I have been living in a very dry time period with regard to reading as nothing in recent months has truly captured my fancy. That is until I began N.T. Wright's book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. I am only about 80 pages into the book and I already find myself interacting with Wright on almost every page. . . in some cases with huge "ah-hahs" of new discoveries and delights. I'll blog about a few of them over the next few postings but, among all the new wonders, is that I have finally found someone who takes on the question of "death: friend or foe" head on! I have pondered the issue of death for years including talking with older friends who may be close to this experience. Answers to the question of death range all over the map loosely characterized on comfort end by "death is my friend and is easy to embrace. . . it is just crossing over from one life to another" to the very opposite opinion that "death is my mortal enemy. . . one to to fought to the bitter end". So which is it? There is no question that death was not part of God's original plan but what are we to make of it now? Is death a friend to be embraced or a foe to be fought?
Of so many things I like about Wright's book, Wright take on death is not mushy embrace but also not a fearful defeatism. Wright insists that death is, in fact, our enemy but is a beaten enemy who is not to be feared after Jesus showed our future by His Resurrection into a newly transformed body that is, at once, physical yet also physical in a way completely unlike our own. Now that is something I can buy into with enthusiasm! Just as Dallas Willard puzzled me for over a year with his stray comment (in person) that "the Cross of Jesus is the Achilles heel of evangelical theology" so to have I struggled with the reality of death, friend or foe. And I haven't even begun to unpack the depth of Wright's work.
Ahh, it feels good to be reading something that captures my imagination again after a long dry spell.
