Skip to content Reflecting on Death & Heaven with Pastor Matt McCullough May 8 · 56 min ...more
Reflecting on Death & Heaven with Pastor Matt McCullough
May 8, 2025 · 56 min
In this episode, Haley and Dustin sit down with Matt McCullough, pastor of Edgefield Church in Nashville and author of Remember Heaven (releasing May 2025).
Matt shares insights from his first book, Remember Death, and how reflecting on death can be a path to deepening our hope in Christ. He discusses why we don’t like thinking about death, but also why it’s vital for our spiritual growth and identity. Matt also shares insights on his upcoming book and how reflecting on heaven and the afterlife can benefit our lives today.
Subscribe to the podcast and tune in each week as Haley and Dustin share with you what the Bible says about real-life issues with compassion, warmth, and wit.
So you have every reason for hope, for every challenge in life. Because hope means everything.
Hope Talks is a podcast of the ministry of Hope for the Heart.
Listen in to learn more :
(00:00) - Finding Hope in Everyday Life
(09:20) - Facing Death
(13:36) - The Impact of Remembering Death
(25:19) - The Weight of Death and Jesus
(37:17) - Discovering Hope in Eternal Life
(47:09) - Overcoming Anxiety
(55:05) - Renewing Hope Through Faith and Prayer
--------------
Resources from Matt McCullough
Get a copy of Matt’s book, Remember Death: https://tinyurl.com/3kp25udc
Get a copy of Matt’s new book, Remember Heaven: https://tinyurl.com/2wtxyh6x
Hope for the Heart resources
Connect with Hope for the Heart on social!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hopefortheheart
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopefortheheart
Learn more about the ministry and resources of Hope for the Heart: https://www.hopefortheheart.org/
Learn more about Hope Talks and catch up on past episodes: https://www.hopefortheheart.org/hopetalks/
Want to talk with June Hunt on Hope in the Night about a difficult life issue? Schedule a time here: https://resource.hopefortheheart.org/talk-with-june-hope-in-the-night
God’s plan for you: https://www.hopefortheheart.org/gods-plan-for-you/
Give to the ministry of Hope for the Heart: https://raisedonors.com/hopefortheheart/givehope?sc=HTPDON
Learn about our summer event on Mental Health and the Church: https://resource.hopefortheheart.org/mental-health-and-the-church
Sign up for our fall Hope Together conference: https://hopetogether.com/
Series Hope Talks May 8, 2025 · 56 min · Hope Talks
In this episode, Haley and Dustin sit down with Matt McCullough, pastor of Edgefield Church in Nashville and author of Remember Heaven (releasing May 2025). Matt shares insights from his first book, Remember Death, and how reflecting on death can be a path to deepening our hope in Christ. He discusses why we don’t like thinking about death, but also why it’s vital for our spiritual growth and identity. Matt also shares insights on his upcoming book and how reflecting on heaven and the afterlife can benefit our lives today. Subscribe to the podcast and tune in each week as Haley and Dustin share with you what the Bible says about real-life issues with compassion, warmth, and wit. So you have every reason for hope, for every challenge in life. Because hope means everything. Hope Talks is a podcast of the ministry of Hope for the Heart. Listen in to learn more : (00:00) - Finding Hope in Everyday Life (09:20) - Facing Death (13:36) - The Impact of Remembering Death (25:19) - The Weight of Death and Jesus (37:17) - Discovering Hope in Eternal Life (47:09) - Overcoming Anxiety (55:05) - Renewing Hope Through Faith and Prayer -------------- Resources from Matt McCullough Get a copy of Matt’s book, Remember Death: https://tinyurl.com/3kp25udc Get a copy of Matt’s new book, Remember Heaven: https://tinyurl.com/2wtxyh6x Hope for the Heart resources Connect with Hope for the Heart on social! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hopefortheheart Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopefortheheart Learn more about the ministry and resources of Hope for the Heart: https://www.hopefortheheart.org/ Learn more about Hope Talks and catch up on past episodes: https://www.hopefortheheart.org/hopetalks/ Want to talk with June Hunt on Hope in the Night about a difficult life issue? Schedule a time here: https://resource.hopefortheheart.org/talk-with-june-hope-in-the-night God’s plan for you: https://www.hopefortheheart.org/gods-plan-for-you/ Give to the ministry of Hope for the Heart: https://raisedonors.com/hopefortheheart/givehope?sc=HTPDON Learn about our summer event on Mental Health and the Church: https://resource.hopefortheheart.org/mental-health-and-the-church Sign up for our fall Hope Together conference: https://hopetogether.com/ ...more Show the full description Show less In this episode, Haley and Dustin sit down with Matt McCullough, pastor of Edgefield Church in Nashville and author of Remember Heaven (releasing May 2025).
