2-7-2016 Bioethics Part 43

The speaker is discussing the importance of faith and hope in relation to death and dying. They explain that faith in Christ takes away fear of death because Christ has conquered death through His resurrection. However, simply believing in the resurrection is not enough; one must continue to remind themselves of their faith and its significance in preparing for death. Christian hope is different from secular hope because it is an expectation of something that will happen, specifically being part of the new heavens and the new earth with God. This hope should temper our hopes and dreams for this life, redirecting them towards the greater glory of being with God. The speaker also challenges the misconception that focusing on heaven diminishes our effectiveness in the world. Instead, they argue that thinking about heaven more actually makes us more effective in loving our neighbors and making the world a better place. Alright, let's get started. God, we pray that as we continue to talk about this difficult subject, that you would give us a better understanding of it, and hope as a result of having thought hard about what we will be studying today and for the weeks and months to come. In Jesus' name, Amen. This morning, we are going to continue talking about death and dying and the virtues in relation to that topic. We've looked at, last week we looked at two virtues, well kind of one and a half virtues. What was the first virtue that we talked about in relation to death and dying? Faith. Okay, so the aspect of faith. Faith is important for all of life, correct? Like there's not like a particular time at which you need faith and then other times you don't need faith. But we're specifically saying, okay, but what is it about faith in dying that is so crucial? Why is faith, how does faith work itself out in those who are dying? Why is it so necessary for dying well? Huh? Takes away fear? That's right. And why would it take away fear? You know what you have to look forward to? Okay. The object of our faith. What is the object of the Christian's faith? Christ. That's right. And as a result of having faith in Christ, what is it even about that? We can just keep drilling down in this for, I mean a long time we won't, but what is it about faith in Christ that leads to some kind of assurance? What? Why courage at death though? There we go. Christ has conquered death. And how has Christ conquered death? He's raised from the dead. So, the faith in Jesus, in particular in His resurrection, is one of those things that grounds us and helps us to die well. What if I already believe in the resurrection? Am I done? Or no? And if not, why not? And if so, why so? Like, I believe in the resurrection. I'm done, right? Check. Got that done with. Okay, you have to believe it applies to you? Do you struggle to believe that? Yes. If you are sane, then you struggle to believe that. Because that is a pretty lofty claim about what God has done on your behalf. Therefore, once you believe it, you have to continue to hear that thing said over and over and over again to be reminded of what your faith is in, why your faith matters, why your faith should actually give you some kind of grounding in this world, preparing you for death. We are never done preparing for death. You are always in the process of preparing to die. When do we start that process? Well, you should. Yeah, sure. As soon as possible. Right? Why? Yeah, preparing yourself for it. Working towards it. Dying well is hard. So you better get ready for death today. Right? Not five years from now. This isn't like an after-college I'll think about. This is all my life goals for the next ten years. I got these things, and then it'll be working on that stuff. No. It has to happen today. Faith. Nobody looked at hope. How does Christian hope differ from secular hope? It's not expecting? You sure? Okay. Okay, I get what you mean. It may or may not happen. And the Christian hope is? That's right. It's an expectation of something that will happen. And why is it that you believe? First of all, what is the Christian hope? Like, just kind of summed up. Anybody? There you go. Yeah, glory of God for being part of that new heavens, new earth, body, everything. Okay, cool. So, that's true. Why is that a fixed reality for a Christian that we wait for? It's already been accomplished? How the heck do you know that? Because of the resurrection. Huh, interesting. We're back to the resurrection. Probably a pretty important thing to think about. Yes, Jesus is the new heavens and the new earth. He is in a resurrected body. We are in Christ, therefore we will be like him. This should lead to us having a large amount of hope for our lives that goes beyond our life here. We also saw that if we have this kind of hope, what happens to our hopes and dreams for this life? Does it erase them? No. Is it wrong to have hopes and dreams in this life? No. So, what does a fixed expectation for the future that we are hoping for because we have not received it, what does that do for our hopes today? Redirects or changes them? That's right. Yeah, that