No One Gets Out Alive

This is the second post in my Life, Death & Healing series. You can find the first one here if you missed it.

We live in a world where for most people, getting sick or feeling unwell means a trip to the doctor – and we do this for a few reasons. One, being sick is no fun, and most of us don’t like the pain or discomforts that illness brings. Two, unless we have had our eyes opened to the real possibility that we can be healed by God, then doctors and medicine may hold the only hope we have for being restored to wholeness. And lastly, as most of us have been sub-consciously conditioned from infancy with a degree of fear about death, we are highly motivated to put it off for as long as possible!

The conditioned expectation within us that medicine has the power to heal, means we go to the doctor with the expectation that he or she will not only be able to diagnose the problem, but can offer suitable treatment to fix it. In fact, without our really even being aware of it, as a society we have become so medicalised that it rarely occurs to us to question the authority of a doctor, so if they tell us we need invasive surgery, we let them cut us open and poke around in there. If they recommend a course of treatment that is painful or expensive, we submit to it because we have come to trust in the authority of their superior medical knowledge in matters relating to our health. And if they tell us we are dying, we believe them.

I once read a book called “10 Hours to Live” written by Brian Wills. He was a 22 year old man that doctors had diagnosed with a deadly, fast-growing cancer, and they had given him just ten hours to live. Rather than just accepting such a devastating statement, he instead chose to hold to his belief in a higher truth. This kid had to stand in faith against the caring hospital staff who were compassionately trying to prepare him for what they believed, and fully expected, was his imminent death. No doubt the staff were genuinely caring, but their belief was based on their faith in medicine. His faith was in God.

The evidence that his body had been afflicted by cancer was apparently undeniable, but the facts of his situation did not align with his faith, so he chose faith. Against a great deal of pressure, he showed fortitude when he again and again faced every challenge with scriptural truth. Standing in faith can be challenging enough at times, even when it’s just between you and God, but imagine having to stand in faith for healing when you are in a hospital surrounded by well-intentioned doctors wanting to treat you, and dedicated hospital staff wanting to kindly minister to you in the best way they know how. I can perhaps imagine how exasperated staff members might have shared a look of pity across the hospital bed at one another, as they tried to deal with what they most likely saw as a young man in denial.

What left the deepest impression upon me from the book though, was when one person, no doubt in frustration, said to him; “You need to accept the fact that you’re dying!” When I read those words, something in my spirit angrily rose up, causing me to blurt out “So are you!!” I felt indignant on the young man’s behalf, not as much because he was effectively being condemned by choosing the path of faith; but more so because the person speaking had failed to realise the simple truth that we are all dying. That is an unavoidable and inevitable fact. From the moment we were conceived, our bodies were destined to decay and there is nothing we can do to change that fact. Sickness and disease simply accelerate the inevitable outcome we must all face. Yet rather than just accepting that truth, we flee from it because we have been conditioned from birth to be afraid of dying – as though any other outcome in life is possible.

It’s simple: there is no escape from death. No one gets out alive.

But while we live, we can choose not to live with that fear; to let God determine the number of our days, and not let the devil prematurely rob us of a single one of them. We have the power to choose where we will put our faith. Let us not love our lives so much that we are afraid to die (Rev 12:11), but like the apostle Paul, might we be able to say: