Is it worth it? Why do Christians choose to spend their entire lives for the sake of the Gospel, and even find it worthwhile to do so?
For the past few months, I've been in Taiwan trying to end my relationships well with my family members (all of whom are non-Christian) before I leave for a year. While I was there, one of my great aunts passed away.
So there I was, in the arrival of December, thinking about death. The funeral was quite east meets west. It began with three hours at a Buddhist temple with monks chanting unintelligible sutras while the smell of incense hung like a curtain, smoke reaching all the way to heaven where dead ancestors are believed to hear prayers. My family bowed and kowtowed continuously with paper as their burnt offering to a spiritual world much like ours; one that required the offering of paper money, paper mansions, paper clothes, paper iPads even – in a practice of filial piety beyond the last breath. The purpose of their worship was to secure a wealthy life for the ancestors so as to receive blessing and protection from them in return. All offerings were to be burned that night. Afterwards, a Christian service was conducted complete with prayer, hymnals, and exhortation. Following a day of ancestor worship, hearts now turned to just another god they believed among many. They hoped to cover all the bases, as four children and twelve grandchildren said their goodbyes to the elderly matriarch who loved them well.
If you've ever experienced death before, whether you've lost a loved one, or you yourself were at death's door, you know that when death arrives, it stings. And a stinging pain is the worst kind, because it's the only kind that tells a lie. At first, it's sharp and localized, finding a single open target that is most vulnerable – perhaps a more recent memory, or even the final moment of saying goodbye itself – and strikes. The pain from that sting even holds the promise of being quick as it manifests in the shock that comes with a torrent of tears leading you to fall into a trap. A trap that makes you believe you are letting it all out. That after this, you will be fine, and comfort will come soon because nothing can feel worse than that quick, initial jab in this one exposed area. Until the second wave sets in, and with it, the realization that the worst part of a sting was yet to come.
You have been deceived. What was sharp and localized now becomes numb and widespread, as one painful recollection bursts into an unending army of many. You realize that an attack upon what was open and vulnerable is nothing compared to an assault on what has been kept hidden and locked away – endless memories from a sweet distant past, and the thousand moments of forgotten goodbyes taken for granted. The promise of a swift pain is promptly broken as it betrays itself in the dry, gray routine that accompanies a series of every-days with the empty feeling of loss without anymore tears to cry. And now you believe that it is impossible to let it all out, and nothing can feel worse than that slow, continuous burn that seizes your entire being and makes you feel guilty and thirsty for every breath. There is no until. The second wave is here to stay, and the only thing you can do now is become familiar with its presence.
"The sting of death is sin…." 1 Corinthians 15:56
How true those words ring. And as I watched this funeral procession, I felt that desperation and I felt that sting. But it wasn't enough that I felt it. What broke me the most was feeling that everyone around me felt this sting. And that even in their very sincere worship to their various gods, they were still left hanging in their grief, in their questions, and in their aimlessness without any comfort, answers, and purpose.
There is nothing like this sting of death to get people -the living and the dying – thinking about their own way, truth, and life. When you attend a wake, it's as much about viewing and paying respects to the dead as it is about waking up yourself to the fragility of existence we are in. At this point, people who've been mindlessly going through life will begin thinking of eternity and consider where they will go when death arrives for them. The brave ones will search for answers to this question in their past, and the humble ones will dare to look at the way they are walking presently, and question its truth. Then, thoughts of time and change flood their minds as they realize the sacredness of moments in a finite life. And as seen in the video above, how often do people waste the very seconds that build up this finite life? Illusions disappear as the important reality of walking a fruitful path, seeking truth and living purposefully becomes evident. Because when the time comes, there is nothing more tragic than someone holding life by its fingertips, saying "Don't go. I'm not ready yet. Stay just a little while longer."
In the sting of death, faith itself seemed weak and unimportant. Death suggested to me that it didn't matter which way you walked, what truth you believed in, or how life was lived. I looked at this family of mine with their own ways, truths, and lives different from mine, as I sat in death's stings, and I asked myself, "When death arrives, is there life for them apart from true worship before the true God?" What happened to the God I worship, anyways, after he declared, "I am the way, the truth, and the life"? Didn't he himself die also, pretty much right after he made that declaration? A lonely death of misery. And after this man who claimed to be God died, for three days, the earth lay silent from death's sting – one so powerful that even an infinite God seemed to be at its mercy. The truth up to this point was pretty pathetic.
But thankfully, the truth didn't end with death. Three days later, Christ rose from the dead and the sting of death was no more as the ultimate deceiver was deceived. The One who had declared "I am the way, the truth, and the life" proved to be all of that, having beaten death at its own game. So there was my answer. When death arrives, there is no life apart from true worship before the true God , because this is the only God that has beaten death.
So there I was in the arrival of December, in the midst of death, and I was finally thinking about life and the desperate need to awaken the lost (whether they be those in my family, or those across the world) with news of this true God. Specifically, the story of this season we've just celebrated, and how the God who proceeded to beat death first came into this world two thousand years ago as a baby named Immanuel – God with us. Because when this God spoke his love to the world, it was none other than his physical presence among us.
This coming of Christ was incredibly surprising. To set things up, God made a priest speechless, his barren wife pregnant, and their child incredibly loud as he preached life from the desert. He made the barren woman's cousin, an unwed teenage Jewish virgin girl, to be a walking scandal with child. He made another unwed teenage carpenter boy, marry this girl and be her midwife for this child who wasn't even his, in a stable of animals far away from home (because he also made inconvenient Roman census laws a fulfillment of Jewish prophecy regarding the little town of Bethlehem). He made wise men from distant nations become fools as they chased a bright star to an unknown land to worship an unknown king they would lay eyes on only once in their lifetime – a king who turned out to be a baby in a manger. He made a group of shepherds who never saw anything but herds of sheep, see hosts of angels while everyone else in town who usually saw many more things in comparison, missed the one thing worth seeing. And the miracle of this season is that somehow this baby who was born to die and overcome death, made all their silence, infertility, chastity, midwifery, inconvenience, foolishness, and watching worth it.
For those of you who have been putting it off, and suffering the sting of death, maybe it's time to think about life right now. And after you finish thinking about life Himself, offer up to the Lord this life to be lived fully and to be lived well. Because when the time comes, there is nothing more joyous than being that person who kisses this life as it leaves, dies to wake up to those words, "Well done, good and faithful servant," and then lives forever to worship. Because this is why we offer up our lives as Christians to the hands of the Almighty – worship. As John Piper says, "Missions exists because worship doesn't." And so this is why I go on missions – to lose my life only to find it in forever worship with forever souls before the forever God.
"For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it." Matthew 16:25
