Does Not God Hate Death?

One of the things I have been wrestling with, given the recent loss of two loved ones, is God’s attitude toward death—and therefore what my own should be. (I know people have written about this but I’m not in a research frame of mind.) My tentative conclusion (not new with me of course) is that God hates death, we should too, and we should be slower than we are to jump to easy phrases like “he/she is in a better place.”

One of the great truths and consolations of Christian faith is that God, through the resurrection of Christ, has defeated death. But it is a victory won with great cost—to Jesus and to ourselves. God’s intention is shalom, which includes an affirmation of this life and a intention that we flourish in it. Death—especially early death—is a strike against shalom and against God. That he defeats death in the end does not remove the fact that death is a perversion.

Consider Jesus raising Lazarus. Jesus does not say, “Don’t worry, he’s gone to a better place.” Instead he is described as greatly disturbed and troubled. The same verb elsewhere in the New Testament indicates indignation or anger. He is angry because death is a symbol of Satan at work, trying to undo the shalom God intends. Jesus knows he will soon destroy the work of Satan by defeating death, but that does not lead him to accept death with equanimity. By raising Lazarus he will give a foretaste of that victory and an indication of how he feels about death. To put it crudely, it pisses him off.

So let’s do two things when those we love are taken untimely from us. Let’s be pissed off. And let us also love even more the one who hates death even more than we do and has defeated it—at great cost.