life vs death

Yesterday, when looking over my subscriptions, I came across this post (A shift in perspective) from D (check out his awesome site here!).

Interestingly enough, D's post corresponded very closely to the topic that was discussed at a lunchtime talk I attended yesterday at Tenth Presbyterian. The speaker, Steve Munz, was talking about how ‘death’ according to God is not just a physical death – it is LOSS. He brought up Deut 28, which contrasts the blessings of life (v 1-14) with the curses of death (v 15-end), aka the absence of all the blessings aka loss (Deuteronomy lists all the blessings of life, like a place to call home, being fruitful, etc). When he asked the audience which they feared more, it was an almost unanimous agreement that loss, not physical death, was the greater fear. And Steve brought up that it is out of this fear of loss, of NOT having, that we sin -- to try to control and obtain things we are afraid of losing.

Steve talked about how God is not stingy with promises of life and blessings if we obey Him. Unfortunately we don’t obey. We didn’t from the beginning; after the fall, the consequence was death. While Adam and Eve didn’t die right away, ‘death’ in a figurative sense entered the world in the form of LOSSES—loss of the blessings from God, of the Garden of Eden, of peace/health/perfection. As a result, we now all experience ‘deaths’/feelings of loss--whether it be from tangible things, status, grades etc—because we are separated from God by sin; by the desire to obtain perfection on our own, for our own glory, instead of for God’s. In the teen (in D's story)’s eyes, his life was probably miserable because he felt like he lost everything, yet it meant so much more to him because he also felt it was HIS glory (aka self esteem) at stake (read: “People would then at least think I was a good person”). Side note: I know SO many people (myself included), who went through this crazy annoying stage of angst. Oh, the joys of being a teenager...haha

Anyways, Steve reminded us of how God sent Jesus to die so that He could overcome death, to overcome the losses in our lives and replace it with LIFE (aka blessings). Death was not eliminated--even Jesus died--but the gospel is about His resurrection; God went through death so that he could prove He was GREATER than death. Steve then brought up Hebrews 2:14 – “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— ¹⁵ and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

How this relates to D's entry? I loved the way he put how “It is tragic that we expend so much energy lamenting that which is often unchangeable and inescapable when there are those who are starving for just a fraction of affection, a single moment of grace“ – ie, we spend so much energy trying to prolong death in our sick patients, but the harsh reality is, no matter what medicine we perform, EVERYone eventually dies. As Christians, this should push us to ask: what are we doing for these patient’s souls? Worse than a physical, bodily death is an eternal death, something to which everyone is condemned by default but also something everyone can be saved from. So shouldn’t we be spending energy into saving people from the eternal death instead of the physical, aka sharing eternal life, only obtainable though Jesus , aka sharing God?  Isn’t that crazy?

It is this epiphany that finally convicted me to give my life and career to God, to His eternal purpose, instead of the transient successes that come with this world.  That being said, I am not going to give up the position God gifted me to become a doctor and to reach people THROUGH medicine. Also, I am absolutely NOT going to let sick patients slip through if it is preventable. However, people do need to hear about God, and as most of our communication is nonverbal anyways, if obeying God is a priority in our lives, people will notice. This goes back to my entry about Jeremy Lin—my motivation of succeed is not for myself, but so other people can hear about God :)