Val Kilmer, Top Gun and Batman actor, dies at 65

Val Kilmer, the award-winning actor who played roles as diverse as Batman and Jim Morrison, died Tuesday in Los Angeles at the age of sixty-five. The cause was pneumonia, according to his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer. Mr. Kilmer had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, but later recovered, she said.

His career was remarkably varied. He made his feature debut in a slapstick Cold War spy-movie spoof, Top Secret! Kilmer went on to portray Jim Morrison, Batman, the artist Willem de Kooning, and the father of Alexander the Great. My favorites of his roles were his appearances in Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick and his portrayal of Doc Holliday in Tombstone.

“Hastening the coming of the day of God”

When I saw the news of his passing, my first thought was that while Mr. Kilmer is no longer with us, he will live on in film. We can see him as though he were alive any time we watch one of his movies.

There is something in us that yearns to do the same, to “plant trees we’ll never sit under.” Actors do this through television and film; musicians do it by recording their work for others to hear; writers do it by publishing their words. Some do so by donations that emblazon their names on buildings. Nearly everyone is memorialized at least by their name carved on their tombstone.

But this thought was followed immediately by a second: The day will come when everything humans do to outlive themselves on this planet will be gone. Peter assured us: “The day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (2 Peter 3:10).

How should we respond to this certainty?

Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! (vv. 11–12).

Here’s the phrase that struck me: “hastening the coming of the day of God.”

How many of us want that day to come?

“The world is too much with us”

If you somehow knew that Jesus would return tomorrow, what emotions would such knowledge evoke for you?

I would like to tell you that I would greet such news with unalloyed delight, that I am living so fully for eternity that I see this temporal world as only a means to that end. But it’s not true. Nor, I would imagine, is this completely true for you.

Willliam Wordsworth spoke for most of us:

Many of us live in a day of prosperity that would have been unimaginable to previous generations. Our ancestors had to grow the vegetables and butcher the meat we buy at the grocery store. Our homes are more technologically equipped and comfortable than any generation before us. Our cars are more numerous and sophisticated; our medical care is more advanced and accessible; our media is more available and distracting than ever.

A wealthy man built a new mansion for himself and then asked his pastor to visit. As they toured its many rooms and extravagant furnishings, the minister remarked, “These are the things that make it difficult to die.”

“The safest road to Hell”

One way God redeems the sudden deaths and tragedies of our world is by using them to remind us that, despite our attachments to this temporal world, it is indeed temporal. We are all “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). Tomorrow is promised to none of us. We should all say daily to God, “My times are in your hands” (Psalm 31:15).

However, our enemy wants us to believe the opposite. He wants us to think that we are all movie stars whose lives in this world go on. He tempts us to put off thoughts of mortality until it is too late.

This is obviously true for lost people, each of whom is in desperate need of salvation (John 3:18). In The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis imagines one tempter advising another: “The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” Satan seeks to convince those who have not trusted in Christ that such trust is unnecessary, that there is no hell, or, if there is, “good people” like themselves are in no danger of going there.

However, Christians are not exempt from the same strategy.

“Come, Lord Jesus!”

Satan cannot win our souls, but he can steal our abundant life in Christ and corrupt our witness. If he can convince us to live for this world while ignoring the next, he does both. We then seek transcendent joy from a realm that can offer only temporal happiness. We compromise our character and dilute our witness in a quest for popularity and possessions.

By contrast, if we use every day to prepare for “the day of the Lord,” what happens?

• We refuse the temptations of temporality for the purity of purpose and thus experience God’s perfect will and abundant joy (Romans 12:1–2; John 10:10).
• We risk the temporary rejection of our broken culture to serve Jesus with our words and actions and thus encourage others to “see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).
• We use God’s blessings in this life to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:39) and thus serve Jesus by serving those he loves (Matthew 25:40).

And we can pray with John from the Patmos of our fallen world, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20).

We are all one day closer to that day than ever before in human history.

Is this fact good news for you today?

If not, why not?