My kids and I went to see the movie "Hoppers" over Spring Break. If you are unfamiliar with this latest Pixar movie, it's kind of like "Avatar," but in a kid-friendly, funny way. Some really smart people find a way to send their consciousness into an avatar of a beaver and infiltrate the animal kingdom as one of their own. Mabel, an environmentally-minded college student, hijacks the system for her own strategic purposes, putting herself into the beaver avatar.
There's a scene in the movie where a bear charges towards another beaver in order to eat him, but beaver Mabel stops him and saves the beaver. Both he and the bear are very confused. They ask her, why did you do that? Perplexed, she asks the beaver, well, did you want to be his lunch? And the beaver shrugs. It’s pond rules, he tells her. He caught me; he gets to eat me.
It’s an interesting thing to say. Generally speaking, all creatures, four-legged and two-legged, have a fear of death. This fear of death has also been described as a survival instinct. It's the instinct to fight to live.
The fear of death is the most common fear that humans have. Some say the fear of death is really about the loss of control. Some say it’s about the unknown of what happens after we die. Some say it’s about a fear of nonexistence. Regardless of the reasoning behind it, this fear is very common and generally kicks in pretty early in childhood.
The fear of death underlines many of the things that we do, in both good and bad ways. It may cause us to embrace life with a You Only Live Once (YOLO) attitude. It may cause us to avoid dangerous activities deemed too risky. It may make us want to leave behind a legacy, so we are not forgotten, as though having our name on a building or in a history book somewhere means we live on. It may make us want to accumulate wealth and power, like the man in Jesus' Parable of the Rich Fool found in Luke 12. According to Jewish Law, the rich were supposed to share their excess with the poor, not hoard it for themselves. The man in the parable decides to build bigger storage barns to hoard his extra grain and goods. "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'" (Luke 12:20)
A fear of death can lead to selfishness and misplaced priorities.
In the book of Hebrews, the unknown author* says something fairly interesting. In Hebrews 2:14-15, we find this:
"Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death."
The fear of death is described as slavery. Isn’t that fascinating?
If we are slaves to this fear, we focus so much on ourselves that we lose sight of the greatest commandments to love God and love others. If it is really about getting as much out of this life as we can, because this is all there is, things like justice and mercy and walking humbly with God become lower priorities. We put our comfort, our position, our wealth, our power, our privilege... ahead of the things God calls us to.
Over the course of Christian history, there have been many Christian martyrs. The majority of the disciples, as well as Paul, died the death of martyrs. These are individuals who believed that following Jesus and holding to His truth was more important than their very lives. They had no fear of death. It is not that they sought death. They weren’t suicidal. They just weren’t afraid because they knew that there was something far greater in store for them.
Even Paul said in Philippians 3:8, "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”
Christ is worth giving up EVERYTHING for.
The early church understood this.
Modern-day martyrs in places like Nigeria and North Korea and China and Pakistan understand this.
But to us, in our Western mindset and our lightshow church services and our feel-good pulpit messages... we've lost this. We've boiled down the gospel to a bunch of social niceties and cultural norms and have lost sight of what Christianity is.
Christianity is not simply a religion. It's not simply a culture. It's certainly not a political movement. It's not even a list of do's and don'ts.
Ultimately? Christianity is surrender. Surrender to our Creator God and the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
What we do in this life matters, but not for the sake of our name, our popularity, or our legacy.
Only HIS name needs to be remembered after we are gone. Only what we do for Him in His name matters. When we remember that, God really does destroy the fear of death, because we know . . . there is so much more than this.
* Note: Biblical scholars pretty much all agree that Hebrews was not written by Paul. It was clearly written by a Jewish person who was familiar with the Law and the Old Testament. Some have proposed Barnabas as the author, or maybe Apollos. It was even recently suggested that Priscilla, of Priscilla and Aquila mentioned in Acts, wrote it. We may never know for sure.
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