A Dead Cat by Tom Neven on 10/04/2007 at 7:15 AM

The call came on my cell phone just as I was pulling into the garage on a Friday afternoon after a long, hard week at work.

"Quick, Dad, come to the animal hospital! It's Shadow!"

It was my son, Joshua. Shadow would be our 14-year-old cat.

Now I confess that I didn't much like the cat. She existed mostly as an inert collection of chemicals that became a cat only upon the sound of food hitting her bowl or the fridge door opening. Or when there was a juicy piece of meat to steal off your plate. She'd become even more inert in her old age -- in addition to becoming incontinent, with dire consequences for the carpet by our back door.

Upon hearing the news and the alarm in my son's voice, I had a pretty good guess what was going on. I drove quickly to the vet's to find my wife and teenage daughter in tears. Shadow was in an examining room, gasping for breath and going in and out of convulsions. The vet said her kidneys were rock-hard, meaning that her blood was filling with uric acid. The end was near. He wanted permission to give Shadow a lethal injection to end her suffering. My wife and I looked at each other and nodded.

What surprised me then was my reaction. I found myself choking up as I gently gave Shadow a few last stokes behind her ears.

You have to understand that death was not new to me. I'd seen men die and had not reacted in this way. But then I had not been a Christian, and I lived in circumstances where death was not entirely unexpected, so you hardened yourself to it. (I was a Marine Corps infantryman.)

But now I was choking up over a cat -- one I didn't like very much to start with. I was puzzled at my reaction until I realized I was, in some small way, seeing death as God sees it: a tragedy, a black stain, a violation of the created order as God intended it, a result of our rebellion and fall into sin. Death is a stench in God's nostrils. In the story about Jesus and Lazarus in John 11, we read that, upon hearing of his friend's death, Jesus was "deeply moved in spirit and troubled" (v. 33). In the original Greek the first of these terms connotes anger. Jesus was mad about the ravages that death had visited upon his creation. The second word expresses agitation. Lazarus had been a beloved friend, and Jesus shared in the common feeling of grief over his death. Overcome by emotion, he spontaneously burst into tears (v. 35).

I don't know how many times I've heard someone say, "Death is part of life." No! I want to scream. Death is DEATH! C.S. Lewis has a keen insight on this:

Here is something telling me -- well, what? Telling me that I must never, like the Stoics, say that death does not matter. Nothing is less Christian than that. Death which made Life Himself shed tears at the grave of Lazarus, and shed tears of blood in Gethsemane. This is an appalling horror; a stinking indignity. (You remember Thomas Browne's splendid remark: 'I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed of it.')

As believers we no longer have to fear death. But that doesn't mean we still shouldn't be bothered by it-a great lesson I learned from a dead cat. 

A Dead Cat by Tom Neven on 10/04/2007 at 7:15 AM

The call came on my cell phone just as I was pulling into the garage on a Friday afternoon after a long, hard week at work.

"Quick, Dad, come to the animal hospital! It's Shadow!"

It was my son, Joshua. Shadow would be our 14-year-old cat.

Now I confess that I didn't much like the cat. She existed mostly as an inert collection of chemicals that became a cat only upon the sound of food hitting her bowl or the fridge door opening. Or when there was a juicy piece of meat to steal off your plate. She'd become even more inert in her old age -- in addition to becoming incontinent, with dire consequences for the carpet by our back door.

Upon hearing the news and the alarm in my son's voice, I had a pretty good guess what was going on. I drove quickly to the vet's to find my wife and teenage daughter in tears. Shadow was in an examining room, gasping for breath and going in and out of convulsions. The vet said her kidneys were rock-hard, meaning that her blood was filling with uric acid. The end was near. He wanted permission to give Shadow a lethal injection to end her suffering. My wife and I looked at each other and nodded.

What surprised me then was my reaction. I found myself choking up as I gently gave Shadow a few last stokes behind her ears.

You have to understand that death was not new to me. I'd seen men die and had not reacted in this way. But then I had not been a Christian, and I lived in circumstances where death was not entirely unexpected, so you hardened yourself to it. (I was a Marine Corps infantryman.)