Matt shares insights from his first book, Remember Death, and how reflecting on death can be a path to deepening our hope in Christ. He discusses why we don’t like thinking about death, but also why it’s vital for our spiritual growth and identity. Matt also shares insights on his upcoming book and how reflecting on heaven and the afterlife can benefit our lives today.
Subscribe to the podcast and tune in each week as Haley and Dustin share with you what the Bible says about real-life issues with compassion, warmth, and wit.
So you have every reason for hope, for every challenge in life. Because hope means everything.
Hope Talks is a podcast of the ministry of Hope for the Heart.
Listen in to learn more :
(00:00) - Finding Hope in Everyday Life
(09:20) - Facing Death
(13:36) - The Impact of Remembering Death
(25:19) - The Weight of Death and Jesus
(37:17) - Discovering Hope in Eternal Life
(47:09) - Overcoming Anxiety
(55:05) - Renewing Hope Through Faith and Prayer
--------------
Resources from Matt McCullough
Get a copy of Matt’s book, Remember Death: https://tinyurl.com/3kp25udc
Get a copy of Matt’s new book, Remember Heaven: https://tinyurl.com/2wtxyh6x
Hope for the Heart resources
Connect with Hope for the Heart on social!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hopefortheheart
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopefortheheart
Learn more about the ministry and resources of Hope for the Heart: https://www.hopefortheheart.org/
Learn more about Hope Talks and catch up on past episodes: https://www.hopefortheheart.org/hopetalks/
Want to talk with June Hunt on Hope in the Night about a difficult life issue? Schedule a time here: https://resource.hopefortheheart.org/talk-with-june-hope-in-the-night
God’s plan for you: https://www.hopefortheheart.org/gods-plan-for-you/
Give to the ministry of Hope for the Heart: https://raisedonors.com/hopefortheheart/givehope?sc=HTPDON
Learn about our summer event on Mental Health and the Church: https://resource.hopefortheheart.org/mental-health-and-the-church
Sign up for our fall Hope Together conference: https://hopetogether.com/
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0:00 My encouragement would be not to try to distract yourself from what it is that's bothering you, not to run away from it, that you ought to be bothered by it, but you ought to look to Jesus through it, that he is the only0:11 thing more certain than the grave. And yet he is. He's alive today, and he lives to intercede for all of his own. So run to him, and don't be afraid of anything that drives you into his arms.0:24 Welcome to Hope Talks. We're your hosts. I'm Haley Scully along with Dustin Anderson, and we wanna give you every reason for hope for every challenge in life because hope means everything.0:37 Dustin, it is guest day on Hope Talks, and we have pastor Matt McCullough with us. We've decided we've just or I I decided. I proclaimed we're gonna pretend like we've been friends for 10 years.0:52 Knock the dust0:52 off the conversation. But, Dustin, tell us who pastor Matt McCullough is.0:58 Yeah. He's the pastor of Edgefield Church in Nashville, Tennessee. He also helped plant the Trinity Church near Vanderbilt University. You've written a couple of books. 1 of them I read when it first came out called1:09 Remember Death, The Surprising Path to Living Hope. That's a book you kinda don't wanna read in public, especially for those listening. The cover is just very clean black1:21 and white with the words remember death on it. But it's actually a really deeply meaningful, encouraging, practical, and theological book. And then you have another book coming out. I would think it's kind of a1:33 follow-up called remember heaven, Meditations on the World to Come for Life in the Meantime coming out just in a few weeks. Right?
1:40 That's right. Yeah. It's almost time.
1:42 Yeah. And then you're also a contributor to 9 Marks and the Gospel Coalition. So if you wanna read more from that, you can find him there. But, yeah, on the hope talks, we're gonna get into some of your books and
1:54 things, but upfront, we just really love hearing people's hope stories. And for some people, that's kinda when they came to know the Lord, their moment of salvation. Other times, it's like a trial or a conflict they went
2:05 through where they really learned to lean into Christ and find hope. So thank you for being with us today, Matt. We're encouraged and excited to hear about you. But first, upfront, welcome, and do you mind
2:17 sharing your hope story with us?
