Remember Death: The Surprising Path to Living Hope
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Life-expectancy worldwide is twice what it was a hundred years ago. And because of modern medicine, many of us don’t often see death up close. That makes it easy to live as if death is someone else’s problem. It isn’t..
Ignoring the certainty of death doesn’t protect us from feeling its effects throughout the lives we’re living now. But this avoidance can hold us back from experiencing the powerful, everyday relevance of Jesus’s promises to us. So long as death remains remote and unreal, Jesus’s promises will too..
But honesty about death brings hope to life. That’s the ironic claim at the heart of this book. Cultivating “death-awareness” helps us bring the promises of Jesus from the hazy clouds of some other world into the everyday problems of our world—where they belong.
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- Explores that many of us don’t often see death up close.
- Tells avoidance can hold us back from experiencing the powerful, everyday relevance of Jesus’s promises
- Cultivates “death-awareness” helps us bring the promises of Jesus.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Where Is Thy Sting?
Chapter 2: The Problem of Identity and the Promise of Union with Christ
Chapter 3: The Problem of Futility and the Promise of Purpose
Chapter 4: The Problem of Loss and the Promise of Eternal Life
Chapter 5: The Problems of Life and the Promise of Glory
Chapter 6: Grieve in Hope
General Index
Scripture Index
“Through the lens of Scripture, McCullough looks death squarely in the eye and reminds us that it is nothing to be afraid of. For the Christian, it has truly lost its sting. Remember Death is a welcome conversation in a culture that doesn’t know how to think about mortality.”
—Andrew Peterson, singer-songwriter; author, The Wingfeather Saga series; Founder, The Rabbit Room
“This is a profoundly helpful book. With a preacher’s turn of phrase and illustrative eye, with a pastor’s care for precious people and their greatest fears, and with a theologian’s grasp of the Bible’s big picture and the heart of the gospel, Matthew McCullough writes to overcome our detachment from death and deepen our attachment to the Lord Jesus Christ. These pages will repay careful thought and meditative reflection on their surprising riches.”
—David Gibson,Minister, Trinity Church, Aberdeen; author, The Lord of Psalm 23: Jesus Our Shepherd, Companion, and Host
“I pray that you come away from a book on mortality with a sense of clarity about what really matters—about who really matters. I pray that this book, as it leads you to reflect on your own coming demise, gives you a sense of joy, of gratitude, of longing to be part of that great cloud of witnesses in heaven. Your life is worth living precisely because it is not your life at all. Your life is hidden with Christ. That gives you the freedom to lose your life in sacrifice to others, in obedience to God, in order to save it.”
—Russell Moore,Editor in Chief, Christianity Today; author, Losing Our Religion
“Matt McCullough’s meditation on death is haunting, profound, and stirring, reminding us of our identity and our destiny apart from Jesus Christ. Death casts a shadow over our lives, showing us, as McCullough points out, that we aren’t the center of the universe. Those who live rightly and those who live forever often think of death, but at the same time they live with hope since Jesus is the resurrection and the life. This book reminds us why we die and teaches us how to live.”
—Thomas R. Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
“Can we face death and find hope? According to Matt McCullough, yes. Remember Death rightly reorients us to the impermanence of this world and the brevity of our lives, witnessing to the paradox that grief is necessary for faith. Richly informed by Scripture and a feast of other sources, this book vitally forms our longings for the world to come. I can’t wait to recommend it.”
—Jen Pollock Michel,author, Surprised by Paradox and Teach Us to Want
“This is a brilliant book. Rightly advocating ‘death awareness’ but not ‘death acceptance,’ McCullough powerfully demonstrates that in order to remember Christ well, we need to learn to remember death well. This book shines with scriptural truth, pouring forth the light of Christ upon our fleeting, fear-filled lives.”
—Matthew Levering,James N. and Mary D. Perry Jr. Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary; author, Dying and the Virtues