But now I was choking up over a cat -- one I didn't like very much to start with. I was puzzled at my reaction until I realized I was, in some small way, seeing death as God sees it: a tragedy, a black stain, a violation of the created order as God intended it, a result of our rebellion and fall into sin. Death is a stench in God's nostrils. In the story about Jesus and Lazarus in John 11, we read that, upon hearing of his friend's death, Jesus was "deeply moved in spirit and troubled" (v. 33). In the original Greek the first of these terms connotes anger. Jesus was mad about the ravages that death had visited upon his creation. The second word expresses agitation. Lazarus had been a beloved friend, and Jesus shared in the common feeling of grief over his death. Overcome by emotion, he spontaneously burst into tears (v. 35).

I don't know how many times I've heard someone say, "Death is part of life." No! I want to scream. Death is DEATH! C.S. Lewis has a keen insight on this:

Here is something telling me -- well, what? Telling me that I must never, like the Stoics, say that death does not matter. Nothing is less Christian than that. Death which made Life Himself shed tears at the grave of Lazarus, and shed tears of blood in Gethsemane. This is an appalling horror; a stinking indignity. (You remember Thomas Browne's splendid remark: 'I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed of it.')

As believers we no longer have to fear death. But that doesn't mean we still shouldn't be bothered by it-a great lesson I learned from a dead cat. 

Comments

[1. Joseph said the following at 7:22 AM on Oct 4:]

1

amen brother

[2. Meg said the following at 8:14 AM on Oct 4:]

2

Interesting. I heard my campus minister speak on this topic last semester after the Virginia Tech shootings. It really grabbed me because I realized maybe this is why I get so shook up when someone I don't even know that well dies. But still, people are inevitably going to say that pseudo-comforting line, "Death is just a part of life." How should we react to that? Should we ignore it and chalk it up to ignorance on the other person's behalf?

[3. Carrie said the following at 8:30 AM on Oct 4:]

3

This is humbling. Too often, as Christians, death is not as big of a deal in our minds. We glaze over it with cheesy little sentiments. I've been guilty of it many times. We then feel compelled to skip over the mourning stage because we don't want to mourch because we know better, heaven is better.
Death is something thought ought to make us think more soberly about things. I watched my aunt's body give out after a massive stroke and death was very real. I had many questions about it afterwards.
Thank you very much for this post.

[4. Carrie said the following at 8:51 AM on Oct 4:]

4

mourch = mourn

[5. Kathryn said the following at 9:14 AM on Oct 4:]

5

My Dad had much the same reaction with our old cat, Mellie. Mellie degenerated over a week as his kidneys slowly failed. One night he crawled onto his cat-pillow and died. As Dad is at home most of the time, he'd been with the cat and seen his slow dying, and then found him in the morning. He'd never been terribly fond of the cat, but he was rather upset to see him die. It was pretty surprising to see Dad so sad about it.

Death wasn't a part of the original creation plan, and death wont feature in the new creation. Praise God that one day there will be respite from it.

[6. Shannon said the following at 9:16 AM on Oct 4:]

6

Wow. C.S. Lewis was generally brilliant, but sometimes he just flat-out missed the mark. "Stinking indignity"? How dare he use those words to describe my stillborn son's broken body. If I believe God governs life and death for His own good and mysterious purposes, I cannot (indeed I have no desire to) use such foul words to describe what He ordained - both the event itself and its physical effects on the deceased. It is indeed an appalling horror, but only from an emotional standpoint (i.e., why Jesus wept at Lazarus's grave).

As to Gethsemane, Christ wasn't sweating blood at the prospect of His physical death. His turmoil of soul stemmed from the imminent spiritual separation from His Father, with whom He'd always had perfect communion. Christ knew God would turn His face away from Him, and as anyone who's been there knows, spiritual separation from God is a foretaste of hell itself.

[7. Adam T. said the following at 9:21 AM on Oct 4:]

7

I've been thinking the same way recently - I'm in my first year of medical school and that means we've been studying anatomy with cadavers. The first time we went to the anatomy lab was a... weird... experience for most people, I think, and afterwards I kept asking myself 'Why? WHY is it so weird and uncomfortable to be around death and deal with death?' And the answer I came to was: though some might find the thought of death scary, there's more to it than that - the underlying sense of *discomfort* that death brings to us arises because it *wasn't supposed to happen*. Just like the blog mentioned.

