Culture of Death

The term, "culture of death," refers to a civilization that endorses killing, a culture that embraces death as a good thing. We who love human life often decry our current pro-death culture. It shows in the gun problem. Guns are not the problem; they're the tool. It's the people so willing to kill that is the problem. It shows in the entertainment world with our thirst for violent "entertainment" that seems to numb us to actual killing. It shows in our absolute demand that women be allowed to murder babies in the womb if they want, a demand that cost over 65 million lives since 1973. It shows in the new laws being passed that allow doctors to kill patients if the patients want to die. We say we want to live, but in many ways ours is becoming more and more a pro-death society.

It is, then, an interesting twist that Christianity is, at the outset, a death culture. "What??!" many will ask. It's true. Jesus said, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it" (Luke 9:23-24). Paul wrote, "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life" (Rom 6:3-4). Paul happily declared, "I have been crucified with Christ" (Gal 2:20). The Christian life consciously begins with death ... to self. We are told to lay aside the old self (Eph 4:22; Col 3:9). We are told to identify ourselves with Christ's death.

The difference, however, between our culture of death and our faith that begins with death to self is that the very next step for the believer is new life. We are baptized into Christ's death and now "walk in newness of life, a resurrected life (Rom 6:4-6). We put aside the old self and put on the new self (Eph 4:24; Col 3:10). We are crucified with Christ, but we live ... in a better way. "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me" (Gal 2:20). So while our walk with Christ starts out in death to self and retains death to self, the new life we receive far exceeds the old we surrendered ... unlike our modern culture of death.