2:19 I'd be so glad to. Thank you guys for having me. It is a joy to be here, and I love that question. I don't have a super dramatic story, but I think it's still relevant. So let's take a let me give it a shot.
2:31 Grew up in a Christian home, became a Christian at a young age, and have the wonderful testimony that I hope my kids will have someday of just growing up, seeing the gospel proved in the lives of the people closest to me
2:43 and in a faithful local church that raised me to know and love Jesus, I don't remember not being confident about the truth of it all. And then I would say that for people like me who grow up the way I did,
2:54 a lot of times, growth as a Christian looks like just moving deeper and deeper and deeper into the the goodness of things you've always affirmed to be true. It's seeing the reality of it
3:06 in new ways that are more and more profoundly shaping for the life that you're living. So for me, when it comes to hope, and specifically the hope that Christ gives us over death and the promise of
3:18 resurrection in a new world that's free of sin and sorrow and and all of death's minions, yeah, I don't have any kind of near death experience that really awakened me to that. I haven't lost anyone, like,
3:30 close to me that was, you know, not very aged, you know, and expected Mhmm. To die. I would say what has really helped me to connect with the goodness of the promise of a world of endless
3:42 joy has been becoming apparent, and just the slow burn effect of having the best times in my life not last long enough.
3:55 I, for the first, I don't know, probably the first I think I was 28 when I had my first kid, something like that. So for most of my twenties, I was building for the
4:06 future. You know? Like, I was training. I was in grad school. I was working on the dissertation, and I was preparing to be a pastor. Like, all the things that I knew I wanted to do, laying the foundation for them. So the
4:17 future is always like, that's the time when you're gonna arrive. The future is your your friend. The future is when it all happens. Everything was future for me. And then having my my first kids,
4:29 I began to realize, just in a new way, I would have always said this was true, but I began to experience the passage of time in a new way, the precious early days with these babies turning into toddlers, turning into pre
4:41 k, you know, just soaking up what they were at each of those stages, and then watching those times pass. I started to experience that now the past sometimes seems sweeter than the future,
4:53 and the future is now gonna be, realizing the future is gonna be full of more things that pass away, that nothing lasts in this world, and that drove me deeper and deeper into the hope of an
5:05 endless world of joy than I had ever been able to experience before. I know that's not very dramatic, it is very mundane and every day, but that's my story. I am trying to lean in to the promise
5:17 that what I'm experiencing now and what I'm enjoying so much is a foretaste of an endless feast to come, and that's the only way I can keep my heart from just staying broke over these good gifts that don't last long
5:29 enough for my taste.
5:30 I've never heard it said that way, but I think that makes a whole lot of sense. Like, you spend a lot of time looking forward and, like you said, working toward things, and then as your kids hit
5:42 milestones and you know that's not gonna come again, they're not gonna be toddlers again, like, that first time where you're really looking back on something. And like you said, like, how do you not have repeated
5:52 heartbreak because you're not gonna experience those moments again? It has to make you shift to some of these good things are behind me, and so how do I have hope going forward? Like, I hope I kinda
6:04 summarized that well because that's a really beautiful way to say that and to look at that and why you would then need to dig into hope for going forward as those things
6:15 pass. I think you said the word dramatic. And I'm gonna ask you about this because I think we find that a lot. I can relate a lot of your story. I, like, grew up in church. We were there
6:27 on the weekends. I am so grateful. The older I get, the more thankful I am for safe family members. There isn't that big dramatic moment. There's not abuse.
6:39 There's not things where I'm like, I really had to hold on to hope in that. And I think even sometimes there is not a regret, obviously. I didn't want bad
6:51 things to happen that would make me dig into hope. How do we, as believers, when we don't have that big dramatic story, how would you say we're still able to understand the
7:03 sweetness of hope and grace and mercy in our lives without that big traumatic story? Because sometimes that's what sells the books. That's what
7:11 you know,
7:12 people lean into, and a lot of us have the everyday life of following Christ. So how do we embrace how sweet that is?
7:20 Well, I mean, this gets to the gist of the first book that Dustin mentioned, the book about death. I wrote that book because in modern American culture, the place that I've lived for my whole life Mhmm. Death has been
7:32 pushed to the margins, and it can be sort of explained away as something that happens to other people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Death is always dramatic, unexpected, jarring, and that just
7:44 isn't true. Death is universal. It is the most certain thing about our lives other than the fact that we were born in the first place. Yeah. And because of the wonderful effects of modern medicine
7:56 and beating back death further and further into the average lifespan, because we tend to die in medical facilities that no 1 ever goes to, and because fewer and fewer people are even buried these days, death is something
8:07 that's much easier to rope off from normal experience than it used to be a couple hundred years ago, even in this country. And so I think apart from that kind of traumatic experience you're talking about, the key to
8:18 seeing the sweetness of the hope that we've been offered, which is precisely framed in light of the problem Jesus came to solve, that is sin and death in our lives. We have to be more honest about the everyday mundane
8:29 grip of death on life, and the passage of time is just 1 clear way to see it.