Most people in our society (unlike in biblical times, incidentally) don't see dead people on a regular basis. I have several times found it... fascinating, maybe(?)... to look at the dead people and think... 'Wow. Here is a concrete example of the horrible thing that our sin really does to us.'

[8. nikki said the following at 9:44 AM on Oct 4:]

8

Shannon, death is a part of the fallen world we live in for now -- it's not what God intended. He works through the scourge of death, but I am sure he sure didn't enjoy seeing your son like that any more than you did. Death was not a part of the original creation, and it won't be part of the new earth either. It is not good. Like sin goes against God's plan, so does death.

[9. Carrie said the following at 10:15 AM on Oct 4:]

9

Shannon, Lewis was stating that death is "a stinking indignity". Death is responsible for your stillborn son. Death is what stole him from you. Death is why Christ came to earth. He came to earth to conquer death and Hell. Death is indeed "a stinking indignity" -- it goes against original creation. Your stillborn son is not "a stinking indignity" and I don't think Lewis would argue such a vile idea. "A stinking indignity" is what took him from you.

[10. Shannon said the following at 11:47 AM on Oct 4:]

10

RE: "A stinking indignity" is what took him from you.

No. God took him from me:

"I form light and create darkness,I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things." - Isaiah 45:7

"Does disaster come to a city, unless the LORD has done it?" - Amos 3:6b

"The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD." - Job 1:21

"Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?" - Job 2:10

Nikki, I'm sure God wept with us when we lost our son. But our baby, who had a chromosomal abnormality that gave him no chance at life, was made to die.

"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well." - Psalm 139:13

I'd rather believe in a sovereign God than a helpless one. I have found infinitely more comfort at my son's grave from realizing that God is the cause of everything in life, that at no point in eternity has He ever sat helpless and watched as His creation wreaked havoc with His plan, than I have from a wretched thought like "Well, He didn't MEAN for this to happen, but..."

[11. Jeff Caylor said the following at 11:55 AM on Oct 4:]

11

Great post, Tom. Really appreciated this.

[12. Melissa said the following at 1:11 PM on Oct 4:]

12

"But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope." I Thessalonians 4:13

The key here is that we do grieve--we should grive, someone we love is now gone. I think often as believers we somehow get this idea that we should not be sad that someone is gone...like our faith is weak if we grieve.

However grief is normal, but our grief is not hopeless--as believers we know that though death was not the plan, Christ has defeated death.

[13. Melissa said the following at 1:14 PM on Oct 4:]

13

Good post, Tom!

I think one of the keys to understanding death and grief is found in 1 Thess. 4:13ff.

Somehow as believers we often get this idea in our head that we should not grieve someone's death. That our faith is weak if we grieve.

However, grief is normal. But as believers our grief is different because it is hopeful-hopeful in the fact that though death was not how it was supposed to be, Christ has defeated that--in that we have hope!

[14. Carrie said the following at 2:27 PM on Oct 4:]

14

Shannon, you speak truth sister. I think we are looking at two different sides of the same coin.
"I'd rather believe in a sovereign God than a helpless one. I have found infinitely more comfort at my son's grave from realizing that God is the cause of everything in life, that at no point in eternity has He ever sat helpless and watched as His creation wreaked havoc with His plan, than I have from a wretched thought like 'Well, He didn't MEAN for this to happen, but...'"

When I question death, I do it in light of God's sovereignty, but obviously you have wrestled with this a deeper level than I have. My apologies.

[15. Gina said the following at 9:05 PM on Oct 4:]

15

That was a really great post. I wish more people would look at death this way. Well said -- and condolences on your cat.

Shannon, I'm so very sorry to hear about the loss of your son. I hope you won't think I'm just being argumentative if I say this: I think what Lewis and others are trying to say (and I agree) is that the fact that death came into the world at all -- and that wasn't through God, it was through humanity's sin -- is the "stinking indignity." Your son's condition wasn't the indignity, and God isn't the indignity. It's what fallen humankind did to itself that's the indigity.

[16. Don Adam said the following at 12:06 PM on Oct 5:]

16

To everyone:

A few years ago out here in California, a precious little 5 year old girl was kidnapped, raped, tortured, killed and her broken body was found naked on a hillside.

Please, please, please, please, in your need to protect God's sovreignty, do not make Him the Author of this horrible evil.

