Why Death?

What place does death have in the world?

Why do we die?

Why do things break and fall apart and decay? Why is there destruction?

As Christians, we have been taught that because of sin, death entered into the world. And that because of the one sin of Adam and Eve, all humankind was cursed to sin and to suffer and to die. This is what we call the Fall of Man and Original Sin. Because of that original sin committed by our first parents in the Garden of Eden, all of humankind and all of creation is fallen. And this is why we experience pain and suffering and this is why we die.

We have also been taught that as humans, we have only existed on earth for a relatively short period of time. Scientific findings place the existence of Homo sapiens to go back for only about 200,000 years. During that time, humans increased in knowledge of themselves and of the world around them. At the same time, throughout those 200,000 years humans experienced death. Their bodies experienced sickness and decay and they died, just like every other plant and animal on the face of the earth.

So at what point do we say death entered into the human condition? Evidence would say that death existed long before humans were formed. Our pre-human ancestors lived and died much as we do now. And their ancestors did the same. The Neanderthal was a close cousin to Homo sapiens. Neanderthals were very much like humans. They wore clothing, they communicated verbally, they participated in art, and they had an awareness of the spiritual. These creatures were so human-like, and yet they were not fully human. Their genetic code was certainly different from Homo sapiens, and yet similar enough that both species seemed to experience life in much the same way. Neanderthals were certainly sentient beings, and yet they were not truly human.

What are we to do with this? Both humans and Neanderthals, as well as the several other more fully evolved species of primates I have not mentioned, experienced death. They mourned for their dead, they suffered from pain when they were injured, they experienced sickness and frustration. All of these things have been blamed on the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, all of these things have been blamed on Homo sapiens, and yet, all of these things existed before Homo sapiens were created. Humans and Neanderthals and the other similar species all had a common ancestor – one also considered a primate. This primate also experienced death, yet this ancestor did not experience death in the same way. This creature was incapable of seeing the world in the same ways in which his human and Neanderthal descendants could. His brain was not designed to comprehend these greater intricacies of the created order. He could not ponder death and pain in the same way his descendants would. He was truly an animal without sentience. And while he may have been able to recognize to a certain extent the tragedy of death and the sorrow all creatures experience when a loved one dies, he did not experience these things in a fully cognizant way. His life depended upon instinct and upon his sensory capabilities. He experienced life through his senses, and while he did think, his thought could only go so far before his baser instincts kicked in. This was what he was created to be.

And yet this study of the evolution of the genetic code of primates fails to answer the question of where death came from. We believe that death entered the world through the sin of people, and yet death obviously existed at the time of this primate ancestor, before humans existed. We cannot say that this ancestor is the cause of the suffering we experience in the world, for he was not capable of the sin which we believe brought death into the world. As Wesleyans, we often say we believe that sin is only truly a sin if it is committed willingly and if the person who commits the sin is aware of what they are doing and that what they are doing is wrong. Surely, humans and Neanderthals and the like were capable of this kind of sin, and surely this primate ancestor was not. He was not capable of sin, because he was not aware of the ability to sin. So if we are to blame death on sin, we cannot blame it on him because he did not sin, and if we are to blame death on the specific sin of humans, we also run into trouble because death existed before humans, before creatures were capable of sinning.

And yet we cannot, as some have, just throw out centuries of church theology and millennia of progress in understanding how we relate to God and how our sin separates us from God and how death interacts with sin – not to mention the restorative work of Christ, which of all things oddly tends to be the most ridiculed by secularists. But at the same time, we cannot simply deny the evidence that science has given us, as others have, and say that evolution is a lie and the earth is only 6,000 years old while completely ignoring the overwhelming genetic and archaeological evidence against such claims.