8:35 You
8:36 know, death is not something that happens to somebody who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is basic humanity. Yeah. And Christ has come to solve that problem for us.
8:45 That's good.
8:46 Yeah. I wanna try and put together a couple thoughts because my story is more of the dramatic story. So a little bit of background on me. I lost my mom when I was 16 years old from due to cancer,
8:59 and I lost my dad when I was 27 from lung complications. And I lost a couple of my very close friends as well, maybe 25, 30 years old. And so
9:11 when I read your book, the title obviously stuck out to me because, like, I really understand this happens. This happens, like, fairly regular in my life. But the way you kinda talk
9:22 through, like you said, we've kind of pushed death to the margins. And I was thinking about on the way in here, like, I've lived in Dallas now for, like, 13 years or something. I feel like I've seen less than
9:34 maybe 5 cemeteries since I've been here. Like, I just don't see them. Yeah. Yeah. But like, I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin and there were multiple cemeteries I passed regularly.
9:46 They're just kind of there in the like, you just see them. So even, like, the landscape, it was reminding so not just, like, the losses I faced in my life, but even, like, the way you kinda talked
9:58 about, we just don't even see it in terms of, like, seeing a cemetery or having a cemetery in the back of a church and things like that. Yeah. And so I'm not sure where I'm going.
10:08 Kind of out of sight.
10:09 Yeah. It's just out of sight, out of mind. And so could you maybe elaborate on that kind of thought a little bit more of what other reasons why we don't really want to think about death or just even, like, with medicines
10:21 and and things like that? It's just like or actually just don't completely removed from us in some sense.
10:27 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think we don't want to. Why would we want to? It's awful. If somebody could spend most of their life avoiding what you had to go through, the kind of losses that you
10:38 experienced, it makes all the sense in the world to me why they'd want to. Problem is that you you just you can't afford it. No matter how bad you like to, you are facing it, so is everybody else that you love. So
10:50 the bible says that that wisdom comes from numbering your days, that it comes from actually facing up to the truth about the world, not the way we wish it was, but the way that it is. It doesn't surprise me at all that
11:01 we would use every tool in our arsenal and our and our disposal to try to keep that truth at bay for as long as possible. So, you know, we've already mentioned quite a few of them. I mean, we we mentioned some of the
11:12 technological changes, changes in nutrition and in medicine that have pushed back disease and death further and further. Another factor that sociologists and historians have
11:23 pointed to that have helped they've helped me realize, I think 1 of my own experience, been is what they call a taboo, which is a cultural agreement, like, unspoken, just that we don't go there.
11:35 Right. It's shameful to go there, that it's embarrassing to go there. Kinda what you mentioned earlier about, you gotta be careful where you read a book. It's called Remember Death with the big white stark cut.
11:44 Yeah. I've had this book on my on my office desk a handful of times, even walking in here. Yeah. I'm like, oh, what's that about?
11:51 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was just obvious. You wouldn't give that away for a Mother's Day present, you know. Right. Merry Christmas, mom. Remember that.
11:59 It's that's
12:00 a taboo. That's a taboo. Seeing that the Puritans who were a big influence on my development several hundred years ago, they didn't have that taboo then. They are always talking about this. Mhmm. They built it into their
12:11 life as something to recognize and account for because they knew they didn't have any other choice. And I think you can overdo it. There is a way to be overly morbid and obsessed with death
12:23 and give it more power than it deserves, especially for a Christian who who has hope in Christ. But just honesty about it, acknowledging the reality and how unavoidable it is, That's
12:34 crucial, not just for wisdom, but also for cultivating, like, a deeper hope in what Jesus came to do. Because as long as Jesus is talking about eternal life, you know, as long as the center of his story is his
12:46 resurrection from the dead, as long as we're not talking about the reason that we need that kind of hope in the first place, like that hope's just gonna sound otherworldly. It's gonna be for other people, those who are
12:56 unfortunate enough to need it, as opposed to the basic conditions under which he makes sense and his good news is so good.
