Resurrection Man

I just finished reading The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers (Thomas Mullen, 2010), a 1930s gangster novel with the twist that the lead characters could not die, becoming literally larger than life.

What would it be like to be unable to die? 

Jason and Whit Fireson (the gangsters whom the public colorfully named The Firefly Brothers) went through death several times in gunfights, but within 36 hours, experienced full and complete resurrection. 

What would that be like?

Our tangible experience is that dead things stay dead. Our scripture (e.g., Gal. 6:15 or 2 Cor. 5:17) tells us that there will be something more (the New Creation when all the cosmos and us within it is made fresh and new), but it is so distant as to be irrelevant. 

The Firesons came to realize in very real time that death is meaningless and powerless. However, it made no difference in transforming who and what they were—they remained desperate, angry young men right to the very last page. Their repeated “deaths” were the consequence of their sticking to being desperadoes with tommy guns. 

Would that be the case if real human beings were granted such a gift? Would any of us be able to use such a gift in a transformative way? Would this be a path to peace? Would someone, say, choose to be a fearless martyr in the face of evil, sure they would not be dead forever (or even for a few days), thereby bringing change to the world? Or would it simply render existential emptiness as insurmountable? If death truly became powerless, would its greatest aspiration be only as banal as chuteless skydiving? if one could not die, would there be more or less impetus to live well?

There are no easy answers to these questions.

I think we would all like to answer them in such a way as to exemplify the meaning life holds, but we are so conditioned by our context and culture to focus solely on SELF. Any move toward magnanimity is thwarted before it can start. A perusal of recent self-help guides reveals a new interest in meditation and contemplation under the rubric of “mindfulness,” but if you look closely you will see something other than the Dalai Lama or Pope Francis with their unequivocal call to self-emptying compassion for others through contemplative prayer and meditation. Instead, you will find only excuses for self-centered determination to self-actualize. Self-help recoils from terms like dependence, interconnectedness, interdependence, sacrifice, or repentance. Those all require an emptying of self. Sure, many of these contemporary gurus will “amen” the Dalai Lama or the Pope, especially when true spirituality speaks of finding happiness, hearing only the ideas of quiet reflection or general calls to warm-heartedness, missing how totally faith praxis applies self-sacrifice, self-denial, and selflessness to the realization of real or actual happiness, i.e., joy. For instance, last fall, the Dalai Lama spoke to a gathered audience in Atlanta, interrupting himself when a man entered the arena to declare that his hero had arrived. the man was Irish and his story was astounding. Blinded as a child by a British soldier, the Irishman spent a good bit of his life trying to find the soldier, not for revenge, but to reconcile. To do so—and he did—he had to empty himself of anger, resentment, judgment, and any other assertion of self to be able to meet the soldier as a fellow human being in love, grace, compassion, and mercy. 

If we are to have any hope for such reconciliation and advancement toward peace in, say, Israel; Capitol Hill; Ukraine; or anywhere else self-will leads to inexorable violence, then a similar move must be made. The dynamic has to shift from self-assertion to self-emptying.

For us in a Christian context, that is the absolute core of Christ’s gospel—fulfillment only comes through self-vacating love. When there is no self, there is complete joy. 

Only a person in such a state of being would be ready for a truly deathless existence.

Perhaps we see why God has (so far) only raised one man from death into full resurrection.