The Slavery of Death: Part 13, The Children of God and the Children of the Devil

To recap, in this series we are wrestling with the following text:

Hebrews 2.14-15
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

More specifically, we are trying to understand what it might mean that the devil holds humanity captive through the fear of death. And, given that slavery to the fear of death, what it might mean for Christ to save or liberate us from that fear.

Across the last two posts--The Pornography of Death and The American Culture of Death Avoidance--I've argued that our fear of death is largely unconscious and neurotic in nature, characterized by what Ernest Becker calls "the denial of death." In the last post I reviewed the analysis of Arthur McGill from his book Death and Life: An American Theology which suggested that the American success ethos is, at root, a neurotic defense mechanism involved in repressing death anxiety. The American culture is, thus, largely delusional and fictional, characterized by a fundamental dishonesty about our mortal condition. Americans pretend that they are immortal and have "all the time in the world." Consequently, anything that punctures this illusion--disease, decay, debility or death--is pushed aside and avoided as unseemly and illicit. Hence the label "the pornography of death."

In this post I'd like to continue our survey of McGill's analysis in Death and Life by asking a simple question:

So what?

So what if American culture is characterized by death avoidance? Why is that problematic? And why should we characterize this "denial of death" as a form of slavery? More, why might this death avoidance be characterized as the devil's work? And finally, why might facing up to this death avoidance be considered an act of salvation and liberation?

Let's start by noting some of the biblical material regarding the relationship between death, fear and love. 1 John will be an important text for us. To start, and echoing the Christus Victor themes from the early posts in this series, we note the purpose of the Incarnation:

1 John 3.8b
The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.

Here we find, in a clear parallel to Hebrews 2.14-15, the notion that Christ came to earth to liberate humanity from its captivity to the devil. In light of that, what are the marks of that slavery? And the marks of our subsequent liberation? 1 John continues:

1 John 3.10
This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

Love is the sign of our liberation and salvation. Those who do not love are the devil's children. Those who love are God's children. This connection is reiterated a few verses later:

1 John 3.14
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death.

Note that a subtle conflation has occurred. The language of "children of the devil" and "children of God" is replaced with the language of life and death. And love is again observed to mark the transition. Those who do not love remain in death. Those who love have passed from death to life.

We see in all this a tight correlation between death, the devil, and love:

Children of the Devil : Hate : Remaining in Death

Children of God : Love : Passed from Death to Life

So where does fear enter the picture, the fear mentioned in Hebrews 2.14-15? Later, in 1 John 4 the relationship between fear and love is noted:

1 John 4.18
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. This completes a network of associations between the devil, death, fear, and love. Children of God have been set free from their fear of death and, thus, are able to love. Children of the devil remain in slavery to their fear of death and, thus, are unable to love. Filling it all out:

Children of the Devil : Hate : Remaining in Death : Fear

Children of God : Love : Passed from Death to Life : No Fear

What we see in all this is how, in the biblical imagination, there is a tight correlation, even a conflation, between these concepts. The devil, slavery, death, fear and hate are all tightly associated. By contrast, God, salvation, life, the absence of fear, and love are all closely linked. Thus, when Christ "appeared to destroy the devil's work" it involved "freeing those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." With this fear "cast out" by love and for love the Children of God are revealed as those who have "passed from death to life" in the demonstration of their "love for others." Because "God is love."

By contrast, there are those still under the devil's power, those still held in slavery by fear. This fear of death impairs the ability to love marking these persons as Children of the Devil.

These are the biblical connections between fear, death, love, slavery and the devil. But how do these ideas map onto the modern culture of death avoidance and denial? Theology aside, how is all this playing out, if at all, in the hearts and minds of real men and women?

In short, how does a denial of death affect our ability to love?

According to McGill love is undermined when our fear of death causes us to form our identity around the notion of possession. On this blog I've called this a Malthusian identity, named after Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) the English clergyman who wrote one of the fundamental essays of economics An Essay on the Principle of Population. In the Essay Malthus made the observation that reproduction tends to outstrip (or will eventually outstrip) resources. This leads to population crashes driven by famine, disease, or war over scarce resources. A Malthusian identity is an identity formed to solve the challenge of being a biodegradable creature in a world of scarcity. The fundamental ethic of a Malthusian identity is the Darwinian instinct which, obviously, is driven by death/survival fears.

