The Way of Death

Got into an argument with Matt this weekend. Not like a real argument, just one of those ones where you express a considered opinion and the other person violently disagrees with you and then you both look at each other in horror, like, “I had no idea you could be so wrong.” So I said to him, after thinking about it for three days, that I’d rather die from Ebola than beheading. I’d rather die horrifically from a disease, than die swiftly at the hand of him who hates me. He was shocked by this preference. Ebola is horrible, he said, it’s painful and awful. He’d much rather be beheaded. It’s quicker. A few minutes and then you’re dead, rather than waiting in agony for two weeks and then dying. For him it’s the measured amount of suffering, in death. Which is weird because he also wants to be hooked up to every possible machine as long as possible, and makes me promise, often, never to unplug him. These are the sort of friendly conversations we have of an evening, probably because we live in Binghamton and what else are we going to talk about when we’re having a break from talking about the church.

Anyway, for me it’s not the swiftness of death, even though I’d be happy to be unplugged, it’s about the amount of evil therein. Death is evil, obviously, not part of God’s original creation, not the culmination of the “circle of life”, not something beautiful at all ever, even when you can see good in the midst of it, which often we can. Death is evil. But there are some more evil ways to die than others. Dying of a sickness is evil, but not that evil. Being beheaded or crucified is really evil. It doesn’t just show the evil of death, it shows the evil of the other person, their triumphant unrepentant catastrophic evil. And you are powerless before that evil. It overtakes you, like a flood, or a raging fire, and then you’re gone and the be-header remains triumphant. I’d rather not die that way.

It’s totalitarianism I’m afraid of, not plagues and earthquakes and floods. Of course the earth will be dissolved in a mess, a mess we participate in and are frequently overwhelmed by. We’re all going to die and it’s going to be awful. But we don’t all have to be killed. We don’t have to be regulated within an inch of our lives. We don’t all have to be imprisoned and confined by someone else’s godless rage. I guess I wish the whole country would stop freaking out about Ebola and be much much much more afraid of what politicians are doing in their dark malevolent corners.

Have a happy Monday! And here’s a picture of a flower.