would be a good way to put it. Tempers them. It doesn't mean that they're bad, but it does make you say, okay, these are hopeful things. But what is true about all your hopes and dreams for this life? They don't match up? Right. The other one, what we are expecting and waiting for is way more, should be way more precious to us, is way more glorious. I don't care what kind of job you hope to have in this world, it is not nearly as cool as being with God forever in perfect goodness. Good. So, we have tempered hopes. We will not get everything we want in this life, everything that we hope for, and that, for the Christian, ought to be okay. I think that one of the funny things about Christians, working off this hope idea, is that we think that if we focus on the new heavens and the new earth, what is to come, then what is true, this is kind of just a general kind of consensus, if we focus on that stuff, then what's true about the way that we view life now? It's just a pilgrimage. That's right. The idea is, if you aim for heaven, then you're just going to not be any good here. Right? That's the common conception. I grew up hearing that. You don't need to worry or even think about what's coming. You just need to love your neighbor, and that will preach. Paul says something rather different in a lot of places, including, like, let's just go to Colossians chapter 3. Here's a slightly different take on it. Colossians 3, verse 1, If, then, you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. For Paul, where is the Christian mind to be placed? Above. Why? Because the earth is dirty and physical matter is terrible? No. Why then? It's right there. Your life is in Christ, and Christ is... But where is Christ, positionally? He's seated at the right hand of the Father, so if you're in him, then it is, I've said this before, this is a crazy phrase if you've never heard it before, but it's true, that you are, your position in heaven is more real than your physical existence on earth right now. You go, wait a second, hold on, I know I exist. You actually don't. You're pretty sure you exist. I could work at this for a while, we won't this morning, but you actually cannot be sure of your own existence. You can be relatively sure of your own existence, but you cannot actually be sure that this, all this, is real. There's no way. That doesn't matter. What is true is, for Paul, What is true is, for Paul, your position in heaven with Christ is fixed, because that's where Jesus currently is, and you are in him. So you go, but Jeremy, I think I'm real right now. He goes, yeah, I think so too, I don't think you're crazy, I think I'm not crazy, I think we have good reason to believe that we are all actually here right now. However, because Jesus is where Jesus is, and you are in Jesus, then that position is even more fixed. So, paradoxically, Paul would say the opposite of what so many of us tend to say today, which is, Paul would say, think about heaven more, not think about heaven less. Think about being in the presence of God more, not less. And here's the most weird thing. Christians, again, believe that we need to think about today, not about then, because we need to be effective today. What do we know about Christians today, and their effectiveness in the world? Anybody? Yes, not stellar champions of, you know, awesomeness in the world. At all. Therefore, maybe, this whole aiming at earth, instead of aiming at heaven, is not only unbiblical, but also unhelpful. I am completely convinced that the Christians are pretty useless in a lot of ways in today's society, because they go in one of two directions. The first direction is, all I want to do is go to heaven, and I don't care about here. It's more the kind of fundamentalist, it's all going to burn thing. And then on the other side, what's the exact opposite of that? We're going to redeem the world, hands and feet of Jesus, bring the kingdom, right? Barf. If we're over here, I'm just on the glory train to heaven, forget all this garbage, it's all going to, I'm just going to fly away, then what am I going to do when it comes to my neighbor? Neglect. That's right. The Christian hope is only focused out there, and there's no actual tangible result of my hope. So, I don't even really look forward to death or anything, or even life, I'm just looking forward to what's coming on the other side. That's wrong, but if I'm all the way over here, this is the trendy cool stuff that everybody really likes to talk about today, then what is the actual, how am I actually going to live? You're going to be in despair, that's right. It's one of those kind of things like communism, looks really cool on paper until you actually try to work it out, and then you realize that your crappy artwork is not really saving anybody, and it's not really bringing in the kingdom, and nobody really cares. Instead of saying, I am headed to a glorious place. However, I'm not there yet, and as long as I remain, loving my neighbor is my duty, and it's also glorifying to God, and it's also good for the world I live in, as long as it exists. And I don't need to paint pictures