Death is Such an Ugly Enemy

This is an excellent section from D.A. Carson's book Scandalous.  John 11:33 says that when Jesus saw Mary and others weeping over Lazarus' death He was "deeply moved" in His spirit.  Carson stresses that the phrase “deeply moved” really should be translated as “outraged” because the language communicates anger.  Part of what Jesus was experiencing was anger.  Jesus was angry because death is always ultimately because of sin, the ultimate tragedy. Although God brings good out of the death of a believer, death itself is something evil.  Carson writes:

“There is a compassion in these tears, but there is also outrage. Jesus is outraged not because he has lost a friend but because of death itself. Death is such an ugly enemy. It generates endless and incalculable anguish. And for anyone steeped in the entire biblical heritage, death itself is a mark of sin. How is death introduced to the [human] race? Death itself is nothing other than God’s insistence that human hubris [prideful arrogance] will go so far and no farther. It is God’s judicial response to our warped rebellion. Whether death afflicts us at five or ten or thirty or fifty or seventy or eighty years, it comes and it is implacable [it can not be bribed away]. We are sinners, and we will die. Every time there is death, it still hurts. It is still painful. It is still ugly. And it is still the result of sin. This is not the way God made the creation in the first place. Jesus is outraged by the whole thing. He is outraged by the death that has called forth this loss, by the sin that lies behind that, and by the unbelief that characterizes everyone’s response to it. . . [The Bible] dares to recognize death as the last enemy. Death is an enemy, and it can be a fierce one. Death is not normal when you look at it from the vantage point of what God created in the first place. It is normal this side of the fall, but that is not saying much. It is an enemy. It is ugly. It destroys relationships. It is to be feared. It is repulsive. There is something odious about death. Never pretend otherwise. But death does not have the last word. It is the last enemy, but more to be feared is the second death. Thank God for a Savior who could claim, ‘I am the resurrection and the life’” (132-2.)

Death as an Argument for God

Death is usually viewed as an argument against the existence of God. A good God wouldn't allow suffering and evil and death, or at least so the argument goes. However it struck me that there is something about death that actually makes it a good argument for God.

If evolution caused the seemingly infinite variety of life forms and intricate biological functions that we observe, why is it that in the billions upon billions of adaptations found in nature, evolution has not found the one adaptation that--by far--would be the most beneficial to a species, namely, a lack of mortality?

I do not mean immortality in the sense that an animal could fall into a volcano and live. What I mean to ask is why there is not one single organism, from cockroach to man to bacteria, that does not possess natural mortality? Certainly pre-programmed death cannot be more beneficial to a species than an unlimited lifespan? Nor is there any inherent reason why, with as much complexity as life has, could it not find a way for at least one single organism to sustain itself indefinitely?

If blind nature can supposedly find a way to create eyesight and consciousness, then why couldn't it find a way for one simply organism to just keep on living unless meets a violent death? All that would be necessary for this would be the adequate repair or replacement or parts. Certainly that would have been easier for blind nature to achieve rather than biological reproduction--especially when it involves two different gendered parents. If blind nature can find a way for life to build itself automatically from a single cell after conception, then why can it not find a way for one organism to sustain itself indefinitely?

But death is a fact. And it is a fact that is explained by a Biblical worldview. Human death, at least, came into the world when Adam rebelled against God and cut himself off from the source of life (Genesis 3; Romans 5). Death is part of the curse that is now over this world, and which one day will be lifted because of Jesus' death on the cross. The existence of death is better explained by a Biblical worldview than by blind naturalism, and thus strangely enough death is actually an argument for the existence of God