Natural Death?

And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot: for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept.  Genesis 21:16

When my family moved to a farm we were quickly adopted by a kitten we decided to call Stripers. He was a delightful ball of energy and fun. When he wasn’t snuggling on our laps, he was out catching grasshoppers to play with in the living room; I told my sisters that he liked his veggies! His favorite thing to do in the evening was snatch at the moths fluttering around the lamps. Just imagine if there were snack size candy bites flying around YOUR house!
One morning that summer, Stripers was gone. Soon I found his little, mangled body next to the road down the hill. He was the first cat I buried under the old lilac at the corner of the house.

It is always a sad thing when someone dies, but accidental deaths are especially hard to accept because someone is so alive one day and completely gone the next.

Every culture in the world has its own way of mourning the dead. We usually gather around the bereaved family and show our support for them in some way. Often special clothes are worn so the mourners don’t have to say anything for others to know they are grieving. The Bible mentions a number of practices that the Jewish people would perform to show their sadness at the passing of a loved one.

We all know, even though it isn’t comfortable to think about, that some day every one of us will leave our bodies behind.

The question is, are we meant to go through this?

Is death the natural condition of the world, as necessary as being born?

Evolutionary thinking says, “yes.”

Conclusion #1: Evolution is a cruel and brutal process.

Evolution is not a planned process. It does no engineering. The end products were never visualized. No goals exist. There is no thought of failure or success. There is no seeking of perfection. There is no seeking of anything. Evolution does not do anything. It only happens. Mutations produce chaos with genetic accident after accident, most of which is eventually fatal. Evolution uses misery and death to sort it all out. Evolution produces the strongest organism when the organism is in absolute misery. Rapid and early deaths make allele selections quickly.

We are at the mercy of a merciless idiot that survives with no regard for the comfort of the organism. The process of evolution has no goal, but its result is as if its only goal was to reproduce.

[Taken from a now defunct website discussing evolution. You can find a similar quotes on ICR]

I don’t know about you, but that about makes me want to lose my lunch. Evolutionary thinking is heartless and cruel, full of hardened indifference to suffering and hopelessness.

Now, what does God say to that question? His answer is “no.” Death was not part of God’s original “very good” world. God warned Adam that death would come if he ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Sure enough, death passed onto the Creation when Adam disobeyed God (Romans 8:19-23). Although Adam continued to live on earth for another 930 years, his body began to die that very day and his spirit was separated from God’s life.

In the past you were spiritually dead because of your sins and the things you did against God.  Yes, in the past your lives were full of those sins. You lived the way the world lives, following the ruler of the evil powers that are above the earth. That same spirit is now working in those who refuse to obey God. In the past all of us lived like that, trying to please our sinful selves. We did all the things our bodies and minds wanted. Like everyone else in the world, we deserved to suffer God’s anger just because of the way we were.

But God is rich in mercy, and he loved us very much. We were spiritually dead because of all we had done against him. But he gave us new life together with Christ. (You have been saved by God’s grace.)  Ephesians 2:1-5 Easy-to-read Version

In our hearts, we know that we were not meant to live on earth for a short time and then just turn to dust as if we’d never been. We know that our inner self—our spirit—is meant to live on forever. Praise God, He had His Son, Jesus, take our sins into Himself and die in our place! All that is left for me is to ask God to wash the filth of my disobedience away and claim me as His own.

What an unspeakably great gift this is: to be not just clean, but alive and in heaven with God forever!

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.  Revelation 21:3,4