13:04 How did you go from kind of starting to think about this and having these thoughts in your own life and considerations to, like, oh, I need to write about this. I need to study this, and
13:16 I need to write about this because I see a need out there for this conversation. How did you go from that to writing the books about it?
13:23 Well, there's several steps, I guess. If I had to identify them, obviously, this all bled together. There was not a it wasn't a clear bright line that I crossed into it. But several things that I can point to. 1 is, I
13:34 mentioned many years as a graduate student. I studied church history at Vanderbilt. That's how I got to Nashville originally, and and I spent a lot of those years studying the Puritans, both in England and in New
13:44 England, and noticing, as I studied them, just how prominently death featured in their preaching, in their writing, and even the kind of material stuff that was involved in their Christianity, their
13:56 headstones, their art. So noticing, okay, this was really important to them and to their formation as Christians, their spirituality, and I don't see it anywhere around me. That's not part of my experience of
14:07 Christianity, so noticing that. Then moving from my grad student life into the pulpit and becoming a pastor right after grad school, starting to preach verse by verse through the Bible, preach expositionally. Just take a
14:19 book at a time and work through it section by section. And just doing that systematically, I started to realize just how often the Bible talks about death. It's all over the place. So much more than I realized before
14:30 that discipline of preparing to preach whatever comes next to my people. So then I'm noticing this this thing that was really important to other Christians from other times and places is missing now, and yet here it is.
14:41 It's everywhere in the scriptures. And then as I'm trying to apply those texts about death to my friends in my church, it was clear more and more over time that this is completely off the map, and it's
14:53 jarring, and people are noticing this, and it's actually helping. It's helping. Yeah. And so I think it was probably several years into just normal preaching ministry with that as a backdrop that I realized I think
15:04 there's something here that would help people. There's a missing piece that's really important to the scriptures that we could be getting more benefit from, and I've got enough material now. At some point, I just
15:14 thought, there's critical mass here, and I got a sabbatical. My church gave me a sabbatical month to get away and write it, and I did. So it isn't just a collection of sermons, but it certainly was rooted in just
15:26 biblical preaching, trying to make the relevance of Jesus clear to my friends from God's word, and applying it to our specific setting, our context, and what's missing here. That was the
15:37 source of it.
15:38 I like the thought because I do think a lot of times we're like, la la la la la. I don't wanna talk about death. You know? Almost like if we talk about it, then somehow that means you're gonna be faced with it or we just
15:49 we wanna ignore things because it is scary. It is a scary thought. And the more that we are exposed to people's stories and understanding what's possible you know, kids do get cancer and die. Family
16:01 members do get in car accidents and pass away. There are terrible stories, and we just kind of wanna even though we're constantly exposed to it, wrapping that into a conversation of Christ
16:13 of we don't have to close our eyes and plug our ears. Mhmm. We can develop a confidence in the conversation that we don't have to be afraid of. We can
16:24 have peace in the midst of those things. So I wanna get a little more into that. But, also, I love thinking of, like, young Matt going into
16:36 university and deciding to study church history. I think seeing those moments of direction and how God pulls together a calling. So how did you decide
16:48 to study church history that led you to this conversation today?
16:53 Yeah. Well, I was interested in being a pastor from an early age. My dad's a pastor, so I got a close-up view of his life and ministry and loved what I saw, and maybe I would like to do that
17:05 someday. So my undergrad was at a college associated with a seminary and very focused on ministry training, and had a great time there, but decided I was pretty young at the time and was really
17:17 interested in the academic work that I'd been doing, and especially my favorite classes there were church history classes. Favorite professors were church history professors. And so I still thought I'd probably wanted to
17:28 pastor if I could, but not anytime soon, and I needed to develop more, and I was really interested in this, so decided to just try for it, see if I could get into a university PhD program, and and do that full time. So
17:39 it's hard for me to explain why I love history as much as I do, to be honest. It just sort of Mhmm. Happens. I don't remember a time when I did it's like, I don't remember when I didn't love college football. I I don't
17:49 remember not being into history. And 1 thing led to another, and I just had the chance to spend more time than most people get to studying it. And I'm really glad that I did, because even though I I became pretty
18:00 convinced even years before I finished the PhD that I wanted to be in ministry if I could be, I really think having historical perspective has made ministry has been a huge
18:12 advantage to my ministry. And this this conversation we're having right now is just 1 example. Just knowing Christians in the past used to think this was a big deal. We aren't talking about this. Why? If I hadn't had
18:22 that historical perspective, I don't think I would have noticed what I did. So, yeah, not exactly a textbook way to prepare for ministry, but it's it's a journey I'm glad I've been on.
