As I write this article, a major winter storm is hitting the mid-Atlantic, canceling more than 1,900 flights across the US. Schools are closed across the region. Snow plows cleared the plaza at the US Capitol as lawmakers met to certify the votes from the Electoral College in the 2024 presidential election.
For as long as I live, the first winter storm each year will bring back terrible memories for me of “Icemageddon,” the storm in 2021 that caused Texas’ power grid to fail, leaving millions of us without access to electricity, some for many days. Hundreds of people died, most of them from hypothermia, though some died from motor vehicle accidents, carbon monoxide poisoning, fires, and falls as well.
My wife and I spent several days huddled in front of our gas fireplace. Its heat was the only warmth in the house. I circled through the house every hour to make sure dripping faucets were still dripping. The power would come on for a few minutes every few hours, allowing us to cook food and turn on the television to see what was happening in the outer world.
This was the only time in my lifetime (so far) when the power of nature threatened me so directly and made my mortality so undeniable.
And therein lies my point.
Amputation saws on display
There was a day when humans regularly faced the threat of death in the natural world. We were nowhere near the top of the food chain and lived in peril from predators, snakes, insects, and other natural enemies. We could not forecast tornadoes, hurricanes, and severe storms so as to preemptively protect ourselves from their fury. A broken bone could prove fatal, as could many diseases that modern medicine has conquered.
I remember visiting the Civil War Museum in Atlanta and seeing its display of medical equipment from the war. There were amputation saws in abundance. One display reported that far more soldiers died of infections and diseases than from battle wounds.
Is it any wonder that society tended to be more religiously committed in those days?
Most who explain the rise of secularism in recent generations point to Darwin’s evolutionary explanations for creation and life, the rise of scientific anti-supernaturalism, and the advent of postmodern relativism along with the so-called sexual revolution. These are all factors, to be sure.
But I think an even more fundamental contributor is our growing insulation from nature and natural death.
Have you ever actually seen a person die? I have, but only because I am a pastor and am sometimes asked to be with families at such times. For the most part, even our loved ones die in hospital wards isolated from the rest of us. Few die at home. And unless we have served on a battlefield, we have not seen personally the horrors of mortality from such trauma.
It’s easier than ever to dismiss from our minds the reality of mortality. Part of us knows that none of us lives forever. But very little in our sensory experience or daily lives makes this unwanted knowledge a personal reality with which we must cope.
And this is just what our enemy wants.
“The safest road to hell”
In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis expresses the devil’s viewpoint: “The safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” Satan wants our current safety and softness of life to anesthetize us to the reality of death, for at least two reasons.
One: He obviously wants lost people to remain lost until they are lost forever.
If unsaved people are confronted with the reality of their death and their eternal destiny in hell, they are far more likely to seek the salvation of their souls. The longer they put off such considerations, the less likely they will consider them until it is too late.
Two: He wants Christians to live for this world so we are unprepared for the next and ineffective in drawing others to Christ.
Satan cannot attack our Father, so he attacks his children. He cannot steal our souls, so he seeks to steal our joy and inhibit our witness. The more we are secularized, the less we experience the abundant life of Christ in this world (John 10:10) and reward in the next (1 Corinthians 3:10–15). And the less we are willing to pay a significant price to share our faith with those who are in eternal peril of their souls.
Four transforming resolutions
What, short of another Icemageddon, can we do about this?
I was recently reading again the “Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards,” a set of personal commitments made by the greatest theologian America has ever produced. Edwards was a philosopher, university president, pastor, and the great preacher (along with George Whitefield) of the First Great Awakening. His influence continues to shape our nation and our spiritual lives even today.
His personal resolutions help explain how he became a person of such eternal significance. Consider four in light of our conversation today:
- Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.
- Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.
- Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.
- Resolved, that I will live so as I shall wish I had done when I come to die.
Will you make these resolutions yours today?
One day you will be forever grateful that you did.
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