LOSS AND GRIEF: IN CHRIST

I have been thinking about the loss and grief one experiences over a loved one.  I do not claim that the following thoughts are explicit teaching in Scripture, but I think they cohere with it.

In regard to Adam and Eve, Genesis 2:24 states, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and unites with his wife, and they become a new family [literally “one flesh”] (NET).  This translation has captured the sense of “one flesh” that is often misunderstood on a popular level.  It is not about sexual union.  It is about the beginning of a new kinship unit (“one flesh”).

I think there is a psychological truth about this relationship and its loss.  There are many examples in our natural world of discrete elements uniting to form a system in which new properties emerge.  The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.*  I suggest that in personal relationships something new emerges in the nature of our existence.  When I married, I did not merely have an identity label change to “husband.”  In a real sense, in my relationship with my wife, a new aspect of my existence emerged that would not be there were we apart.  Our relationship has formed part of who I am.  Therefore, when someone in a close relationship dies, we experience not just a loss of their presence, but also a loss to an aspect of our existence, to who we were.  The loss and grief are deep.

A theological truth about Christ helps with this sense of loss.  Faith in God creates a participatory relationship.  One entrusts one’s life in God.  The Greek NT expression of faith in Christ, pisteo eis. means “entrusting into” Christ.  It creates a new emergent reality.  Paul, particularly in Colossians and Romans 8, addresses believers’ struggles by teaching them about the significance of being a new creation “in Christ.”  Moreover, we are “in Christ” in community jointly with others.  What struck me recently was the thought that for those “in Christ,” when a loved one dies, our relationship with that loved one has not really come to an end.  Being jointly together in Christ means that relationship still exists.  Even though we miss that person’s presence, who we were in that relationship is still there within the being of God.  I find that thought comforting.

Father, bless those who are grieving over loss of loved ones.  Comfort them with your Presence.  Comfort them not just with the thought that they will once again meet those loved ones, but with the awareness that those relationships still exist in Christ.  Amen.
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*Probably the most universally known example of emergent properties is how the elements of hydrogen and oxygen (gasses at normal temperatures) come together to form water molecules with properties completely unlike the individual elements.