18:34 Yeah. No. I love that. I mean, what are you interested in? We had and I can't remember what 1 of the previous episodes where we talked about, oh, it's with Crystal Levenshurst. What tools are in your hand? What are you
18:45 interested in? What are the things that you love to study? What are the conversations that you like to
18:51 have? And
18:52 I think that's so true. So many times we look at just today and we try to think about what is God doing and where is he leading? But having the historical perspective, God didn't just wake up this morning and have
19:04 a brand new plan for everybody. Yeah. So looking at the Puritans, looking at, you know, the things that God has done throughout time, and then thinking, where do we lay that mantle down? And do we need to have that
19:15 conversation again? Because talking about death points to the need for salvation. I mean, it is such an evangelistic tool and resource. So, Dustin, you said that Remember
19:27 Death really had impact for you. Why was it so moving and helpful for you?
19:32 I think it put just a lot of language and thoughts that I think I was experiencing, but I didn't ever articulate them because, I mean, for example, like, being there
19:43 at my parents' funeral, my friend's funeral, the promises of resurrection of heaven, life after death, all of those, that's what carried me through. Like, in
19:55 those moments, in the grief, those promises were more real than the coffin. And that's kind of what you wrote about is that actually then consciously voluntarily, like,
20:07 remembering death, remembering the reality of this actually is kinda like the doorway to deepening your hope. It, like, makes the promises more real because, I mean, that's what a lot of the promises are about. I
20:19 mean, the promises don't make sense unless it's not just assumes death, it's about death.
20:25 Right.
20:26 Like then Yeah. Think too, like, even the timing of this episode, we're recording the day after Easter. The whole Easter celebration is he he's risen. Yeah. He's conquered death. So it's like that promise,
20:38 I mean, that is like the crux of it all, you know? Yeah. And so I think it articulated something I had experienced number of times with the losses I faced, but it I don't know. It made it more kind
20:50 of explicit, but also another example just like we mentioned Psalm 90, like, teach us to number our days. It's essentially a command of, like, teach us to remember that we're gonna die and that life is
21:02 short and all of these things. But he also brought out a lot of ideas on how remembering death connects with our sense of identity, and I think that sense of futility Mhmm. And how it
21:14 helps us cope with loss as well. And so I wanted to ask you if you could just briefly explain some of those ideas as well from that book before we jump into the Yeah. Next
21:26 1.
21:26 Yeah. Sure. I mean, first of all, I'm so glad it comforted you, brother. I mean, that's a huge encouragement to me to know that it did. I wrote it. The center target person I had in mind
21:38 was younger friends who had not yet experienced a lot of loss, whose futures seemed full of possibility and promise to help them see that it's better to start now accounting
21:50 for what? For the truth of the world, for the grip of death on life, and to not to recognize that tomorrow's not your friend, it's your enemy, unless Jesus is risen from the dead, and he is. So Jesus is your friend.
22:00 Amen.
22:00 And so I I wrote it largely to kind of mess with people who weren't yet bothered by death so they would be. Yeah. Your experience is something that I've heard from other friends too, where because they
22:12 had experienced death, 1 of the challenges for them was living in a death avoiding culture, like, feeling like the only 1. Like, why why am I the only 1 over here feeling this grief and talking about death? We're all
22:24 dying. This is all happening, but I just need to talk about it. And that taboo is so suppressing of that conversation that you feel like you're just a buzz kill if you bring it up. So a book like this 1 is kinda like a
22:35 lid that comes off for someone who's who's been through what you have, and you're just like, yeah, of course. Let's talk. Thank you. I get it.
22:42 Yeah. That's a great way of putting it because I felt comfortable talking about death for a long time. Yeah. And Yeah. It's a weird thing to be comfortable with because oftentimes, everyone else is uncomfortable with
22:54 it. Yeah. But there's a sense of just like, no. Like, this is it's not a morbid thing. It's like, this is our hope. This is where I found, like, the most comfort. And it's like Yeah. It's a weird kinda Yeah.
23:06 Thing to navigate.
