From: ajw@cbnews.cb.att.com (andrew.j.whitman)
Subject: Re: Mark Heard
Organization: AT&T
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 18:12:33 GMT

In article <1992Sep9.162546.1023@cs.rose-hulman.edu> anderson@cs.rose-hulman.edu. (Claude W. Anderson) writes:

>Psalm 116 says "how precious in the sight of the Lord is the
>death of His godly ones."  
>
>But when confronted with the death of a close friend, 
>"Jesus wept".  Right there in the middle of a passage whose main point is  
>reassuring the believer that death is not final, we see
>Jesus letting out his painful emotions.  I think he woould have agreed
>with Andy's original statement, "I hate death!"  He hated it so much
>that he was willing to pay the ultimate price to free us from its
>clutches.  Yes, we can celebrate someone's "homegoing".  But we must
>also recognize that death is the direct result of sin's entry into the
>world.  For that, even we who are filled with hope can weep.

I agree.  And that's all that I was saying.  The same passage in 
John 11 talks about Jesus being "moved in his spirit."  Actually,
the Greek is a lot closer to "righteously indignant."  Jesus was
mad - mad at death, mad at the terrible waste and tragedy that
results, mad about the broken relationships.  I'm not Jesus, nor
do I play him on TV, but I get mad about it too.

I'm glad that Mark Heard is with the Lord.  And I wish that he would
have been able to hang around another forty years or so.  I wish
his daughter was all grown up and on her own and better able to 
cope with such a tragedy.  I wish that a long stay in the hospital
wouldn't sap people of their lifes' savings.  I wish that Janet Heard
could have had a long and happy marriage.  And I wish that the best
and the brightest weren't always the ones to be taken.

And when you're wishing those kinds of things, you find that the
people who spout pious slogans about going home to be with the Lord
sound remarkably like Job's friends.  And you begin to suspect that 
they really don't have a clue about what it means to experience 
pain and grief.  

I never knew Mark Heard.  But I know his music backwards and forwards,
and he's helped me through some tough times, and he's inspired me
with his creativity, and he's impressed me as one of the most
honest and sincere Christians I've ever encountered.  I feel like
I've lost a friend, and I can't say that I've ever had that 
reaction with any other musician.  And in my own remote, electronic
way, I'm grieving for someone I never knew, and for the people he
left behind.  

I'm not glad that he's dead.  I can't rejoice about that.  I'm glad
that he knew Jesus, and that what seems to be a senseless death
can be remade into eternal life.  But you'll have to excuse me
if I pass on the "O Death, where is thy sting?" quoting right
now.  The sting seems sharp enough.  And you'll have to forgive
my indignation, unrighteous though it may be.  But I get pissed
off that forty-year-old men die of heart attacks, and I sometimes
grow weary of this beautiful, crazy, blessed, fallen, ephemeral
world that we live in.  And those are the times when I think I'm
a Christian because I just want something to last.  I still hate
death.

>Claude Anderson
>(812)877-8331
>anderson@cs.rose-hulman.edu    -  NeXT mail welcome

Andy Whitman
AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus, Ohio
att!cblpn!ajw  or
ajw@cblpn.att.com