As Wesleyans, we are not Fundamentalists. We believe that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God, but we do not mistake the word of God for the Word of God, which is Christ. We believe in the truth of the Bible, but we believe more so in the truth that is revealed in Christ. We do not believe that God simply dictated the words of Scripture to the people who wrote them down. We believe that those who wrote the Bible used their own minds and skills and incorporated their own thoughts and ideas into its pages while at the same time being influenced and led in a certain direction by the Sprit of God. This gives us room to say that perhaps some of things we read in the Bible reflect not so much the way God saw the world, but rather the way humans interacted with God within their own limited historical and cultural settings. If one were to take the Creation accounts in Genesis, for example, on a completely literal level, then one would have to conclude that the sky is actually a great glass dome overlooking the earth, behind which can be seen a great mass of blue water. Science has disproved this theory long ago, but this does not mean that the story is just a bunch of falsehoods and should not be trusted. On the contrary, this story paints a picture of the all-powerful God who created the heavens and the earth by his own will and love, and it shows how his image is stamped over all of his creation, and how people out of all of the creation were chosen to interact with God in a special way. All of these timeless truths are portrayed in a poetic way in Genesis, a way that the people of the time could easily remember. In addition to this, these truths are forever engraved upon an ancient near eastern understanding of the world, which believed in such things as the sky dome. These elements of the story do not detract from its intended message, even though some get overly distracted by them, rather they show how God has revealed himself in all generations, even to ancient near eastern people who did not fully understand the way the world operated on a grand scale, just as God continues to reveal himself today to us who do not fully understand the way the world operates on a grand scale.

And yet after all this time, we still do not have an answer as to exactly why death exists and how exactly the sin of humans is related to death. We believe that sin causes death, but what do we exactly mean when we say that? Death can have many different forms after all. Do we mean to say that all forms of death are a result of human sin? Do we believe that death came into existence because of sin? Or do we believe that the end result of sin is death? Does death truly exist in and of itself? Or is death merely the absence of life and all that truly does exist? Perhaps what we mean when we say that sin leads to death is that when we sin we die spiritually. Our sin cuts us off from the life-giving Spirit of God. So in a very real sense, our souls are being led to death when we sin. So maybe when we say that sin leads to death, what we are really saying is that our soul is dying when we sin.

However, this leads some other problems. While it is very true that our souls are dying when we sin, there is more to death than just a spiritual death. Some may argue that the spirit and soul of a person is all that matters, so a spiritual salvation from death is all that is required, but that ignores that fact that as humans we have been created to exist in both a spiritual and a physical sense. We are both physical and spiritual beings, and this cannot be ignored. The Gnostics believed that people were created from sinful matter, and the only way we could be free from sin was to die and live on as an eternal soul, but such an understanding denies the inherent goodness of God’s creation. We believe that God created everything good, and that this is not limited to some concept about an eternal soul. God made the physical as well as the spiritual, and he made both good. If we truly believe that, then what do we say when we say that sin only leads to spiritual death and not physical death? When we say that, we say that physical death is not truly bad. If only spiritual death is the result of sin, then that would mean that physical death must have come to be a reality by some other means. But do we really want to say this? Everything within us screams that when we lose a loved one, or when we are forced to see a loved one suffer physical pain or when we experience physical pain and suffering ourselves, that this is not the way things should be. If the creation was truly created good and our sin only leads to spiritual pain and death, then what is the deal with all of the physical suffering and death that we see? Where did all of that come from? And why do we resist it with all of our being? Something deep inside us tells us that it is all terribly wrong. And yet physical death and decay are a part of nature. Without physical death, the creation would not exist as it does. The created order is full of cycles and one of these cycles is the death of all things. As the creation continues to recreate and to replenish itself, it continues to discard the old and that which is no longer needed in order to make space for new creation. Is that all that physical death is? Is it just a natural part of the way the universe exists? Everything dies and decays after all – from people, to animals, to plants, to planets, to stars, to galaxies. And yet everything continues on regardless of death. People create more people before they eventually die. Plants make more plants. Even stars have a reproductive cycle. It would appear that everything in the universe was made with the purpose of eventually recreating itself in one way or another. Is physical death then, the way that nature makes room for new creations? Does physical death eliminate that which is less complete in order to replace it with something more complete? And what does such a belief say about us when we die? Are we to believe that the reason we die is to make room for better people, a more complete creation than we are, to come after us? Again, this type of thinking can also lead us into many additional problems.

While the evidence may lead us to believe that the natural way of the universe tends towards “survival of the fittest,” and while we cannot rule out such a claim, we must also recognize that such an understanding is limited when it comes to understanding death. We may be led to believe that physical death on its own is a good thing because it has helped lead to the creation which we see today and has driven the creation towards perfection. But does a natural physical death truly lead to a better creation, or just a different creation than what previously existed? Does death really make anything better? Or does it simply eliminate what nature perceives as lesser? One could argue that death not only eliminates the lesser and the imperfect, but it also eliminates that which is good. If we truly believe that the physical world was created good then why would anything in it need to be destroyed? And what are we to believe about ourselves? If God truly loves us, then why would he create us to die? While it might be easier for some to believe that death naturally occurs in creation in general, it is more difficult to claim that sentient beings such as humans, beings which we believe God loves personally and on an individual level, have been created to die and be replaced by other humans. Maybe that is how creation was meant to exist up to the point some branches of the primate family tree became sentient beings, but what about after this? Why does God let people die?

