Christian Morbidity

This summer I attended a five-day Christian leadership camp for teenagers. The camp was held on a local university's campus, and so the girls were all housed in the same dorm. In order to truly keep us 'unruly' campers under tabs at all times, girls were divided up into groups of 8 to 12, and a staff person was assigned with each group. Supposedly, the groups would do everything together - eating, walking, sitting during lectures, as well as quiet time and something they called 'T-time.' For those in the groups fortunate to have friends attending, the only time we were required to be around the group was one meal a day, and at T-time.

My group was interesting. We had a very sweet girl only a few years older than I as the group leader, and she turned T-time into 'arts-and-crafts' time. Thus it was that the second night, I came out of T-time with a name tag for my door, with the legend "death before dishonor" scrawled on front.  I really don't know why I got such a hard time about it... I even put stylized flowers on it like all the 'normal,' 'perfectly healthy' girls. Well, they were stylized purple roses, but it was a huge concession on my part! As were the bright colors elsewhere on the placard.

At this point, my introduction has only something slightly to do with the title of the post, so I'll wrap up. The group leader and the other girls saw my name tag, and rather than seeing the phrase "death before dishonor," they could not get past the "death" part. So I was roundly ragged on for being 'morbid.' In fact, I was in informed that Christians should not be morbid, and that it is not pleasing to God.  Oh, and that by using that phrase, I was most likely depressed.

...Wait a second. Rewind there. What is this, saying that Christians should not be morbid? Christians believe that this world is just the temporary precursor to the afterlife. Last I checked, the only way to get there was to die.  Christians should be the most 'morbid' people in the world. We realize that the mortality rate is 100%, and that everyone is going somewhere when they die. Which means that Christians should be spreading the news of "we're all going to die, but guess what?! We've got a solution! His name is Jesus!", not avoiding the issue like the plague.

By treating death as 'taboo,' Christians adopt the same fear of death as the rest of the world, in direct violation of the phrase 'in the world, but not of it.' What is so scary about death when we've got our Lord and Savior waiting for us on the other side?

B

Edit: I didn't realize that my morbid post would be published on All Hallow's Eve... What an interesting coincidence.