An Invitation to the House of Mourning

Thinking about death in light of its inevitability is not masochism; it is wisdom. Just like it helps to develop a theology of suffering before we dive headlong into it, it serves us to foster a theology of death before we are desperate for one.

How can God be good in the midst of death? How can a God who claims victory over death still allow it? How on earth do I grieve with hope?

There are few things that rattle us like death. I’ve found this to be true for both those who believe in eternal life after it and those who don’t. We see at the end of another’s life a preview of the end of our own, and it sobers us. It also provides an opportunity to consider anew what death has to teach us about life.

Ecclesiastes says it is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting—better to attend a funeral than a wedding. Why? “For death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart” (Eccl. 7:2 NIV). We will encounter death, and it will cause us to think about God. How we think about death while we are alive has an outsized impact on how we live while we are alive.

That is why our theology of death is worth considering, revisiting, and reshaping. (Hint: if you’ve thought about death at all, you already have one.) The disorienting things we think, feel, and wonder about in this limited life? They have a place in the story of God and in Scripture’s story of death.

As we revisit our theology, I will use a framework, sometimes called the metanarrative, that breaks down the story of Scripture into four major movements:

· Creation

· Fall

· Redemption

· Consummation

Next, we will look a little more closely at what each of these means as it relates to the theme of death in Scripture.