Perhaps the answer lies at the point in which the creation became sentient – the point at which the ancestors of homo sapiens and like-minded creatures were first given sentience. One could argue that a creature that cannot experience death on a cognizant level cannot ever have a problem with death. While a non-sentient animal can still experience death and pain on a sensory level, it does not ever have to wrestle with the meaning of life and death. However, we, as sentient beings, do. And this continues to beg the question, why do people experience physical death? It also causes one to wonder how deep physical death stings us, and not us only, but the rest of creation as well. We believe pain and anguish to be a bad thing on a cognizant level, but we also experience pain and anguish on an emotional and sensory level and it causes great unpleasantness to the point at which we recognize through our cognitive abilities that pain is a bad thing – not just because have the ability process that fact with our minds, but because our sensory bodies naturally feel that way when they are injured. This is true not just for us, but for the rest of the animal world. It is not just humans who dread pain and destruction. Animals also dread it on a very deep, though less cognizant, level.

So what does that lead us to conclude? It would seem then that while physical death is a natural part of the physical creation, it is also for some reason natural for the creation to fight against death. Why then is there this contradiction? One could perhaps say that without this resistance to death, the creation would summarily succumb to death. Without the natural tendency of the creation to resist death, death would be all that would remain and there would be no creation. If then, it is so important that the creation resist death so as never to fully succumb to it, why is death necessary at all? If God is the creator of the creation, then why did he allow a creation that includes death?

Perhaps the reason why death exists in the physical world is because God had in mind to create humans – people made in his image who would have the ability to think for themselves, fully sentient beings. Perhaps God recognized from the beginning that once sentient beings were created, they would immediately have the ability to distinguish between two different ways of thinking and living, two different paths if you will. A sentient being would be capable of recognizing the difference between good and evil, and would also be capable of choosing which path to follow. A sentient being would have the ability to perceive with the mind what the rest of creation could only perceive through sensory input abilities. It would be able to perceive with the mind that which other animals only recognized by instinct. A sentient being would have the ability to go against instinct to the point of making decisions that would affect the rest of creation on a grand scale. A sentient being would be able to recognize death and destruction with its mind, and more than that, would be able to choose whether or not to reject death and destruction, or to embrace it. A sentient being would also have the ability to recognize others of its own kind and love them and be able to ponder his or her responsibility towards protecting them as well as his or her responsibility to the rest of the creation, the choice to treasure or to abuse. It would seem then that these first sentient beings right on down the present state of sentient beings in us as humans chose to try both paths. From that point on down to the present time, they have always wanted both the good and the bad. They have wanted everything. They wanted power over good and evil, and the power to decide what was good and what was evil. In other words, these first sentient beings, whose sentience has continued on in Homo sapiens for the past 200,000 years, have wanted to play the part of God. We have wanted to be masters over good and evil. People over the millennia have chosen to both treasure and to abuse each other as well as the rest of creation. As a result, the entire creation has become what we might refer to as “fallen,” to the point that even other animals fear humans and have the ability to be influenced by humans for better or for worse. It would seem that animals in today’s world have developed in such a way as to become permanently subject to humankind in many different ways. The mental abilities of many animals can even mimic those of the humans who interact with them. Animals in turn can experience shame or happiness or fear or hatred at the sight of a human, depending upon their interaction with humans.

