All Kinds of Death

Lately I've been overwhelmed and exhausted by Facebook, and really the news in general. I can't imagine that I'm the only one. For one whole day I had to completely avoid facebook because of the pictures of Iraqi children…I can't even say it. Then I read a really good article juxtaposing that, those Iraqi children, with all of our millions of slain children. It doesn't look as brutal because nobody is in there taking pictures. Either way, this person pointed out, Satan hates children and would kill them all. And we help do it and so do those evil People, waving their black flags, across the world. Then there are the various shootings in our regular news cycles. Then the people starving on top of that mountain. Then Robin Williams.

Then I flipped open my bible this morning and Jesus, warning them that he would suffer and die, said, 'Take up your cross and follow me.' And Peter took him aside to rebuke him, because that, the cross, is so ugly, and so foul, and it was the worst possible thing that Jesus could have said. What's the worst that could happen? The cross. Death. Peter didn't want it for Jesus and he didn't want it for himself.

Except that he did. We do. We always chose death. Every time. The death of the soul. The death of sense. The death of compassion. The death of submission to God. If we didn't love death, love it with our whole hearts and souls and minds, wouldn't the whole world look remarkably different from right now? No, we want to die, we even want the soul to die, rather than to partake of the life of God.

And what does it profit us? Nothing. We gain nothing in our insatiable quest for death. Whoever would save his life, says Jesus, will lose it, and the whole world says Yes, I would rather lose it, and take some with me, than be with you and watch you die.

Jesus calls Peter 'Satan' for rebuking him, and it's an apt name. Satan. The hater of life, of God, of children. Peter and the disciples stood around helplessly while Jesus died, brutally, horrifically. They hid their eyes. They cowered. They had nothing to say and nothing to do. If they had had the internet, they might have hit refresh once before going to watch Jesus' greatest hits on YouTube.

And while they hid, Jesus died, trampling down death by death, opening the way to life.

It's no use me getting preachy on the internet, wishing more people would chose the way of life and peace, rather than the way of death. Even as I have committed my way to Jesus, and struggle under the burden of his cross, and know, fundamentally, that I don't want to lose my soul, that no matter what happens I would rather lose my life than my soul, even then I am constantly living in the ravages of death. I cannot expect others to do more than me. Of course we would kill all the children and all the people and finally ourselves, if we could. The rebellion against God is deep and wide and full and rich, and we all drink insatiably, unless God himself snatches some of us out and gives us something else to drink, his blood, his death. And then we can live. The way of the cross is the way of life, it's the only death that will get you anything.