23:07 Yeah. So back to your question about the different chapter subjects. So in order to mess with people, 1 of my goals was to show where death shows up, that
23:19 death is way more than just the end of the hearts beating and the lungs breathing. It's not just a bodily material reality. It is a presence in life that
23:31 shows up in a lot of places that many people just haven't seen it before. So I wanted to to, like, slap that label, the death label on struggles that are common to all. Because everywhere you learn to see death, you
23:43 can learn to see Jesus more clearly too. So 1 of them was identity, you mentioned, the struggle to establish yourself, to have an identity that matters, something that lasts. Each of these chapters
23:55 starts with a a problem section and then try to tries to build to a promise section, so helping to show how the promises of Jesus, the very specific promises of the gospel make sense,
24:07 sort of pop out on the page when they're seen in the light or against the darkness, if you will, of the problems they came that they're here to to solve. So the problem of identity is learning to recognize that death
24:18 means none of us matters in the way that we thought we did or wanted to. That 102 hundred years from now, not even our own descendants will remember who we were, much less what we did or what we cared about or
24:30 what we accomplished. Death means you're erased in that sense, in the sense that we tend to not ultimately erased. Right? I'm building to the promise to hope that God God knows us. He our names are
24:42 written on his hands. He purchased his people by name. But I want people to know that's a better thing than some sort of career accomplishment that you're probably stressed out about right now, that I want to see you
24:54 relieve from the stress of making a name for yourself or making a mark, help you to see that just isn't gonna happen. Death is gonna make sure that doesn't happen. You aren't going to be righteous in the way that you're
25:04 hoping for now, and then see that being united to Jesus, the promise that we are adopted into God's family is far more rewarding and far more lasting than any kind of identity we might
25:16 make for ourselves through what we bring to the table. Futility, that was a chapter that's largely about Ecclesiastes, the repeated refrain of all things being vanity or emptiness or
25:28 just striving after wind, and I try to just bring that experience to life. It's such a common experience for all of us to get what we thought we wanted and realize it didn't satisfy us the
25:40 way that we thought it would. The point in that chapter is that, yeah, the reason it doesn't satisfy us the way we thought it would is that we were looking to any number of things for a satisfaction or a joy that
25:49 wouldn't be erased by death, and none of them can carry that weight. They don't have that kind of stability. Death erases all the things that we think give life meaning when we think about them under
26:01 the sun and not in light of God and what he is to us and what he provides. So I think I talked about things like work and pleasure and money. Ecclesiastes' favorite hobby horses, right, and
26:13 help showed what death does to each 1 of those things. And what we're looking for in them is gain. That's the Ecclesiastes' favorite word for it. Gain, something that you can hold onto and keep. We're looking to
26:25 amass, and death just shows no one's doing that. You can't. It's gonna take it away. And then the lost chapter is kinda where I started in this conversation. There's a way to talk about eternal
26:37 life up against the problem of everything here. All the best stuff about life now doesn't last. It's here for a moment and gone. And Jesus came to solve that problem. He came to give us joy that that won't be
26:49 limited like every joy we've ever known here. So that's the flavor of the book. It tries to show you, like, death isn't just the end of your bodily life. It is all over the place. In your experience of life right now, in
27:01 your healthiest, youngest years, you are experiencing the problem of death. And if you can learn to recognize it and meditate on it and not dodge it, then you can learn to see Jesus through it too.
27:11 That's good for it.
27:13 Yeah. And it also helped I think you talked about this too, how it kind of makes every other problem kind of it puts it in its proper place. Yeah. That's kind of 1 of my big takeaways
27:25 from the book was that because, I mean, death being the big problem, having that solved with the resurrection, any of the problems, like you said, with I'm working towards
27:37 this. There's this project I have, and it's stressing me out or I'm, you know, struggle with identity, whatever it is. It kind of just puts those things into a proper perspective. And so I don't For me,
27:49 it's helped me just kind of, like, relax.
