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Sybaris

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Subject: Death... and what Jesus did about it!

 

Hey friends,

Below is what Christian intellectual giant, C.S. Lewis, wrote about death and the Gospel. It's a well written, concise explanation of what the Bible says about eternal redemption through Jesus Christ. For those of you  experiencing the painful loss of a coworker this morning, take a second to hear some good news. :) __________________

On the one hand Death is the triumph of Satan, the punishment of the Fall, and the last enemy. Christ shed tears at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane: the Life of Lives that was in Him detested this penal obscenity not less than we do, but more. On the other hand, only he who loses his life will save it. We are baptised into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall. Death is, in fact, what some modern people call “ambivalent.” It is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon: it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered.

Satan produced human Death.

But when God created Man He gave him such a constitution that, if the highest part of it rebelled against Himself, it would be bound to lose control over the lower parts: i.e., in the long run to suffer Death. This provision may be regarded equally as a punitive sentence (“In the day ye eat of that fruit ye shall die”), as a mercy, and as a safety device. It is punishment because Death—that Death of which Martha says to Christ, “But . . . Sir . . . it’ll smell”—is horror and ignominy. (“I am not so much afraid of death as ashamed of it,” said Sir Thomas Browne.) It is mercy because by willing and humble surrender to it Man undoes his act of rebellion and makes even this depraved and monstrous mode of Death an instance of that higher and mystical Death which is eternally good and a necessary ingredient in the highest life. “The readiness is all”—not, of course, the merely heroic readiness but that of humility and self-renunciation. Our enemy, so welcomed, becomes our servant: bodily Death, the monster, becomes blessed spiritual Death to self, if the spirit so wills—or rather if it allows the Spirit of the willingly dying God so to will in it. It is a safety device because, once Man has fallen, natural immortality would be the one utterly hopeless destiny for him. Aided to the surrender that he must make by no external necessity of Death, free (if you call it freedom) to rivet faster and faster about himself through unending centuries the chains of his own pride and lust and of the nightmare civilisations which these build up in ever-increasing power and complication, he would progress from being merely a fallen man to being a fiend, possibly beyond all modes of redemption. This danger was averted. The sentence that those who ate of the forbidden fruit would be driven away from the Tree of Life was implicit in the composite nature with which Man was created. But to convert this penal death into the means of eternal life—to add to its negative and preventive function a positive and saving function—it was further necessary that death should be accepted. Humanity must embrace death freely, submit to it with total humility, drink it to the dregs, and so convert it into that mystical death which is the secret of life. But only a Man who did not need to have been a Man at all unless He had chosen, only one who served in our sad regiment as a volunteer, yet also one who was perfectly a Man, could perform this perfect dying; and thus (which way you put it is unimportant) either defeat Death or redeem it. He tasted death on behalf of all others. He is the representative “Die-er” of the universe: and for that very reason the Resurrection and the Life. Or conversely, because He truly lives, He truly dies, for that is the very pattern of reality. Because the higher can descend into the lower He who from all eternity has been incessantly plunging Himself in the blessed death of self-surrender to the Father can also most fully descend into the horrible and (for us) involuntary death of the body. Because Vicariousness is the very idiom of the reality He has created, ~His death can become ours~. The whole Miracle, far from denying what we already know of reality, writes the comment which makes that crabbed text plain: or rather, proves itself to be the text on which Nature was only the commentary. In science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself.

 

From "Miracles", by C.S. Lewis

 

 

This was amazing because it went out to over 4,000 people and any kind of non-business subject matter is strictly prohibited. Kinda shocked me to realize [again] there are people that despite knowing full well the penalties incurred for sending out something like this believe so strongly in their delusion that they would do it anyway.

 

I thought the bit about Jesus crying for Lazarus was funny. It makes no sense that an omniscient entity would exhibit emotion or have preference enough for another being that it would invoke emotion due to whatever occurrence.

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If Jesus was so omniscient, why did he not already know that Lazarus was dead, and that he would resurrect Lazarus as soon as he got there?  If I had that kind of power, I wouldn't waste time weeping, I'd be like, "Hey, everybody, check this out!  I'm gonna make Lazarus walk out of his tomb now!  Ta-dah!  Wow, am I cool or what?"  Well, that would be my response.

 

I would add pyrotechnics, too, as Lazarus emerged from the tomb. 

 

It's ironic that the above was sent to employees, as most of us have jobs we consider soul-sucking and death may actually be considered freedom.

 

"But...Sir...it'll smell" -- nope, not if I was the omniscient, omnipotent Jesus.  I'd make Lazarus dance out of his tomb, fireworks blazing overhead, a mariachi band playing to greet him, a magical pink unicorn gleefully pawing the air in front of him, and he'd smell like peach cobbler.  Tell me THAT doesn't give you a better picture in your mind than "Jesus wept."

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If Jesus was so omniscient, why did he not already know that Lazarus was dead, and that he would resurrect Lazarus as soon as he got there?  If I had that kind of power, I wouldn't waste time weeping, I'd be like, "Hey, everybody, check this out!  I'm gonna make Lazarus walk out of his tomb now!  Ta-dah!  Wow, am I cool or what?"  Well, that would be my response.

 

I would add pyrotechnics, too, as Lazarus emerged from the tomb. 

 

It's ironic that the above was sent to employees, as most of us have jobs we consider soul-sucking and death may actually be considered freedom.

 

"But...Sir...it'll smell" -- nope, not if I was the omniscient, omnipotent Jesus.  I'd make Lazarus dance out of his tomb, fireworks blazing overhead, a mariachi band playing to greet him, a magical pink unicorn gleefully pawing the air in front of him, and he'd smell like peach cobbler.  Tell me THAT doesn't give you a better picture in your mind than "Jesus wept."

 

That's great! I want steel drums too.

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So someone in an apparently large company dies, and one person takes it upon themselves to send this message to 4000 people! Just... wow! The corporate communications department would normally send out an announcement expressing condolences to those closest to the person, but for an individual to send a religious message, or any other mass email for that matter, would normally get a pretty stiff reprimand. You just don't send email to that many people!

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