to bring in the kingdom, I need to paint pictures, or I need to play music, or I need to take out the garbage, or I need to show up and work on time, because it makes for a world more worth living in. That's why. So I have hope, that again, tempers all my expectations for this life. And it doesn't matter what I do, I don't have to be the world's greatest whatever. If I am, that's great, but I don't have to be, because what I have to be is just faithful to God, in this life, living with this incredible hope for the future, knowing that whether I am a garbage man, or the President of the United States of America, I am seated with Christ in heavenly places. How ridiculous is that? And nobody in the kingdom of God is greater or lesser than anybody else. And as we long for heaven, we are the best of all possible neighbors here, until that's the end. If that's not a hopeful outlook, friends, I don't know what is. That is the most hopeful of all possible worlds. Now, as we talk about hope, prayer is a key component in development of hope, of God's people. The longer I'm in ministry, I'm more convinced that teaching people to pray well is a vital activity of pastoral ministry. This is one of the reasons why we have long written out pastoral prayers on Sunday. You go, why the heck do we spend so much time right here praying? Here's why. You probably stink at it, because it's not saying anything about you, but it says something about the fact that prayer is a learned activity. We don't just become Christians and then know how to pray. So as we pray here, as we write things down and think about it, it's shaping, hopefully, and I know this for a fact, because I hear you pray, it shapes the way that you pray, so that you are taught how to do this. Just think about the opening words of the Lord's Prayer and how it can produce hope in us, and how vital this is for us in learning how to die well. Now it's your turn. Think about those words. You can be any part of that. What do we learn from those few words that give us hope? There's about 55,000 different answers. Yes? Okay. Okay. Yes. Hope in a mighty God, because He is heaven and He is transcendent. Good. Yep. What else? Okay. Okay, so He reveals Himself as a Father and a good Father. Yeah. Good. That gives us hope, right? Maybe your dad is terrible, or was terrible, or will be terrible. You have a good Father in heaven. Good. What else? Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes. And again, getting back to this idea of, it is not, I hope that the Broncos win the Super Bowl, which they don't have a prayer. That is a hope, right? Sorry, Teresa, that ain't gonna happen. That's a hope, but when you shift and think about, okay, but what's this Christian thing we need to do? And what's this idealized Christian form of hope in the world? Thy kingdom come. Is it the same as I hope the Broncos win the Super Bowl? No. It is, I have hope that this kingdom is coming. Why? Because Jesus, perfect timing, because this is not the case. Perfect timing. Because this is not the kingdom coming. I don't care how much you like that team. Both of them are lame. It has nothing to do with today, however. The hope of the kingdom coming is a fixed reality. So as we pray, thy kingdom come, we're not crossing our fingers and going, I hope so. We're praying for something that you know God is going to bring. So you're longing for that thing. Any other ideas? Hallowed be thy name. What the heck? How does that give hope? Okay. Yeah, the perfection of God, that He is somebody that deserves to be hallowed or honored. He's seated in heaven. He is the Father. He is transcendent. So as you just pray those words and think about that, and think about your own death and the hope for the future, this radically shapes the life that you live and the way that you die. It's praying this way and paying attention to what we're saying that will help us prepare for death. David Van Drunen says this, the capabilities of dying people are often severely limited. There may be few pleasures and activities left to enjoy, but prayer requires no mobility, appetite, or ability to hear or see, and I would add or even speak. For the dying, prayer may be one of the few things left to do. As with so many other things, prayer is not something we can neglect during life and then expect to learn in the throes of death. The person who learns to pray throughout the whole of life is one who is much better to be prepared for the end of life. If you know how to pray, are you going to die well necessarily? No. However, if you don't know how to pray well, are your chances of dying well severely limited? Yes. Absolutely. So the next time your kids, the next time your fellow church member goes, why in the heck should we stay after church for prayer meeting? Why in the heck should we get together and pray? Why in the heck is prayer important? One of the answers can now be, because you're going to die. Right? And what's going to happen when you die? What's going to happen when you've got nothing left to do when you are nearly physically incapacitated? You can pray, but if you don't learn how