Death & Taxes
When I was a kid, one of the maxims my Dad would often cite was, “The only things in life you can count on are death and taxes.” As a child, I just thought everyone will someday die, true and therefore everyone (at least at some point) will pay their taxes too. When said over and over again, with an air of confidence to the creed, it sounded well enough like settled science, or as my Dad was an economist, settled social economics.
The world can often be a sad place, a sad reality. But how sad a philosophy to pass down to your child that the only things you can count on are…death and taxes. Very nihilistic, very depressing. It begs the profound question though: Is it true?
I am not going to go into the merits of taxation and tax law, I’ll leave that to someone else maybe much smarter and shrewder than me. My gripe is with the agent death.
From the secular materialism worldview, death has always existed, will knock at every humans door at some point, and it can also be argued from the Darwinian mindset that death is the hero of the story!
Dr. Janet Browne, Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University wrote, “Darwin … was working on a theory that requires death. His theory of natural selection is built on the idea that the unfit are going to die, that they are not going to contribute to the next generation” (Dr. Browne).
Carl Sagan in his book Cosmos wrote “The secrets of evolution are death and time” (p. 30).
The late Steve Jobs stated during his commencement speech at Stanford, “Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new” (posted at Stanford.edu on June 14, 2005).
Well there’s a joy-kill of a worldview and philosophy to live by. When you delve into the implications of that kind of mind set, that perspective, there are real life consequences (anxiety, depression, suicide, depravity, etc. To be clear, Christians also face these same inflictions but there are very different solutions and answers that can aid the believer).
From a Christian worldview perspective, death as a foregone conclusion, always has been and always will be, that death is the savior of the plot to life is a lie. Let’s look at three points.
First, death has in fact not always existed, death is actually a parasite on God’s creation! Romans 5:12 states “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.” If you are looking for a metaphorical visual to help understand this theology, imagine at the moment of The Fall when Eve (and then Adam) rebelled against The Creator (God) by directly choosing their own rule in defiance of God’s directive, a massive yellow school bus (sin) came plowing through the spiritual door for the first time and as this was occurring, death (an agent) grabbed onto the big yellow school bus (sin) with hooks for hands and just like a parasite, hitchhiked a free ride into The Creation. Before this event, there was no death. One of the many reason’s called His initial creation as “good” and on the sixth day “very good.” How could God call His creation good and very good if everything was in a constant of pain, suffering, death, decay as things like cancer, mutations, and entropy ran rampant?
Second, at the end and as part of Christ’ judgement on this fallen creation and as part of the redemption process of restoring the broken creation and fallen mankind, God will extinguish the parasite, the agent death once and for all. There will no longer be death in God’s creation. There will no longer be the curse of sin. Evil, pain, suffering, sickness and death itself will be forever done, finished! The Book of Revelation says, “Death and Hades will be thrown into the Lake of Fire” (20:14)
Third, and finally…in the meantime. The Apostle Paul when sharing practical theology with the church at Corinth was asked about Christian believers who had passed away prior to Christ’ return, what was their fate? Paul says that to be absent of the body is to be with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). Ultimately and I think this is another revolutionary, mind-blowing concept of the Christian worldview, the follower of Christ, the Christian believer no longer needs to fear death any longer. This perspective is completely antithetical to at least any modern, western thought. In a world and culture where I often hear of a golden rule of “don’t get dead” and the number one fear of humanity in poll after poll is death, it is pretty counter-cultural to live by the view that “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippines 1:21). When you take a good, clear look at the book of Hebrews, chapter two, you will see this proclamation in the Bible, “Jesus came to deliver us from the fear of death Hebrews 2:14-15. All I can say is “WOW!!!!!” and “Hallelujah!!!!” Talk about liberating from the dogma of death!!!
D.L. Moody famously proclaimed “Some day you will read in the papers that D. L. Moody, of East Northfield, is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it! At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now.
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