...Within a few years (five, ten, twenty, or thirty) I will no longer be on this earth. The thought of this does not frighten me but fills me with a quiet peace. I am a small part of life, a human being in the midst of thousands of other human beings. It is good to be young, to grow old, and to die. It is good to live with others, and to die with others. God became flesh to share with us in this simple living and dying and thus made it good. I can feel today that it is good to be and especially to be one of many. What counts are not the special and unique accomplishments in life that make me different from others, but the basic experiences of sadness and joy, pain and healing, which make me part of humanity.
--Henri Nouwen, written on the occasion of his 50th birthday
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good to die? Isn't death the wages of sin? Isn't the absence of death one of the things we look forward to in the age to come? Certainly, "to die is to gain," but only in the sense that we'll be with the Lord, but death isn't the way God designed us. It's our punishment.
The comments you have made are true: the wages of sin are death; the absence of death/separation from our Creator is our hope; and death, we believe, was not in the original plan of God.
All of this Nouwen would certainly agree with. What I believe--in this particular quote--he is naming as "good," is to live after the Fall with the sense that, even though things are broken and not as they should be because of sin, God is still present.
For Nouwen, God is present in the rythmn of life: birth, work, relationships, and yes, even death. In that sense, because God is present it can be called "good."
And, of course, for the believer, earthly death is ultimately "good" because it restores us to true communion with God.
We believe that God has defeated death and it is precisely because of this belief that we can approach our earthly deaths without fear. Rather, we approach death with hope and with joy. Christ and his finished work are what make death "good."
I appreciate your comments - But I'm not sure that this will ever make Death Good - in any sense. God has promised us that he will bring good out of the bad - Romans 8:28 (eg. the ressurection of the body). I don't believe that earthly death will "restore us to true communion with God." That sounds like Platonism to me. Isn't the hope of the Christian to be in the resurrection of our bodies where we receive fully what we had by deposit in Christ's resurrection?
It sounds to me as if we'll have to agree to disagree. I think we are saying much the same thing, but using different language. Peace to you...
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