A Ramble About Dead Men Walking

I recently saw and re-posted a cartoon on Facebook. It was supposed to be funny, but it carried a profound truth. It was of a guy getting his future read by a psychic. The psychic exclaims “You're going to die.” To which, the guy responds in horror, “Oh no! When!?” The psychic calmly responds, “Eventually.”

I love this cartoon.

This cartoon illustrates perfectly the simple truth of being human. My life is going to end. I am going to die. Do I know for certain when? No. But I do know for certain that I will either five minutes from now, five days, five years, or five decades. It is more certain than the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. No matter how many people attempt to subvert this, ignore it, run from it, prolong their lives as long as possible they can it is fundamentally inescapable. There is no living, physical creature that will not eventually cease and dissolve back into its individual elements and constituents and there is no way for that creature to know for certain when it will happen. I, like every other human being on Earth, am a “dead man walking.”

What is more, this dead man walking will face judgment for all that he has done. There is no getting around this either. This is true regardless of what religion or lack thereof you profess. Either you await judgment in the afterlife, or you await the judgment of history, and by those who remember you and everything you have done. I believe that I await judgment for all that I have done and said by my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. While there are some who may believe this will be a fun and pleasant experience, I am under no such delusions about what I will hear repeated back to me. I believe that He is able and willing to deliver even me from judgment, but I know what I deserve.

So how does a dead man walking live? Does he celebrate the moment, knowing that each could be his last? Maybe, except we do not cease to exist. Physical death does not mean we can just party and then go into oblivion. After death comes the judgment. No, the wise dead man walking must live every moment with this death and his own impending judgment fully in view. He knows that everything he does will be reflected back to him at this judgment. There is going to be nothing more important to him than this single fact. Everything else around him will become dead to him for the sake of this one event that he cannot afford under any circumstances to botch.

Will it matter to a dead man walking how much money he makes? Not in the slightest, because the amount of money, possessions, or social status will have absolutely no positive bearing on his judgment and depending on what he did with it could have a very negative bearing on his case. In fact, the less responsibility he has in this area, the fewer possessions he has to be responsible for, the better off he'll be.

Will it matter to a dead man walking how comfortable he is? Whether or not he has all the food he wants and likes, the sexual companionship, and/or all the comforts this life has to offer? Nope. Because he knows that it will end, and again have no positive bearing on his case. Will he care about how he looks or his physical appearance? No, because he knows every time he looks into a mirror he is looking at a corpse that just happens to be breathing for the moment.

Will a dead man walking care about what others think about him, or what he thinks of himself? Uh... No. The truth is that the only person whose opinion matters to him is going to be his Judge.

For those of us who follow Jesus Christ, He and His Apostles repeatedly informed us that we are dead men walking in no uncertain terms. They say it so often that I really shouldn't have to repeat it here. If we believe in Jesus Christ then we will believe what He said about this and act accordingly.

So, are you a dead man walking, or not?