I suppose you’ve noticed that death seems to come in clusters—whether the deaths of celebrities or of people you know. My wife and I have noticed that we’ve been attending a lot of funerals lately, and while none of them have been for family members, we have seen people we know and love grieve for their personal loss.
If it’s a believer who has died, the service often includes reference to 1 Thessalonians 4.13, where Paul exhorts his readers to “sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.” The officiant will often observe that we do sorrow, but not in the way that those without hope do.
The rest of Paul’s paragraph makes it clear that the “hope” to which he refers is the resurrection, which for the believer will involve eternal life in a glorified body.
But , whether believer or not, we still grieve.
Why?
I think it’s because we are relational people; we’re designed to have healthy relationships with others. That began when God designed marriage—”It is not good that the man should be alone” (Ge 2.18)—but it extends to broader relationships as well: children, extended family, friends, colleagues. Many of us are introverts, but we still value trusted friendships.
And the reason for this devotion is at our core, because we are in the image of God (Ge 1.26-27).
God is relational, and he has always been that way. Before there were humans, and even before there were angels—before there was anything but God—there was relationship. The Bible tells us that God is love; and since he does not change, he has always been love. But love requires relationship. With whom would God have a relationship, if he hadn’t created anything yet? His relationship must have been with another eternal being. And the Scripture teaches that there were two other eternal Persons in those days (if “days” makes any sense in that context). There was the Son, and there was the Spirit. And the three of them—one essence, but three persons—were in a perfect, eternal relationship of love—and of every other attribute: truth, justice, goodness, power, wisdom, and so forth.1
And so we, in the image of God, find it unnatural when a relationship is broken. We know instinctively that this is not the way we were designed. This is not the way it’s supposed to be. And so we all, even Christians, grieve. That is a proper response to the breaking, even the temporary breaking, of a relationship.
But Paul says that our grief is not like the grief of others; it is qualitatively different from that of those “who have no hope.” The resurrection changes our perspective dramatically.
Those without this hope bring comfort to themselves with thoughts that believers find unfulfilling:
“He will live forever in our hearts.” Well, our hearts are temporary too, and when we die, we will stop thinking about him. So no, he won’t live forever, even in that way.
“He has joined the universal soul.” Well, there’s no evidence of that, and what is the “universal soul,” anyway? How is that any meaningful sort of existence, or relationship to us?
Related to the previous platitude is a poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye:
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
Forgive my bluntness, but this is just wishful thinking. No, he’s not any of these things. And no, the white peacock who showed up at Paul’s house during the recording session was not the late John. And no, these thoughts do not serve as any realistic or meaningful basis for not grieving.
There’s a better way.
Next time.
Photo by Hari Perisetla on Unsplash