What does this have to do with the presence of physical death in the creation? It would seem that God allows physical death in the creation in order to destroy that which is not good. It would seem that God recognized that when he created sentient beings that they would have the ability to choose between good and evil, and that they would choose both good and evil. This attempt to replace God by being masters over both good and evil is what led to what we would call spiritual death among people, in which the human soul is cut off from the life-giving Spirit of God, from which it came. Because people would experience spiritual death would seem to be the reason why physical death was also allowed to continue. God will not allow spiritual death to reign over people forever. This is why people experience physical death – so that their spiritual death will not remain in the creation. What about those who desired good more than the bad? We believe that God is gracious and that he does not want any person to be destroyed. What he wants to destroy is sin, and the reason for that is because sin destroys us, we who are his good creation. Sin must be destroyed in us before it is allowed to destroy us itself. Because of our desire to be master over both good and evil, we have become a self-destructive creation. Paul in the book of Romans writes that all of creation has been subjected to frustration because of us. Our sin has changed the course of natural history. Paul also writes that it is through Christ, who was God in the flesh, fully God and fully human, who committed no sin, that the creation may be restored. It is through Christ that we have the ability to become “children of God.” It is through Christ that our bondage and tendency towards sin is broken, and it is through his death and resurrection that we are set free from sin and death. We are not only set free from spiritual death and separation from God, which is what we call “hell,” but we are also set free from physical death. Christ physically rose from dead, and because of this we will also be physically raised from the dead. When Christ ascended into heaven forty days after his bodily resurrection, he was entering into God’s space. God’s space is separated from this space that we occupy on earth, but it is not far away. Through Christ, we have access to God’s space. Eventually, God’s space will be united with our space, and when this happened we will see that everything that was truly good about this world will never be destroyed. God’s good creation is eternal, both the physical and the spiritual creation. The reason physical death exists now is to provide for the ability to rid the created world of sin and everything that causes despair and separation from God. The final goal is essentially to remove hell from the creation and into its own space separate from God forever. All that was truly evil in creation, all that continually chose to reject God in the creation, and chose to reform itself into the image of hell (or the image of the absence of God) will be separated from everything that is good in creation. All that has become hell will be removed, and since it is the Spirit of God that sustains life, one could argue that in the absence of God’s Spirit, there would be no life, and in hell, all of creation that refused to submit to God’s redemption would cease to exist.

In the absence of sin and the desire to sin, we would then see a new creation, one where nothing good from the old creation was destroyed, where we would be reunited with loved ones who had previously died, and a place where death itself would be destroyed and there would no longer be any spiritual death for God would always be there, and there would no longer be any need for people to experience physical death, because sin would always be absent.


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Sources:

C.S. Lewis. The Problem of Pain. HarperCollins Pub., 1940.

NOVA. Becoming Human: Unearthing Our Earliest Ancestors. WGBH Boston, 2009.

St. Augustine. City of God, Book XIV.

The Influence of Eschatology on Western Culture

In considering how eschatology has helped shape Western culture in history, one must consider also the roots of Western culture. The traditional West has derived much of its philosophical tradition from the Greeks. Greece heavily influenced the culture of the Roman Empire, which in turn influenced the whole of Europe. Later, Europe had much cultural influence over the rest of the world, especially so in North and South America and Australia. These locations, along with Europe, are what is considered to be the Western World of today. The West has its true birth in Greece, however, with the influence of the Greek philosophers, such as Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. Their understanding of the universe helped to shape the understanding of subsequent generations and cultures. This is why so much of what we, as Christians, claim as our eschatology tends to lean towards rather Platonic ideas.

In our eschatology we tend to have a platonic world view, meaning that we embrace Plato’s idea of some sort of afterlife. However, we go beyond just that and tend to think of an afterlife as being better than the life that we live now. We tend to believe that this world in which we now live is only a shadow or a copy of what is to come. There are deeper layers to creation that have not yet been explored, however, they look a lot like what we have now, only much better. This concept is seen in the writings of such western authors as C.S. Lewis among many others. In Lewis’s book The Last Battle, he portrays both our world as well as his fictional world of Narnia as only being shadows or copies, a small glimpse of what is to come, of the real world of the afterlife. He compares this idea to an onion – one may remove layer upon layer, always going deeper inside towards the true reality. Because of this type of idea, we in the West tend to think that this physical world we live in does not really matter all that much, because it is only a bad and spoiled copy of a better world that we may experience when we die. I believe this is especially true among Christians, who often in the West tend to believe that God is going to destroy this bad copy that is his creation and take us all into the real world of “heaven” where everything will be the way it is supposed to be.

This type of thinking lent itself to the Gnostics of the early Church who were also heavily influenced by Greek philosophy. They believed that the actions done in the body were of little significance, because these body was only something bad that would one day be destroyed, and we would live on as spirits in the afterlife, because only our spirits were truly pure and good. This Gnostic idea seems to have invaded much of Western, especially evangelical, Christian thought. People, for the most part, believe that when they die their bodies will rot away and their spirits will live on. They will go up to heaven and live with God as a spirit of some kind. This vague idea of some sort of spiritual afterlife often contradicts beliefs that Christians will receive a new body in heaven. It would seem that while our culture is highly eschatological in its thought it does not really have any idea what it truly does believe about these things. Our culture seems very ignorant, and worse, ignorant of its ignorance.

