"The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD"

Wednesday, at 2:17 PM, our son John's wife Katie gave birth to their first child, Gemma Rose Twila McGahey―our 6th grandchild, and first granddaughter since our first, Mackenzie, came into this world almost 16 years ago. Mother and daughter came through the ordeal with flying colors, and so it was a day of rejoicing in the McGahey household. The truth of the old proverb was immediately felt: "Grandchildren are the crown of the aged" (Proverbs 17:6, NRSV).

But, as always in this late autumn of life, dark clouds appear and don't seem to go away. In this case they have been hovering over the southern skies for months. Teri's mom, Irene "Janie" Price Schleiden, had been in declining health, with multiple pathologies, for a long period of time. Fortunately, Teri was able to visit her for a month in April, during which time she rallied, at least for a while. Early yesterday morning, however, we woke with news that she had passed during the night, a mere 12 hours or so after the birth of her 11th great-grandchild, one whose picture she would never get to see.

Yesterday morning, while lying in bed, what came to mind immediately was the tale of Job in the book of that name in the Hebrew Bible. Job, so the ancient story goes, was a righteous and prosperous man. In a meeting of the Divine Council, God approaches "the Satan"―the "Accuser"―who had come along with the angels ("sons of God"). Upon seeing the Accuser, God immediately brings the case of the righteous Job before him; the Satan then cynically claims that Job's uprightness can simply be attributed to the self-interested response to the manifold blessings he had received from God: "Stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face" (Job 1:11, NRSV). So God grants him permission to strike everything Job has, up to but not including his life. And so he does, sending foreign peoples and natural disasters to kill his flocks and take away his servants. Finally, a tornado comes and destroys his oldest son's, and heir's, house, killing all of Job's children in the process. Job's famous response, cited above in the post's title, is remarkable, and not one I would likely make were I to experience anything comparable: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD" (Job 1:21, NRSV). Later, after God gave permission to the Satan to afflict Job with sores up and down his entire body, Job refuses the advice of his wife to curse God and die, so as to relieve himself of his misery (Job 2:9). His response, once again, is truly remarkable: "Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad" (Job 2:10)?

Now, I am not saying that the death of my mother-in-law is a parallel situation, let alone one that could potentially precipitate a perceived theological problem about God's justice for people accustomed to expecting a correlation between righteousness and prosperity (e.g., Proverbs 13:21: "Misfortune pursues sinners, but prosperity rewards the righteous;" Proverbs aren't promises, after all!). The Book of Job indeed raises the question of "theodicy," in particular, the question as to why bad things happen to "good" people. What the Book of Job argues is that, contrary to the pious certainties uttered by his "comforters" Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, such a correlation doesn't necessarily exist. In the end, both Job's tormenters and Job himself are silenced as YHWH speaks out of a storm, assailing them for their presumption and ignorance. Those without knowledge―God's relentless bombarding of Job with questions in chapters 38-41 is brutal―have no grounds on which to "darken (God's) counsel" (38:2), "correct Shaddai" (40:2), or "discredit (his) justice" (40:8). In the end, God doesn't answer the question, "Why?" It is enough to rest in confidence that the all-powerful God is also a just God, no matter the circumstances and no matter the existential dissonance caused by the vicissitudes, "fair" or not, of life.

My mother-in-law's death doesn't raise questions of theodicy. She lived a long, happy and, most importantly, a good life, was married for more than 60 years, had 5 children, 12 grandchildren, and 11 great grandchildren. She enjoyed a prosperity most Americans do not experience, a prosperity of which she surely was unacquainted in her humble youth. And, like all of us caught up in Adamic humanity, she was susceptible, and ultimately succumbed, to death (e.g., 1 Corinthians 15:22), lending one more piece of empirical evidence of the truth of the words of Kerry Livgren, "Give up your foolish pride/All that walk the earth have died" ("Child of Innocence" [from Kansas's 1975 album, Masque]).

Nevertheless … years ago, in the midst of a previous season of dying that affected our family, I wrote a post on Jesus' response to Lazarus's death in John 11, particularly his indignation (enebrimēsato) at death's "violent tyranny" (Warfield) when confronted with the tears of his friend Mary (John 11:33). Yes, death is a universal phenomenon, and it is one that all of us, "good" and "bad" alike, as sinners, must accept blame for as perpetrators (cf. Romans 5:12c: "And so death comes to all people, for all [have] sinned" [pantes hēmarton] [trans. JRM]; how one interprets this text theologically makes no difference to the point). And so we are entirely justified to view the death of loved ones with wistfulness, deep sadness, and the melancholy of fellow travelers on "this mortal coil" (to use the language of Hamlet in his "To Be or Not To Be" soliloquy in Shakespeare's most famous tragedy). Those of us who are Christians may grieve, but not, as the Apostle Paul famously said, "as those who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13). We―especially those of us, like I, who work in the Reformed tradition―take comfort in the fact of God's absolute sovereignty, understanding, as the Psalmist did, that "(our) times are in (God's) hands" (Psalm 31:15), and that "Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his faithful ones" (Psalm 116:15, NRSV). And we believe, as Paul wrote in Irene's favorite Bible book, Philippians, that for God's people "dying" (to apothanein) is "gain" (kerdos) (Phil 1:21) because, as mysterious as it may be, such entails "being with Christ," a condition "better by far" (pallōi mallon) than that of remaining on earth in his service (Phil 1:23). But that's not all. Death, and the consequent "presence with the Lord" in a mysterious, disembodied "Intermediate State" (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:8), is not the "complete healing" many well-meaning Christians attribute to it (this requires a post all its own!). "Life after death" in heaven is, to put it bluntly, not the vanquishing of death. Those "with Christ" are still, like it or not, in the grave. Indeed, the real me is not some Platonically-conceived soul, but rather the embodied me. For Death to die, as John Donne put it, we must be resurrected, what N. T. Wright has cleverly deemed "Life After Life After Death."*

And this is precisely what the gospel proclaims will be the ultimate consequence of God's victory in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Paul, in his great chapter on resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, speaks of Death personified as the "last enemy" ultimately to be vanquished by Christus Victor (1 Cor 15:26). This ultimate victory, guaranteed by Christ's own resurrection as the "firstfruits" (1 Cor 15:23), will take place only at the resurrection of all his people at the "end," at his Parousia ("when he comes," 1 Cor 15: 23), when we will receive new bodies that won't "wear out" and are incapable of degeneration, decay, and death.** Paul's climactic words are unforgettable:

For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible; and we will be changed. For this corruptible body must become clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body with immortality. When this corruptible body comes to be clothed with incorruptibility and this mortal body with immortality, then the word which stands written shall come to pass: "Death has been swallowed up in victory" [Isaiah 25:8]. "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your stinger" [Hosea 13:14]? Now the stinger of Death is Sin, and the power of Sin comes from the Law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! (1 Corinthians 15:52b-57, trans. JRM)

My mother-in-law Irene was a believer in Jesus, and had been from her youth. Paul's words, in his greatest letter, are of the utmost comfort to those of us who loved her: "And if the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies as well through his Spirit, who dwells in you" (Romans 8:11, trans. JRM). Hence I can confidently proclaim the words of Job: "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD."

Soli Deo Gloria!

*N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).

**Cf. Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC; Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans/Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000) 1295-97.