God is not helpless! He is sovereign! But He is not the Author of evil. He gives us victory, He comforts, He brings good when there seems to be no good; but mankind is the author of evil validated by our disobedience and receipients of the consequences of our sin. And even innocent little babies are affected by the 'curse' as a result of the sin of all of mankind.

Praise God for His wonderful grace, mercy and forgiveness. The blood of His Son, His death and resurrection gives us the victory over death,as we put our trust in Him.

As for those precious little babies and children who left this world before they were old enough to distinguish between good and evil; they are with Jesus even now, experiencing the wonders of His very Presence.

[1. Joseph said the following at 7:22 AM on Oct 4:]

1

amen brother

[2. Meg said the following at 8:14 AM on Oct 4:]

2

Interesting. I heard my campus minister speak on this topic last semester after the Virginia Tech shootings. It really grabbed me because I realized maybe this is why I get so shook up when someone I don't even know that well dies. But still, people are inevitably going to say that pseudo-comforting line, "Death is just a part of life." How should we react to that? Should we ignore it and chalk it up to ignorance on the other person's behalf?

[3. Carrie said the following at 8:30 AM on Oct 4:]

3

This is humbling. Too often, as Christians, death is not as big of a deal in our minds. We glaze over it with cheesy little sentiments. I've been guilty of it many times. We then feel compelled to skip over the mourning stage because we don't want to mourch because we know better, heaven is better.
Death is something thought ought to make us think more soberly about things. I watched my aunt's body give out after a massive stroke and death was very real. I had many questions about it afterwards.
Thank you very much for this post.

[4. Carrie said the following at 8:51 AM on Oct 4:]

4

mourch = mourn

[5. Kathryn said the following at 9:14 AM on Oct 4:]

5

My Dad had much the same reaction with our old cat, Mellie. Mellie degenerated over a week as his kidneys slowly failed. One night he crawled onto his cat-pillow and died. As Dad is at home most of the time, he'd been with the cat and seen his slow dying, and then found him in the morning. He'd never been terribly fond of the cat, but he was rather upset to see him die. It was pretty surprising to see Dad so sad about it.

Death wasn't a part of the original creation plan, and death wont feature in the new creation. Praise God that one day there will be respite from it.

[6. Shannon said the following at 9:16 AM on Oct 4:]

6

Wow. C.S. Lewis was generally brilliant, but sometimes he just flat-out missed the mark. "Stinking indignity"? How dare he use those words to describe my stillborn son's broken body. If I believe God governs life and death for His own good and mysterious purposes, I cannot (indeed I have no desire to) use such foul words to describe what He ordained - both the event itself and its physical effects on the deceased. It is indeed an appalling horror, but only from an emotional standpoint (i.e., why Jesus wept at Lazarus's grave).

As to Gethsemane, Christ wasn't sweating blood at the prospect of His physical death. His turmoil of soul stemmed from the imminent spiritual separation from His Father, with whom He'd always had perfect communion. Christ knew God would turn His face away from Him, and as anyone who's been there knows, spiritual separation from God is a foretaste of hell itself.

[7. Adam T. said the following at 9:21 AM on Oct 4:]

7

I've been thinking the same way recently - I'm in my first year of medical school and that means we've been studying anatomy with cadavers. The first time we went to the anatomy lab was a... weird... experience for most people, I think, and afterwards I kept asking myself 'Why? WHY is it so weird and uncomfortable to be around death and deal with death?' And the answer I came to was: though some might find the thought of death scary, there's more to it than that - the underlying sense of *discomfort* that death brings to us arises because it *wasn't supposed to happen*. Just like the blog mentioned.

Most people in our society (unlike in biblical times, incidentally) don't see dead people on a regular basis. I have several times found it... fascinating, maybe(?)... to look at the dead people and think... 'Wow. Here is a concrete example of the horrible thing that our sin really does to us.'

[8. nikki said the following at 9:44 AM on Oct 4:]

8

Shannon, death is a part of the fallen world we live in for now -- it's not what God intended. He works through the scourge of death, but I am sure he sure didn't enjoy seeing your son like that any more than you did. Death was not a part of the original creation, and it won't be part of the new earth either. It is not good. Like sin goes against God's plan, so does death.