What we do seem to believe is that the physical world is not too important, so we tend to do whatever we please with it – polluting both our bodies and our environment, with the underlying thought of this appearing to be that it does not matter because the world is all going to hell in the end anyway – which brings up another idea that seems very much present in the minds of the West, the ideas of heaven and hell. It seems that more people know of these two places and think of them as places where one may go after death than they know of Jesus himself. I am not sure why these particular doctrines have been raised above almost every other belief of the Church, so that even those in secular culture know about these things and yet do not understand or even know of the doctrine of the incarnation of Christ, or of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Even within many Christian circles, more emphasis is placed on heaven and hell and on how one needs to pray the sinner’s prayer so that Jesus can save them from hell and they can go to heaven when they die than anything else.

The end times seem to be a fascination of Western, especially evangelical, culture as well. Everyone seems to be fascinated by the idea that God may someday, any day now, come down and destroy this place. There have been numerous attempts made to predict the date of Christ’s return. All of which so far have been wrong. There is also a certain fascination of particular concepts of an AntiChrist figure that will supposedly rule the world just before Jesus comes back and trashes the place. Various leaders have been accused of being the AntiChrist, or the Man of Sin spoken of by the Apostle Paul. These people include such people as Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pope John Paul II, and Barak Obama. These types of things are really not surprising, however. Western culture has been shaped by the biblical texts as well and not just Greek philosophy. It should not be surprising that people speculate on the identity of these mysterious future figures presented in the biblical texts. It is not wrong to wonder who or what exactly Paul and John and even Jesus himself were talking about. People tend to think whoever is in leadership at the present time must be the AntiChrist. It may seem silly now to say that Gorbachev was possessed by Satan himself since he worked heavily with Ronald Reagan to help prevent Armageddon from happening. It seems foolish now, but a lot of people were convinced back then, just like it made since to believe that Hitler was the AntiChrist during WWII and that Nero was the AntiChrist in the early days of the church. This phenomenon is nothing new and not at all times without logic. It is hard to think of a better candidate for the position of AntiChrist than such evil people as Hitler and Nero. While it is okay to wonder, I believe the problem arises when we become obsessed with things like this and forget the central hope of the Gospel. I believe the apostles would agree with C.S. Lewis when he writes at the beginning of his Screwtape Letters that there are people who ignore devils and people who are obsessed with devils; and neither of these is what Lewis or the Apostles wanted for us as Christians living in Western culture, or anywhere else.

Heaven and Hell

A belief in heaven and hell is an important part of the Christian tradition. One may point out that too many Christians have become overly obsessed with the notions of an eternal existence in either heaven or hell, saying that they have lost sight of the present only to embrace something that has not yet taken hold. However, I would argue that it is not improper to spend significant amounts of time thinking about both heaven and hell.

Heaven is not just something that is off in the future. Heaven is something that we may begin to experience now. Heaven is another way of referring to the place where God dwells, or to God’s presence, or even God himself. If that is what heaven is, then heaven exists right now in the present. Everywhere we go we may find heaven because God’s presence is everywhere. However, we do not always have our eyes open wide enough to recognize the presence of God and his influence in our lives, in the lives of others, or in the creation. Where the presence of God is, there is heaven, because heaven is the presence of God.

However, this earthly recognition of heaven or of the kingdom of heaven as it is often called, would be without merit if it were not for the future hope of heaven as well. Heaven is not just something that is experienced on earth through the presence of God by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The reality of heaven on earth is that the present anticipates the future. Heaven is the presence of God and God’s presence will continue to exist for all time, even after we have died. In this way, we may continue to experience heaven after death and on into the future because the presence of God will never depart from us, and we will be with God forever. This is our future hope of heaven. It is both a present and a future reality. Those who have lost the future sense of heaven have lost hope.