to do that now, you are never going to do it when you're near death. That's hope. What about love? Love is a key virtue when it comes to the topic of death and dying. We need to both give and receive love. This is what makes love distinct from hope and faith. And hope and faith, where are those hope and faith, where is that, as a Christian virtue, placed? It's placed in Christ. That's right. Love is directed where? And received from? Whom? Huh? Okay, the Father. So we're still doing the whole God thing, like the first two. Sure. Yep. For us, that's right. Yes, so we're still with the God thing going on. Is that the only way that love works, though? In what manner? Our brother, that's right. You're not allowed to have faith in your fellow human beings as a Christian virtue. Your faith is solely placed in Jesus. That doesn't mean you can't have faith in other human beings and that they'll do it. When we're talking about faith, though, that is definitely, as a Christian virtue, that's placed in God. When you think about the topic of hope, you do not have fixed hope that is a sure reality in the fact that your spouse is going to do X, Y, or Z by Friday. That's more on the kind of such and such a team is going to win the Super Bowl. Love, though, absolutely works itself out in the fact that you are not only called to receive love from God and give love to God, but to give love and receive love from other human beings. Few would reject the concept of loving our neighbor as a matter of confession, but when it comes to the practice, the matter is quite different. As we've seen earlier, you and I as humans are social creatures. It is actually not possible to live well just completely isolated from all other human contact. To live apart from others, either physically or emotionally at a distance, is to place oneself in opposition to the commands of Jesus to love others. It doesn't mean you have to live close to the church building. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that physical proximity with those who you are in covenant community with is not optional. I don't feel like it. Well, then you need to find a church where you can feel like it because it's not an option. That might require you to, let's say that you physically live further away, for example. What's that going to demand of you when it comes to loving your brothers and sisters if you are not in physical proximity to them? It's going to require a car. That's right. And it's going to require just more intentional effort on your part. That doesn't mean that it's sinful or wrong in any way, shape, or form, but it does mean you have to work a lot harder at it because to love others is not optional. Participation in the life of the body of Christ is no soft option at all. This idea flies strongly in the face of modern American practice that worships personal freedom and autonomy. You and I love to help out to, one of the creepiest Christian phrases out there, to love on other people when it's convenient for us. Correct? I love going and helping homeless people when I have nothing stinking better to do on a Thursday night and I feel real convicted and I need to get like, you know, a little bump for just kind of feeling good about all the sin I'm about to commit in the next couple weeks. I can just kind of assuage that guilt and my own selfishness by going and handing out some bowls of soup in the soup kitchen because I've got nothing better to do tonight. But God forbid that somebody asks me to go to a Call of Duty tournament because in that case I'm just going to have to be like, forget those people, I'm going to go help them next week. Or, and this also works out in this kind of way, when it comes to love, there's this optional love that's very much characteristic of our society today when it comes to something like missions. This is a blaring example of this. I will go and hold those babies as long as they are a different color than me and speak a different language. Then I'll Instagram the crap out of that stuff and then I'll send it back to everybody and say, look, but I won't volunteer anywhere locally. Forget that, I mean, there's other people to hold those kids. Does this mean that every Christian has to go and hold children? No, and I'm not saying that just because I don't like holding children. There are different ways that this works out. However, the point is that love for us often becomes an optional thing that we do when we feel like it, with whom we feel like it. Same thing infects the church. I will love those who are either easy to love or when it is convenient for me to love them. That is not an option for Christians. Although that is the way that it is ordinarily practiced. You and I, and believe me, this is hard saying this out loud, ought to be dependent on each other. Not freeloaders who don't desire to work or anything like that, but those who work in order to help others and to also receive help from others. This isn't easy. Some of us are going to have to go out of our way. Let me be confessional for a moment. It is way easier for me to do a job correctly than to have you help me