[9. Carrie said the following at 10:15 AM on Oct 4:]

9

Shannon, Lewis was stating that death is "a stinking indignity". Death is responsible for your stillborn son. Death is what stole him from you. Death is why Christ came to earth. He came to earth to conquer death and Hell. Death is indeed "a stinking indignity" -- it goes against original creation. Your stillborn son is not "a stinking indignity" and I don't think Lewis would argue such a vile idea. "A stinking indignity" is what took him from you.

[10. Shannon said the following at 11:47 AM on Oct 4:]

10

RE: "A stinking indignity" is what took him from you.

No. God took him from me:

"I form light and create darkness,I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things." - Isaiah 45:7

"Does disaster come to a city, unless the LORD has done it?" - Amos 3:6b

"The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD." - Job 1:21

"Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?" - Job 2:10

Nikki, I'm sure God wept with us when we lost our son. But our baby, who had a chromosomal abnormality that gave him no chance at life, was made to die.

"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well." - Psalm 139:13

I'd rather believe in a sovereign God than a helpless one. I have found infinitely more comfort at my son's grave from realizing that God is the cause of everything in life, that at no point in eternity has He ever sat helpless and watched as His creation wreaked havoc with His plan, than I have from a wretched thought like "Well, He didn't MEAN for this to happen, but..."

[11. Jeff Caylor said the following at 11:55 AM on Oct 4:]

11

Great post, Tom. Really appreciated this.

[12. Melissa said the following at 1:11 PM on Oct 4:]

12

"But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope." I Thessalonians 4:13

The key here is that we do grieve--we should grive, someone we love is now gone. I think often as believers we somehow get this idea that we should not be sad that someone is gone...like our faith is weak if we grieve.

However grief is normal, but our grief is not hopeless--as believers we know that though death was not the plan, Christ has defeated death.

[13. Melissa said the following at 1:14 PM on Oct 4:]

13

Good post, Tom!

I think one of the keys to understanding death and grief is found in 1 Thess. 4:13ff.

Somehow as believers we often get this idea in our head that we should not grieve someone's death. That our faith is weak if we grieve.

However, grief is normal. But as believers our grief is different because it is hopeful-hopeful in the fact that though death was not how it was supposed to be, Christ has defeated that--in that we have hope!

[14. Carrie said the following at 2:27 PM on Oct 4:]

14

Shannon, you speak truth sister. I think we are looking at two different sides of the same coin.
"I'd rather believe in a sovereign God than a helpless one. I have found infinitely more comfort at my son's grave from realizing that God is the cause of everything in life, that at no point in eternity has He ever sat helpless and watched as His creation wreaked havoc with His plan, than I have from a wretched thought like 'Well, He didn't MEAN for this to happen, but...'"

When I question death, I do it in light of God's sovereignty, but obviously you have wrestled with this a deeper level than I have. My apologies.

[15. Gina said the following at 9:05 PM on Oct 4:]

15

That was a really great post. I wish more people would look at death this way. Well said -- and condolences on your cat.

Shannon, I'm so very sorry to hear about the loss of your son. I hope you won't think I'm just being argumentative if I say this: I think what Lewis and others are trying to say (and I agree) is that the fact that death came into the world at all -- and that wasn't through God, it was through humanity's sin -- is the "stinking indignity." Your son's condition wasn't the indignity, and God isn't the indignity. It's what fallen humankind did to itself that's the indigity.

[16. Don Adam said the following at 12:06 PM on Oct 5:]

16

To everyone:

A few years ago out here in California, a precious little 5 year old girl was kidnapped, raped, tortured, killed and her broken body was found naked on a hillside.

Please, please, please, please, in your need to protect God's sovreignty, do not make Him the Author of this horrible evil.

God is not helpless! He is sovereign! But He is not the Author of evil. He gives us victory, He comforts, He brings good when there seems to be no good; but mankind is the author of evil validated by our disobedience and receipients of the consequences of our sin. And even innocent little babies are affected by the 'curse' as a result of the sin of all of mankind.

Praise God for His wonderful grace, mercy and forgiveness. The blood of His Son, His death and resurrection gives us the victory over death,as we put our trust in Him.

As for those precious little babies and children who left this world before they were old enough to distinguish between good and evil; they are with Jesus even now, experiencing the wonders of His very Presence.