Heaven, however, is more than just being with God. The reality of being in God’s presence leads to other great things as well. In scripture, we see that heaven will come to earth, and that the spiritual and the physical will be united as they ought to be with no more struggle. Heaven is not just a place where we can escape to when we die in order to avoid either hell, or the destruction of the earth. While it is true that the earth will one day be destroyed, this destruction is for purification and is part of the renewal process of restoring God’s good creation. All that is not good must be destroyed. In heaven, no good thing is destroyed. This is why earth becomes a part of heaven in the new creation. Earth was created good, and God will not give up on his good creation. Everything that was truly worth anything – that was truly good – on earth will continue to exist in heaven, or when heaven comes to earth. This is why Paul wrote that the creation was waiting in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. The creation will be liberated from destruction and decay. And people are a part of God’s good creation. Every person, every relationship, that was honoring to God will carry on into eternity. In heaven, no good thing is destroyed. We will exist as were meant to exist, and our existence will not just be a restoration of what we call “Eden,” or the innocent state of humanity. We are no longer infants without knowledge. We will have knowledge, but we will live in peace and holiness.

Just as everything that is truly good and remains in the image and reflection of God will continue to do so in the future, so everything that is evil and does not conform to the image and will of God will not continue on into the future. Everything that works against God will be destroyed, the devil, death, even people and parts of creation that defy Him. All that refuses to carry on in the presence of God will be isolated and separated from God. This is what humanity has struggled with all along. We have chosen to live separately from the presence of God and have not retained his image, but have distorted and perverted it. We have worshiped ourselves and the creation instead of the Creator. This is how one may experience hell on earth. Just as the kingdom of heaven is not only something that remains in the future, but has begun already and is even now inside of us according to Jesus, so hell is also something that is not just in the future, but may begin in this life. Every rebellion, every isolation, every turning away from God is hell. If one continues to follow these patterns in this life, then these patterns will eventually become permanent. The temporary hell will become a permanent hell.

In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis spoke of heaven and hell beginning in this life, and that the next life would be the continuation of what we had chosen in this life. He says that those who are in heaven at the last will look back on their life on earth and say that they had always been in heaven, and those who were in hell at the last would look back on their earthly life and say that they had always been in hell, and both would speak truthfully. Those who are in hell, then, lived life on earth in a weird sort of anticipation of ultimate damnation; and those who are in heaven, lived life on earth in anticipation of salvation. Both the damned and the saved experienced the end results of their choices before the end results were finally brought about. This is how, Lewis says, heaven and hell “work backwards.” He says that heaven works backwards from the future to the present in the life of the believer, making even the worst trials and persecutions bearable through hope and joy; and that hell works backwards in the sinner, contaminating even the most pleasurable of sins with the stain of the anticipation of damnation. N.T. Wright views hell to a certain degree as a place where humans lose the image of God and become less than human. All trace of the divine nature is removed from them as they have chosen to live as though it did not exist in them. He also views heaven as God’s space which will ultimately be rejoined with our space in the marriage of Christ and his church.

Just as it is important to view the kingdom of God as “is and is yet to come,” so it is also appropriate to view hell in this way. Though, hell would work in the opposite way of heaven. When heaven comes to earth, there is no more room for any traces of hell to remain. If heaven is the presence of God and hell is the absence of God’s presence, then the fact that heaven would come to earth would mean that hell would no longer have any place or hold here. The reason why we must embrace the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God as both present reality and future expectation is because this is what the writers of the New Testament proclaimed. This was the message of Christ, and the early church carried on his message. We must embrace heaven as now because we must carry on the mission Christ gave to us to proclaim the good news among the nations, ushering in God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. We must also remember that God’s kingdom comes ultimately by God’s power and that while we participate in God’s purposes, God ultimately brings them about. Also, the hope of a future heaven where no good thing is destroyed means that we will be able to see our lost loved ones who died in the Lord. They will be raised in the Lord along with us, and there will no longer be any stupid and hateful death that takes us away from our loved ones, destroying God’s good creation, and defying God and the image of God. We will be together again and it will be wonderful. God will restore all things, and death will be damned forever. Revelation says that death and hades and the devil will be thrown into the lake of fire. Fire is meant to purify, but they will be in this fire forever, indicating that there was nothing in them that could be refined. There was nothing gold about them that could emerge from the flames. They all melted away like wax in everlasting destruction. And through this final destruction, we will be rid of all our enemies forever. This belief in a future hell is one of the ways in which we are reminded of the surpassing greatness of the glory of Christ Jesus that will be revealed in us – a greatness that is greater than all of sin and death. A belief in hell helps us to realize that we need God. We need salvation. We need to live in a healthy fear and love of the holiness of God. A belief in heaven gives us hope that there is more to this life than what we currently see, and that in the end God will restore all things and be all in all.