According to McGill, one way we survive in this Malthusian world is to possess, dominate, or own a bit of the world. This creates what McGill calls an identity of possession where it "is good for me to secure reality into my control and possession, the the more reality the better." How is this done? McGill continues: "I can do this securing in two possible ways. First, I may try to seize bits of the world for myself. Second, I may act in such a way that I will be approved by other persons or forces so that, in reward for something I have done or because they expect themselves to benefit from me, they will deliver some bit of reality over into my control." Basically, we take take stuff for ourselves or serve powerful others in the hope of winning favor or getting access to the crumbs falling off the table. McGill goes on to describe these two paths to possession in greater detail:

The first way is the way of aggression; the second is the way of appeasement. These two strategies belong necessarily to the life of sin. Since my actuality depends upon my having something with my name on it, something in my possession and control to give me an identity, I must constantly work to get something in my control, something in my domination. Sometimes, therefore, I must live by aggression and seize what I need for my identity from others. At other times I must live by appeasement and either earn or wheedle from others what I must possess.

Finally, there is a last law. I must defend what I possess, what I hold as my identity, against the encroachment of others. I project onto them the same kind of identity by which I live, and I know very well what they are struggling to possess. I must work very carefully with them so that our mutual striving to possess does not destroy us all. Consequently, I must work for some compromise where all of us have as many possessions as possible (provided there are not too many shortages). I have a boundary which marks the domain of my reality. I must work constantly to keep others from breaking across my boundary and dispossessing me.

Okay, but how does a neurotic and largely unconscious denial of death fit in? Yes, in an acute survival situation, in a Malthusian pinch, we can see how the fear of being dispossessed comes to dominate our behavior. But does such fear characterize our workaday lives? McGill continues:

So far as we reject living as a needy and hungry creature who is constantly given being by God, so far as we see our identity as wholly in terms of a reality which we can have and which we can securely label with our own name, we live under the dominion of death; we live under the dominion of dispossession. We live in terror of death, of having this bit of reality which we call ourselves, taken from us. Our whole existence is controlled by that terror.

What we see in this analysis is how our, largely unconscious, fear of death is driving us toward an identity built around possession, boundary-monitoring, and aggression. I carve out a bit of the world as "mine"--my house, my yard, my career, my family, my church, my nation, my political party, my faith--and with these things as "possessions" I live life protecting these things, fearing their loss. Consequently, I can find my whole life, as described in Hebrews 2, as being enslaved to the fear of death, best observed in my fears of loss, lack, and dispossession. In this my identity is found to be knit together by a fabric of fear. McGill brings us full circle:

What propels people to possess? Their fear of death, their fear that their identity will be taken from them.

All this is wonderfully insightful. But McGill goes even further in Death and Life to offer a close analysis as to why the fear of death undermines our ability to love others.

To start, McGill makes an obvious point. If fear undermines love then love must be an act of courage. But what sort of courage? Can we specify the courage required by love?

Well, given everything we've been discussing it seems clear that love requires a courage in the face of death. If so, what might that look like?

According to McGill the courage involved in love is manifested in how we approach our own neediness. More, the courage of love involves us moving into a state of neediness. We will be unable to move into the situation of neediness if we are terrified of death. And this failure to embrace our need, a failure driven by fear, compromises our ability to meet others with empathy and compassion in the midst of their own need. McGill on this point:

[The love which is proclaimed in many churches] carefully disregards the outcome of love. These churches speak of love as helping others, but they ignore what helping others does to the person who loves. They ignore the fact that love is self-expenditure, a real expending, a real losing, a real deterioration of the self. They speak of love as if the person who is loving had no problems, no needs...[The] proclaimation is heard everywhere today. They say to people: "Since you have no unanswered needs, why don't you go out and help the other people who are in need?" But they never go on to add "If you do this, you too will be driven into need." By not stating the outcome of love they give the childish impression that Christian love is some kind of cornucopia where we can meet everybody's needs and problems and still have everything we need for ourselves! And beleive me, there are grown-up people who speak this kind of nonsense.

...Too often in our churches we hear the gospel of love without the gospel of need. Too often we hear the lie that to love is to help others without this help having any effect upon ourselves.

...The only love that has anything to do with Jesus Christ is a love that has no fear of need, of neediness, of poverty.

We are starting here to come full circle, starting to see how the fear of death, manifested in an identity of possession or an avoidance of need, impairs our ability to love, marking us as "children of the devil."

By contrast, love casts out the fear of death--our fear of neediness, our fear of dispossession. Free of fear we can embrace what McGill calls "the fellowship of neediness," where "Jesus brings people to a condition where they need one another, where they call for help from one another and where they rely on one another...[for] Love can thrive only within need..."

But we can't get to this point if we remain in the grip of death denial, where our fear keeps us enslaved to the devil. Love is undermined here because our fears drive us to possess and blind us to need (in ourselves and others). Our hearts grow cold and our actions become aggressive. This is the dynamic Paul called "the law of sin and death." The loveless, fear-filled, violent, and selfish path walked by the Children of the Devil.

And in all this we find a remarkable convergence upon the biblical worldview. We are beginning to see how love is undermined by the fear of death. About why there is no fear in love. About how Jesus, in setting us free from the fear of death, is destroying the works of the devil. Moving us from death to life and setting our hearts free to love.