Many of our friends and family—and us, I suspect—don’t think about death a whole lot. So when someone close gets cancer, or a friend has a miscarriage, we’re caught off-guard.
Nathan W. Bingham reflected on this recently:
There are many reasons why ignoring grief and the pain of life is bad. Not the least of which is that we’d be faking it. And faking it is antithetical to Christianity. Christianity is all about getting real with God. Real about who you are and your sin. Real about who He is and His holiness. Real about the only way to reconcile the two: through Jesus Christ. Too many Christians are being crushed as church has become a show room for success stories instead of a hospital for the hopelessly helpless.
However, today I want to consider another reason ignoring grief is a bad idea: pain and grief is an apologetic for the faith. Not apologetic in a literal sense of being a defense of the faith, but:
- a tool to confirm the truthfulness of Christianity,
- a reality best explained by Christianity,
- and a bridge to give us an ear for sharing Christianity.