and have you screw it up and then have me go back and fix it. I don't know what that thing is. It doesn't really matter. The way I've always lived my life is just get out of my way and let me do it. Maybe you're like this as well. It's just like I don't need your help. I've got this. You're just going to get in my way. Might that be, when it comes to whatever the situation might be, might that be a true statement? That you helping me is going to be annoying and you're going to actually get in the way. Might that be a true statement? Absolutely. So what's wrong with it? The other person never learns anything. You never learn anything. And you are continually giving yourself the opportunity to live the tragic lie that you are self-sufficient in this world. Is getting the task done the most important thing in the world? No. Never is. I'm not talking about like if the building is burning down or whatever and you've got to go rush in. Okay, sometimes you've got to get the thing done. However, in ordinary practice, you and I have to at times work at opening opportunities to receiving love from other people and aid and assistance from other people because actually by doing this you're training yourself to die. What do I mean by that? Dying well is very difficult. If you don't know that, then you've never been around a dying person. Why? Why is it hard to die well? Thinking about physical... Think about it just for a minute. The physical realities of somebody... We're not talking about like an instantaneous death. We're talking about like a slow death. Why is dying well hard when it comes to just the physical reality of death? There's pain and fear. That's right. You don't know how long this thing is going to last. You don't know how... Yeah, so there's just an unknown factor there? As you get closer to death, you require more assistance in the menial tasks, the undignified tasks. It's kind of hard to think... What was it you said? You put your mind on things as well. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. It's really hard to think about heaven when you can't clean yourself. When you have to have somebody come in and bathe you, to change your clothes, to do the most, to feed you. Now, think about this. This has been one of the harder things for me to contemplate and have to say out loud. Imagine if you just lived your whole life self-sufficiently. How do you think you're going to be when you have to have somebody come in and change your diaper? Very embarrassed. Suicidal. Yeah. Absolutely. So, this gets back to having... working at providing opportunities for other people to help you. That for some of us is very difficult. Myself included. Why should I seek to have other people help me with X, Y, or Z? Because one day, people are going to have to help me with all kinds of things I don't want them to help me with. That's already going to be difficult. But if I'm not working at it today, then I don't have a prayer of when it comes to actually dying. I'm just going to be... I mean, in all likelihood, I'm going to be a grumpy old man. Right? I hope I change. I hope I continue to change. I am changing, thankfully. However, I don't see myself being naturally predisposed to being super happy when my autonomy is taken away. You are probably the same way. Americans, this is just the way Americans are. However, if we don't work at it, then it's going to be even worse. Way worse. Giving love, this kind of love, is also terrifying for a lot of Christians. Isn't it? Think about it. Just think about it right now. If your job was to, every day, feed me, bathe me, clothe me, every day, every single day until I die, that would be a rather difficult job for you. I'm guessing. I'm not guessing? Okay, thank you, Tim. Dying, for us, as Christians, is usually the same as for non-Christians. It's those people over there. Right? We ship them off to a place. They are around other people who are dying. Finding solid numbers on where people are dying these days in the U.S. is hard to do. But this much we know. Few people are dying at home. And those who are dying at home usually live at home for a very short period of time. They move home when, essentially, there's absolutely no other option. They live for about a week, and then they die. The number is growing of people who die in the home, but it is still rather small. What some of those in the school of dying well championed was the importance of being present with the dying. It's hard to love those who you don't spend time with. Case in point, your friends from college that you don't see anymore. Right? It's hard. You might be friends with some of them. Or high school. Right? You were so sure that you were going to be friends for the rest of your life. And you were, during high school or whatever, like the deepest of friends. Or a missionary, maybe. A missionary that you were just great friends with, and they moved away, and then... This happened to us when we were missionaries. I have a hard time caring about anybody when I'm 4,000 miles away. So, on top of all that difficulty of just distance, there's also the fact that today, we