were found dead, and the boy killed himself. The 17-year-old teen called himself "the angel of death." In the Schiavo situation, Bill Crystal, a Fox News contributor, said in an interview that the number of people in Washington who simply want Terri Schiavo dead is "disquieting." Death.

Despite all the bad press that he gets, God is not bitter, hateful, or angry. He is not fixated on death. The Apostle Paul makes it clear that, in the person of Jesus Christ, "He died for all" (2 Cor. 5 15 NKJV), which is the message of Good Friday and that "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come" (2 Cor. 5:17 NIV). This is life. And that is the message of Easter. God is not mad at us, he loves us, he forgives us, he will not leave or forsake us and, more than that, he is not even "counting men’s sins against them" (2 Cor. 5:19 NIV).

All over the community, there are people who are fixated, obsessed with, or focused on the death all around us. Such thinking brings with it its own dark cloud of gloom, depression, and despair. This Sunday morning, however, there is a choice. We may chose to rouse ourselves from sleep, turn away from this culture of death, determine to embrace the life that God has for us, and celebrate that decision by being in worship services on the most significant day of the Church year.

"In Christ," we read, "all shall be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:22 NKJV) and because of Him "death is swallowed up in victory" (2 Cor.54 NKJV). We are created to be creatures full of life, not death, full of hope, not despair. Life. We are meant for it. Life. We are to live it to its full in a relationship with our Creator. Life. Embrace it today. Life. Celebrate it Sunday. Be in church on Easter.