Cancer Blog #80
By Brian Zimmerman
Begun on July 31, 2021
Email: dyingman1@yahoo.com
My Dying Words
Entry #80– Tomorrow We Die
April 1, 2023
[1Co 15:32] 32 If from human motives I fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, what does it profit me? If the dead are not raised, LET US EAT AND DRINK, FOR TOMORROW WE DIE.
Paul here describes something that is not done often in scriptures: the non-Christian advocacy of the idea that death is final, that there is nothing else beyond it. “Humanly speaking”: I think for Paul this phrase indicates a viewpoint or statement not according to God’s perspective, but our attempt to see things apart from Him, involving the idea that death is natural and normal and always has been. The lifestyle that view may engender – and one that we see increasingly in our country – is hedonism, living for today as there may be no tomorrow for us. It produces a pessimism about life in general that belies the happiness it seems to promise. Why have children if there’s no real hope for the future? We see so many young couples consciously avoid bearing children. They’d rather not burden themselves with responsibilities that have benefit only in the long run when there is no long run. And I see in our culture especially in those approaching or barely in early adulthood a lack of long term thinking. Why save money, why not incur debt, in other words, why make sacrifices for later when there is likely no later?
This short term planning has led to a fixation on two means for immediate gratification. In Paul’s day, it was partying, and for Western countries, it is similar: sex and wealth. The sex here is not in a marriage relationship, but only outside of that covenant bond, which would normally produce children. This sex of hooking up (or one-night stands as they used to be called), has for some people developed into a sort of commitment to living together, sort of an imitation of marriage. But, worse, it has deteriorated into more and more perverse variants on sexuality. I cannot imagine a more short term lifestyle, incapable of producing progeny.
Earning money now is not a building of an inheritance for a future generation, but an opportunity to gratify immediate desires – “for tomorrow we die.” Why save for a future when there’s no hope of such a future? Not only is our individual death being predicted, but the supposed death by natural means of our entire world. Wealth in that scenario can be only short term. Now we are told that not only our individual lives are short term, but our planet is also short term. Get all you can as quickly as you can for death – the end of all – is coming soon. No wonder the children and young people of our culture are riddled with anxieties and fear and doubts. What a hopeless view; there is no certainty of a tomorrow. Why prepare for it? There is only darkness, decay and death. That is what a western non-Christian view of death produces – a pursuit of two things they hope will bring some modicum of pleasure before the end comes but offer nothing but false hope.
But in the midst of this despair, Paul announces another perspective – a true hope, which we shall discuss in the next several entries.
Next: The Hope of Handel