How Can Christians Embrace the Fact of Their Mortality?

“For what is going to it profit a person if he gains the entire world, and loses his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).

The man was not a idiot because he was wealthy. He was a idiot because he neglected to take care of the fact of his own mortality – he was not wealthy toward God. He ignored the incontrovertible fact that everyone dies and leaves all their earthly wealth behind. As someone once identified – hearses don’t include trailer hitches. 

“We all must die, and everybody living should take into consideration this” (Ecclesiastes 7:2).

Everyone must die, including those that run five miles a day and lift weights, avoid sugar and alcohol, take vitamins and eat organic. Everyone, even those that have positive relationships, take relaxing vacations, and sleep soundly every night. 

And it includes big, strong, strapping, bionic heroes like Grandpa. Death is an inevitable a part of life, and Scripture says we must take care of it head on, while we’re still living!

To be a “idiot” in God’s eyes is to live without regard to the destination of 1’s everlasting soul. So let’s take a moment to refocus, and refresh our understanding of the reality regarding our human existence, in order that we are able to share with others who are only being silly.

We are More Than a Physical Body

I also remember the day of my grandmother’s funeral. The last time I had seen her, she was still alive and stuffed with faith in God. Even within the hospital bed, her face was vibrant and rosy. She was Grandma. That was the image in my mind’s eye, and after I walked into the funeral home, that’s what I expected to see.

But after I looked, I didn’t see Grandma. I saw something that looked like Grandma, a shell that resembled Grandma; however it wasn’t her. She wasn’t there. 

Maybe you’ll be able to recall an analogous experience, where you looked down on the lifeless body of a loved one and knew that they were now not there. That the breath of life, essentially the most essential a part of them, had departed. Our collective experience tells us that there is part of one and all that offers the body life, and that, at death, that a part of us leaves the body.

“God formed Man out of dirt from the bottom and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man got here alive—a living soul!” (Genesis 2:7, MSG).

Friend, you’re greater than only a body – you’re a living soul!

“For we all know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, now we have a constructing from God, an everlasting house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed as a substitute with our heavenly dwelling, because once we are clothed, we won’t be found naked. For while we’re on this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we don’t want to be unclothed but to be clothed as a substitute with our heavenly dwelling, in order that what’s mortal could also be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what’s to return. Therefore we’re all the time confident and know that so long as we’re at home within the body we’re away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would like to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:1-8).

So after I looked down at Grandma’s body – her tent – I used to be full of everlasting hope because I knew Grandma was still living, she had just modified locations!

Photo credit: Pexels/Andrea Piacquadio