27:51 Yeah. Totally. Yeah. So Totally. Yeah. The final chapter just the chapters early in the book are these big, long, thematic chapters, and then the final 1 is sort of a catch all. Let me throw everything else in here that
28:03 I didn't talk about in these earlier chapters. And just to bring to life what you're talking about there. 1 of the problems is that I talk about is envy, just how much envy makes us miserable. And when we experience it
28:14 in life that we see something that somebody else has, and we want it, and it takes away the joy we have and what we do already have. No 1 enjoys envy. So but what can we do about it? Sometimes the promises of the gospel,
28:26 the promise of things like eternal life, resurrected body, and all of that compared to, you know, that specific thing I see that they have that I want can just seem otherworldly and detached. So how can we make it more
28:37 real? How can we we draw on the gospel to fight the problem of envy? Well, what I try to show is what death means for anything that we envy. Like, there's a thought experiment I use in the book. If you knew that let's
28:48 say there's, let's say, there's 2 airplanes making the same journey headed for Europe across the Atlantic. 1 of them is like a military style cargo type plane where you're just strapped into canvas
28:59 and like, a little flip up seat, and that's all you've got for that journey. And the other 1 is, like, first class. You get upgraded. You get the good food. You get the cushy leather seats. You get the extra leg room. If
29:09 you're just looking at those 2 journeys, like, there's all the difference in the world in them, and who wouldn't envy the person who was on in first class if they were stuck on the, you know, military transport. But if
29:19 you thought both of them were gonna end up in the Atlantic Ocean, they were both gonna go down and everybody was gonna be killed. I mean, are you really gonna be envying the first class ticket? Probably not. I mean, it'd
29:30 be nice to be comfortable on the way down, but you're going down. That's the headline. Right. So if you take what you're envying, imagine on 1 of those old timey scales. Right? The thing that you're envying that somebody
29:40 else has, boy, if that's the only thing you see, it weighs a lot, and the scale tips towards that thing that you envy. You throw death on the opposite side of the scale and you're paying attention to it, all of a sudden,
29:50 death is way heavier Mhmm. Than whatever it was you were envying. Alright? And now keep that same scale image. Throw the resurrection of Jesus onto the scale against death, and it's way
30:01 heavier. Now it matters more. It's more substantive, more real and true, more lasting than the problem of death. So if you just throw Jesus up against envy, sometimes it's hard to see that he weighs more than
30:13 that thing that I want that they have. Yeah. Sometimes paying attention to what death means for envy is like a gateway into seeing how relevant Jesus is to it. Does that make sense?
30:23 Mhmm. Mhmm.
30:24 Yeah. Yeah. It really does. I mean, the weight that we put on it also increases or decreases our fear or our comfort. Totally. You know, if we're super afraid of it. So the first time that I was
30:36 really had to address death, for lack of a better way of saying it, my freshman year of college, my grandpa John, I think he was 66. So way too early. I mean, I
30:48 can I'm not even 50 yet, and I was getting ready to say I can see 66 from here. So I really overdo it a little bit, Matt, with rounding up. I'm not gonna round up to 66. But, anyways, he was
31:00 diagnosed with glioblastoma, a brain cancer, and he was gone pretty quickly. So here I am as a freshman. It was the first time and like I said, I grew up in church and had been to a few other funerals
31:12 of, like, great grandparents, but it's the first time that I was like, where is he? He's not here. And so where is he? And it's really kinda the first time that I had to wrap my head
31:24 around a reality of death. And I had been to church camp, and I had dealt with the concepts of heaven and hell and wanting all my friends to get saved and know
31:35 Jesus so they didn't go to hell, but it's that middle piece of death is fixing to happen somewhere and how and when. So with grandpa, we really felt robbed. He was, in our
31:47 opinion, too young and Yeah. You know? So there was 2 things to consider there. 1 would be an understanding of death, removing a bit of the mystery. What does scripture say about it? How do
31:59 I lean into what death means and not be afraid of it so that we don't spend our whole lives trying to avoid it or whatever because we know that it's coming? But then I think with
32:11 paw, it was like the end of life. You know? It was being robbed of his life. I remember 1 of the things that I was thinking is, you know, he wouldn't
32:22 see our grandkids. He wouldn't be a part of that. Like, his presence wouldn't be with us in that. So it was the end of life that really made death seem scarier. So how would you
32:34 say getting acclimated to the concept of death can even help us with those considerations where the pain point isn't the death point, the pain point is the end of
32:46 life?
32:47 Well, I think the end of life is is largely what I mean by the pain point of death. What makes death awful is the fact that it separates us from beautiful, wonderful
32:58 things like this world that God made and especially the people that we love who are who are in this world. I mean, that is the right way to see it and to grieve it. It isn't just like the experience of the dying. I
33:10 don't think often of that at all myself. I'm not I've been prone to being afraid of, like, how is it gonna happen and will it hurt and
33:18 Yeah.
33:18 No. It's the grip of death on life. It's the end of beautiful, wonderful joys and of people who are precious that is appropriately haunting for us if we're thinking about it in the right way, I believe. The whole point
33:29 is not to depress us. It's to show, look. Jesus matters. This is why he came talking about eternal life. This is why he had to be delivered up, then crucified, then rise again on the third day, because this world as itShow more
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