The End of the Christian Life: How Embracing Our Mortality Frees Us to Truly Live

Author: Todd Billings
Publisher: Brazos Press
Publication Date: 2020

There is an ancient Christian tradition known as memento mori, “remember your death,” which means we live our lives with our death in front of us. It is a way to refocus our energy on living a full life while we have it. It predates but connects with ars moriendi, the “art of dying” which begins with 15th-century texts that examine Christian death and the afterlife in an effort to allow us to “die well.”

Todd Billings most recent book, The End of the Christian Life: How Embracing our Mortality Frees Us to Truly Live, builds on this tradition in a work that will appeal to the layperson as well as the theologian. For Billings, dying well is not an abstract exercise. He is dying from multiple myeloma, an incurable cancer. Diagnosed at the age of 39, Billings lives with the knowledge that he is unlikely to see his two children graduate from high school. The constant pain of his cancer reminds him of his mortality even as he continues to be a father, husband, neighbor, church member, and friend.

A highly regarded theologian, Billings first wrote movingly about his diagnosis and life with cancer in Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling With Incurable Cancer And Life In Christ in 2015. Now we see a person who has lived with this diagnosis for five years and “In my own journey of treatment and getting to know others in the cancer community, I’ve realized that the process of embracing my mortality is a God-given means for discipleship and witness in the world. As strange as it seems, coming to terms with our limits as dying creatures is a life-giving path” (p. 4).

Billings takes us through the different ways Christians either struggle or embrace the concept of death. He examines the afterlife, how medicine impacts our view of death, how we avoid the concept of death, and an especially intriguing chapter on how “prosperity gospel” theology impacts our view of evil our ideas about death. It is our views on death that Billings focuses on since death is a fact; how we come to grips with our death is another story.

Todd Billings

As a solid Protestant theologian, Billings’ thinking is always grounded in scripture. He does not shy away from the fact that the Judeo-Christian view of death and the afterlife have evolved and changed over the centuries. His exploration of “Sheol” in the Old Testament challenges the popular understanding of it as a shadowy afterlife. In Psalm 107 he shows us that “then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,/and he saved them from their distress;/he sent out his word and healed them,/and delivered them from destruction [Sheol].” Billings cites several examples that show Sheol is for the living and the dead. It is for those who are cut off from God and they cry out to be rescued.

In doing so, Billings shows that scripture does not separate biological life and death as much being in God’s presence or absent from God’s presence. Sheol becomes a fluid “place” where those who suffer, in life or death, find God absent from their lives. Billings acknowledges that his more privileged background has allowed him to escape much of this suffering. Still, “Each person’s suffering has its own character…and a brush with death can transport any of us to Sheol in short order” (p.18). We have been preceded in this suffering by Christ, who calls out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” Christ felt this abandonment, but then “The life-giving presence of God descended to the deep pit of Sheol” (p. 19). God reaches across the chasm to those who feel lost and abandoned.

Billings also examines how our society handles death. Funerals, like weddings, have become separated from worship services and turned into personalized events. “The older pattern was to bring the coffin, and thus the body of the deceased, to a congregational worship service centered on the death and resurrection” (p. 82) Now, many people have “celebrations of life” with no body present, lest it dampens people’s spirits. “Stated differently, all too often the church swaps a Christ-centered funeral liturgy for a sugarcoated ‘personal memorial service’ to accommodate a death-denying culture” (p. 82). Billings sees this as dangerous for Christians as it allows us to avoid our need of God for deliverance.

You are mortal. You are not indispensable to the world. Your life will come to an end.

Todd Billings

Billings is willing to challenge us and our culture in how we approach death. He refuses to slip into false platitudes and points out that the “heavenly family reunion” we often talk about when someone dies has no biblical basis. We simply don’t know what life after death is going to be like (and he has great review of near-death experience literature in here), but what we do know does not imply that our departed loved ones are waiting for us the moment we die. Billings is not trying to be unsympathetic, but as a theologian, he recognizes the limits of our human understanding.

What Billings provides us with in this book is a call for Christians to rethink how they approach their death. The first part of that is stop denying death and then to consider how we live our lives with the acknowledgment of our death. Any of us may die today without expecting it. Billings could as well, but unlike many of us he knows his death will come sooner than he desires. We can be thankful that he has the faith and the courage to share with us how that knowledge of death can shape our lives.

Disclaimer: This is from an advance review copy so the page numbers may change. In addition, I know Todd Billings and in the book, he refers to my youngest son, Oliver, who died from cancer. Nevertheless, this is an honest review of another great book by Billings. If I didn’t like it, I just wouldn’t say anything!

Accordion Revolution

Author: Bruce Triggs
Publisher: Demian and Sons
Publication Date: 2019

“I’m an accordion fan.” It sounds like the first step in a 12-step program, but I’m not only an accordion fan, I’m quite happy with the claim. In my “real” life some of my work includes presenting artists in a cultural arts series, and thanks to a few groups that snuck in with accordions, I became a fan. Perhaps I was tainted by watching the Lawrence Welk show too often when my grandmother was babysitting me, so for years I had a limited version of what the accordion can do. In the years since, I’ve heard Russian, French, Canadian, Eastern European, U.S., and Irish accordion players live and my world has opened to the range of ways the accordion can add to the musical landscape.

I’ve also discovered and enjoyed Rowan Lipkovits and Bruce Triggs’ Accordion Noir radioshow to keep expanding my knowledge. It is no surprise that Triggs’ Accordion Revolution: A People’s History of the Accordion From the Industrial Revolution to Rock and Roll is packed full of history, stories, and enough accordion information to keep you returning to the book over and over. While it is a history, it will also serve as a great encyclopedia of the instrument that will be a valuable source for music historians and accordion fans.

Personally, I land firmly in the “fan” area as I do not even own an accordion nor do I know how to play one. I mean, I would like to get one and learn, but in the meantime, I’m the non-musician following one of his favorite instruments. Triggs writes in a way that is easy for the non-musician to follow, but those who want to get into details of the instruments or some subtleties of the music that only musicians can appreciate, will not be disappointed. He even gets into the areas of how different genres are defined, what instruments are truly traditional, and how racism and nationalism have played a part in keeping some traditions out of the mainstream.

As a blues fan, his explanation of why the accordion has had a hard time breaking into the genre since it cannot bend notes or play a blues scale was helpful. Meanwhile, the accordion’s historical counterpart, the harmonica, has flourished in the blues. Folk fans will find an extended section and one that is insightful and at times harsh on how accordion players were treated or ignored. As he hits the rock era we find little for Triggs’ to talk about as the instrument has not been able to sustain a presence in that genre, although he does give a strong nod to one of my favorite musicians, Garth Hudson of The Band. But the overall history extends far back in time and Triggs takes us from a general time period into specific stories, often highlighting performers who were never recorded.

Triggs’ loves the accordion, but retains the ability to look at it objectively. And, yes, he does see the presence of the accordion increasing, which is something I certainly see in my world of presenting performers. It may not change overnight, but we can see the world in which the accordion once dominated (mid-20th century) to where it almost disappeared (late-20th century) finally finding its rightful place in a variety of musical genres. If you don’t believe me, just listen to the Accordion Noir show to see the range of this fascinating instrument.