Why does God allow death?
Nothing lasts forever, as they say.
- The US Congress certified Donald Trump as our nation’s 47th president yesterday, but he cannot run again per the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution.
- Justin Trudeau stepped down as party leader and prime minister in Canada.
- The 134-year-old sanctuary of First Baptist Church in Dallas is being demolished after a devastating fire last July. This is especially nostalgic for me; I once preached in this historic worship center and attended numerous services and events there.
- A Washington Post writer, commenting on “an unimaginable AI future,” notes: “It’s no longer clear how much of ordinary life will survive the next twenty-five years.”
- Louisiana reported yesterday the first bird flu-related human death in the US. Officials are watching the escalation of H5N1 cases with concern.
- The killing of fourteen people on New Year’s Day in New Orleans is the latest sign of a resurgence in radical Islamist terrorism around the world.
Despite the obvious reality of human finitude and mortality, tech millionaire Bryan Johnson says he spends upwards of $2 million a year on an anti-aging regimen he believes is enabling his body to “achieve the lowest possible biological age.” Netflix’s new documentary, “Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants To Live Forever,” was released on January 1 and tells his story.
Johnson takes over one hundred supplements and pills a day and engages in daily medical scans, blood draws, a rigorous and restrictive diet, an exercise regimen, and various experimental medical procedures.
I hope he doesn’t die in a car wreck.
Why is this world vital to the world to come?
Johnson’s story, coupled with the other news of the morning, raises a question for me: Why does an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God allow death?
If the Lord could take Enoch (Genesis 5:24) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:11) directly to heaven without passing through physical death, why not the rest of us? In fact, why did God even create this temporal world and require us to inhabit it? Why did he not create us in heaven to spend eternity with him there? What is it about this world that is vital to the world to come?
God made us to love him and each other (Matthew 22:37–39), but love is a choice, and choice requires options. As a result, God created a world in which we could choose to be our own god (Genesis 3:5) rather than obey and worship him. Our decision to enthrone ourselves explains all the tragedy in this broken world, from the natural disasters resulting from the Fall (Genesis 3:17–19; 6:11–12; Romans 8:22) to the suffering we inflict on others and ourselves (cf. 1 John 2:16).
If the Fall had never happened, you and I would live in a world where we have the freedom to choose to worship and serve God without any of the horrific consequences of choosing against him. But our loving Father redeems even the tragedy of our misused freedom by using its consequences to grow us spiritually (James 1:2–4) when we submit to his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18; 2 Corinthians 3:18).
He uses the reality of physical death to remind us of the finitude of life (James 4:13–17) and the urgency of turning to him as Lord today (2 Corinthians 6:2). If people simply disappeared or their ascent to heaven was known only to those who happened to witness it, the compelling power of death and the appeal of life beyond it would be diminished.
Why there will be no atheists in heaven
But there’s a problem: If worshiping God requires that we have the option to sin by refusing such worship, how is it that we will worship and love God perfectly in a perfect heaven where there is no sin (Revelation 21:4)?
The Lord gives us the choice in this world to trust him as our Lord, a decision that transforms us into his children for eternity (John 1:12). My sons cannot go back before their birth and no longer be my sons. In the same way, once we choose to be “born again” in this world of options (John 3:3), we become permanently the children of God and need no such options to be who we are in heaven.
Anyone who sees God on his throne in paradise will be compelled to worship him as king (cf. Revelation 7:9–12). It’s impossible for a sighted person to deny the sun once the clouds move away. There will be no atheists in heaven.
This is why God brings us into this world where we can choose for or against him, intending us to choose for him in this life (2 Peter 3:9) so we can “glorify God and enjoy him forever” in the life to come (Westminster Shorter Catechism).
“The continuation of our Savior’s life in us”
One last question: Why does God leave us in this fallen world once we have chosen to trust him as Lord and received eternal life by his grace?
One reason is so we can share that grace with as many as possible so they can experience eternal life with us. John Wesley encouraged us:
“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”
The other is that this life affords us the opportunity to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18) as we seek to become ever more like our Lord (Romans 8:29). Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774–1821), the first person born in America to be canonized by the Catholic Church, explained her spiritual life this way:
I once read or heard that an interior life means but the continuation of our Savior’s life in us; that the great object of all his mysteries is to merit for us the grace of his interior life and communicate it to us, it being the end of his mission to lead us into the sweet land of promise, a life of constant union with himself. And what was the first rule of our dear Savior’s life? You know it was to do his Father’s will. Well, then, the first end I propose in our daily work is to do the will of God; secondly, to do it in the manner he wills; and thirdly, to do it because it is his will.
Will you choose “a life of constant union” with your Lord today?
NOTE: For more on the power and privilege of personal worship, I encourage you to experience our ministry’s First15 devotional for today: “What Is Worship?”
Tuesday news to know:
*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.
Quote for the day:
“I will refuse to see any problem as anything less than an opportunity to see God.” —Max Lucado
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