Where are the dead now?
The nights are drawing in, the clocks are about to go back and we’re fast approaching the church season of All Saints. Strictly speaking this happens over two days: All Saints Day on 1 November and All Souls’ Day on 2 November, but all the world cares about is All Hallow’s Eve, alias Halloween, on 31 October. It’s the time when Christians remember those who have gone before us in faith, whether this is our particular heroes of the faith or just the ordinary people who inspired us. Many churches hold a memorial service at this time of year; at St Mary of Bethany we will have ours on Advent Sunday 1 December.
One question I hear a lot is, ‘Where are the dead now?’ Christians are confident of their eternal destiny, by and large: to live face-to-face with God in a new creation (although a lot of people would brand that ‘heaven’). They are less sure of what happens to dead people in the meantime. People have a number of suggestions. The most popular idea for non-Christians is that the dead are somewhere else, ‘looking down on us’. Another thought is that they are sleeping, ready to wake up on judgement day. A final alternative is that they are with God in heaven, but without a relationship with our realm.
We can think about these in turn. The idea that a loved one is elsewhere but somehow still with you has a sentimental appeal. It might help to comfort those who are struggling with grief. There are two problems with the idea: one logical and the other scriptural. Logically the idea that a dead person can always be with you is problematic. You might like the idea that they see big moments in your life, a wedding day or the birth of a child; it might be less appealing if they can see all your private business. If they do not see everything, who chooses what they see? If you think of heaven as a place of bliss where someone is with God, you might think they would have better things to do than constantly looking in on their surviving loved ones.
The scriptural problem is that this idea is not supported by the Bible. There is no evidence that the dead are present in the lives of the living, or conscious of them; in particular you might expect Paul’s letters to hold out a thought this comforting. There are very limited windows into the world of the dead. The dead prophet Samuel is summoned up by the witch at Endor in 1 Samuel 28; he does not appear to be keeping an eye on things in the land of the living. In Revelation 6 we are shown the martyrs under the altar in heaven. They call out to God for justice, but there is no suggestion they are watching those left behind. The one place we see this idea is in Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. Here, the unnamed dead man is in hell and longs to send the former beggar Lazarus to warn his family of their coming doom. However, there is no evidence that Jesus is seeking to make a metaphysical point in the parable, or to say that this is what the afterlife is like; he is simply saying that people who reject him in life will be rejected in death, and that even someone rising from the dead (ultimately Jesus) will not convince them. On both biblical and logical grounds, then, the idea that the dead are watching over us is unreliable.
The idea that the dead are asleep, awaiting a final judgement, has more potential. Paul uses the word ‘asleep’ for the dead in both 1 Corinthians and 1 Thessalonians. There is a logical sense to the idea: as with our usual sleep, the dead will wake up unaware of the time that has passed, and at that point everyone will face judgement together. In spite of this use of language, though, the Bible does not wholeheartedly support this idea. It is easy to see how this could simply be a figure of speech: ‘falling asleep’ for death. It is certainly not safe to hang a bigger theological point on it. Certainly the Roman Catholic idea of purgatory, a place where the dead can find their way either to heaven or hell, does not find support in scripture either. In fact this idea places power into the hands of the Church, which is then open to abuse. If a priest can pardon the soul of a dead person, sending them from purgatory to heaven, this places huge power in his hands. The Bible contradicts this idea directly: ‘Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgement.’ Hebrews 9:27.
Our final idea, then, is that the dead are with God. This has more support in scripture than the other ideas: in Luke 23:43 Jesus tells the thief on the cross, ‘Today you will be with me in paradise.’ It makes sense that people are in God’s hands at the point of death and will begin their eternal future either with him or without him. The Church of England’s funeral liturgy is careful not to put a window into people’s souls, so it does not presume to know whether a dead person is right with God or not. Of course, we can make an educated guess, based on what they said and how they were in life. The thing we can certainly say of anyone who has died is that their journey is over and they have their reward. We trust in a God who can do amazing things at the point of death, who reveals himself to people in dreams and visions.
A colleague of mine tells the story of a funeral he took for a three-year-old boy, whose family had no contact with the church and no discernible faith. As the child lay in bed at the point of death, he looked up into the corner of his room, held out his arms and said, ‘Jesus, I’m ready for you now’, and with that, he died. There was no way to explain what had happened. No one in the family had ever used the word Jesus at home, other than as a swear word. The family made contact with their local church to organise the child’s funeral, and in the process they all came to faith.
Where, then, are the dead now? It is probably better not to give an answer with too much confidence. They are in God’s hands until Jesus returns and brings history to a close. I prefer to think of them as awake, aware, perhaps reunited with loved ones – that’s certainly what I am looking forward to; but I cannot give you chapter and verse to back this up theologically.