Editorial September 25, 1971 Issue

Death Is No Friend

Carl J. Welz

The Apostle Paul spoke of death as "the last enemy that shall be destroyed."^{I Cor. 15:26;} Outwardly, most of us think we would like to see death abolished. But inwardly—unthinkingly—we accept death as necessary to the continuous and harmonious expression of life on earth.

If no one died, we might think, Where would all the people live and how would we feed them? And if animals, birds, insects, trees, and plants didn't die, the balance of nature problem would be complicated to say the least. So, though we may be saddened by death when it occurs close to us, and we may strive vitally to overcome it or avert it in individual instances, we may be hard put to find a reason for challenging death as a whole.

Theology has attempted to solve the riddle of death by classifying it as the gateway to heaven or to hell. The composer Bach entitled one of his chorales "Come, Sweet Death," and it is common today to speak of someone who has died as having "entered into rest," or as having found his peace, especially if he didn't have much peace while he was with us. But Christian Science insists that Paul's pronouncement upon death was a scientific statement of death's unreality. Were death from God, it could not be an enemy, nor would overcoming it be desirable.

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