die pretty terribly, fueled by every drug humanly imaginable, and every procedure known to man, and surrounded by doctors and nurses. Now, I thank God for medicine, doctors, and nurses, but it's simply a bad way to go. Now, it's something, thankfully, that a lot of people in the medical field are starting to realize and fix. There are a growing number of articles, books, and medical journals talking about the fact that doctors and nurses die very differently than the average human being in America. People wondered why. People don't wonder why anymore. It's because doctors and nurses go, oh, heck no, I know what that's like. I'm not going to participate in any of that. And thankfully, that's starting to bleed over, where more people are thinking about what does it mean to live well, and we'll be discussing some of that going forward. This isn't a public policy statement or anything like that. Regardless of the system, we should be the kinds of people who both desire to be around the dying, and the kind that want to have the dying around us, and to have other people who are well be around us when we are dying. It doesn't matter where we are physically, we ought to desire to be around it. If somebody is a member of this church, let's say they are chronically ill, and for some reason they are in some kind of treatment somewhere for an extended period of time, they are still a member of this church, and you are still responsible to love that person. What that looks like for you might be different than what it looks like for the person that's sitting a few rows away from you. However, because of that physical distance, we're going to have to work harder at it. And it is something we have to work at. Having our children participate in loving those who are dying is something we can be hesitant to do today. I don't want them to see that. I don't want them to be around that. I don't understand that at all. I understand that kind of conceptually, but on another level, your kids are going to die, and your kids need to know that they are going to die. The culture that surrounds them is telling them that they are never going to die, and that they just need to live life to the fullest and be happy and have no cares in the world. Put them around dying people and see what happens. I don't know why kids don't take the world seriously anymore. Really? It's pretty easy when you look at the world that they grow up in. Put them around dying people and see what happens. It's not going to fix everything, but it would pretty radically shape the way that they view the world. And better to start our kids in the process of dying while today. They might be further down the road than we are when it comes time to die. In closing, one of the greatest parts about showing love to those who are dying is the very real possibility that you might be loved in return. People who are dying well are a joy to be around because they've got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Think about this. Think about a church culture where the people who are going out aren't like singing and dancing. They will be struggling, but to watch their struggle and to be able to minister the gospel to them and then to hear them say, thank you. I am scared, however, because I've never been there. However, I long to be with Jesus. How great is this? And to see somebody who just totally, really gives up in the best sense of the term of I am, in the right way, surrendered to God and His will for my life when I know that I'm on my way out. That's the kind of church I want to be a part of. That's the kind of world that I want to see. I can love most freely if I know that I am nearest to victory. It is very hard to hate if I know that I am about to be embraced in a way even more powerful than I have ever known here with love everlasting for the rest of eternity. That ought to be the testimony of people who understand what it means to participate in Christian faith, hope, and love. But if this is how I am to die, then I need to begin practicing now. I need to be practicing the virtue of faith now to remember why I ought to have faith, who I have faith in, why that faith is applicable to me, what the Christian hope is, why that's a fixed reality. And I ought to practice the art of both loving others and being loved by others. May God help us to love well, to live well, and ultimately to die well. Let's pray. And we thank you for the very real love that we have been shown in Jesus Christ, and we pray that that love would affect us, that it would affect us both on the level of the way that we treat others and the way that we receive treatment from others. We do pray that you would help us to work hard at the art of dying well, knowing how difficult it is by nature. We are so incredibly selfish and sinful, focused inwards on ourselves. We pray that we would, through the retelling of the gospel, on Sundays and throughout the week, that we would become different kinds of people, the kinds of people that you long for us to be, that you are working us through the power of your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.