Today, Joe asks Jamie how he processes death. As a pastor and leader, this is something he's confronted with often. This is a personal question. But it also stretches pastorally into helping others process death and grief as well.
Jamie Dew: Hey everybody. My name is Jamie Dew.
Joe Fontenot: And I am Joe Fontenot.
Jamie Dew: And today we welcome you back to our podcast, Towel in the Basin.
Joe Fontenot: Yeah. So Jamie, I have a question about death. You've said on the podcast before multiple times, and I've heard you say this that you think about death a lot. And you always clarify it, you're not like creepy.
Jamie Dew: Yeah.
Joe Fontenot: You're not morbid.
Jamie Dew: Meaning I'm not normally sitting there thinking about-
Joe Fontenot: Fetishizing ....
Jamie Dew: How am I dying? Am I in pain or... No, I don't do that.
Joe Fontenot: Is there going to be an impaling in my future? Right. So my question about death, how do you process death? All right. Now here's what I mean. As a pastor, right, as a person in a position to counsel others, even now as a seminary president, you still counsel a lot of people, right? You're the leader and all this kind of stuff. And so how do you process death? Personally, is this really difficult? Have you found something that works? I mean, talk about that.
Jamie Dew: Yeah. Truth be told for much of my life and much of my ministry not well. I mean, I didn't process it very well at all. I think I've mentioned this before in the church I pastored and I've done funerals since then, too, but in the church I pastored in an eight and a half year window time I did 60 funerals. And I was with and around people a lot during the end of their life and sort of got... As a pastor, I wasn't ready for this. I didn't feel prepared for this out of seminary. I mean, I knew I was going to do a funeral and that'd be sad and all those things, but my goodness, the amount of time I spent around it caused me... Or, well, I've always been the kind to think about death, but I would say amplified my thought about death.
And you kind of have this front row seat where it feels like often you're staring into the abyss and there are a wide assortment of experiences that you have in that that are good and bad. I mean, there's a real sense in which death is horrible and terrible and there's also a very real sense in which there's something beautiful about this moment. And you're sitting there having a front row seat to all of these things and your heart's constantly broken, you're encouraged. And at some point you do enough of them, it just begins to have a cumulative effect on what you're doing and how you're thinking about those things.
And so, yeah, that definitely was a season of time where that thought about death was amplified and I struggled with it. I became a bit of a hypochondriac.
Joe Fontenot: Really?
Jamie Dew: Oh yeah and it just bothered me.
Joe Fontenot: Like how am I going to die kind of thing because you're around it so much?
Jamie Dew: Well just every time you feel a new pain in your side, oh my gosh, I have cancer. No, you just have gas. Just stuff like that. Or anytime you feel a bump somewhere you're immediately...
Joe Fontenot: A tumor or...
Jamie Dew: Your wife is late from some appointment and you've in your mind, she's dead and you've buried her four times. You know, it's just stop, dude.
Joe Fontenot: Right, stop.
Jamie Dew: I almost died a couple of years ago and...
Joe Fontenot: Did that change things?
Jamie Dew: It definitely changed things. I mean, there was something to be said for getting close to the edge of it and then-
Joe Fontenot: This was like a sickness.
Jamie Dew: I won't gross our listeners out, but I had a artery burst in my large intestine just un-warning, no warning, no pain, no nothing. Just all of a sudden, one day I'm hemorrhaging. And I ended up in the hospital for a month, had some big surgeries to fix some things and super painful, hard recovery. Spent five days in ICU bled out, basically lots and lots of blood transfusion.
Joe Fontenot: Did they think you were going to die?
Jamie Dew: I mean, it was getting rocky there for sure. I mean, so anyway, they gave me a bunch of blood because I was bleeding out so fast. And so yeah, it was scary, but I had a sense during that season that I don't know how to explain it other than I felt the nearness of Christ and that was enough. So from all those experiences yeah I've changed and I've grown in ways. I still do think about death all the time. I think to answer the question, that's a little bit of a backstory there.
How do you process it? I do after thinking about it from all these different angles and ways and being around it so much and just listening to the things that people say, there seems to be, as a coping mechanism, almost an attempt to soften death that I don't know anybody would ever intend it to be this way, that cheapens death. Right. We soften it, anesthetize it in ways that make it seem like it's only a positive thing, but death really is an enemy. Right? I mean the Bible doesn't describe death in... It describes death as not being the final word, it describes death as having lost its sting, but it still describes death as an enemy to us. I mean, what we've got to remember is that this isn't what's supposed to happen. This is a disruption.
Joe Fontenot: Right. I mean, Lazarus died.
Jamie Dew: Right.
Joe Fontenot: And Jesus cried.
Jamie Dew: Right. There's a weeping to it.
Joe Fontenot: Yeah. I mean, and he even knew what was going to happen next and still, there was the pain.
Jamie Dew: There's the pain, and then much of his pain there is because he's watching the brokenheartedness of the people that he loves. But it is an enemy and whatever we say here, I don't think we're helping ourselves by... Because I don't know the word... When we cheapen it and we try to soften it, I don't know that we're allowing ourselves to actually process the emotions that need to actually get processed. So look, the fact is death is a disruption. Death is a ripping apart. Not only is it an emotional disruption to us, it is a ripping apart of our very self. I mean the body and soul come together and the human person is there and then in death these two get ripped apart from each other.
So there is that. So I'm saying that not to try to underscore the bad part of this, but we do need to grapple with it for what it is. It is an enemy. It is a disruption to us. Now at the same time, we have to rest in and have confidence in the work of Jesus Christ our Lord with full confidence that it is not the final word. It is not the end. It is simply a disruptive phase that we lament and that we mourned, but it's not the final word. Christ is going to come back and our bodies are going to be raised and our body and soul are going to come back together and we shall live again. And so I think we've got to put our minds there.
Joe Fontenot: Yeah. So I have a question. You mentioned earlier about how you did not process death well at first. When you said that, did you mean that you kind of dismissed it, diminished it or was it one of these things where it may be even had an outsized proportion [crosstalk 00:00:07:00]?
Jamie Dew: It definitely, yeah. It had an out-sized proportion impact on me for sure. But I think part of the reason I was struggling is because while I'm around it so much and front row seat to it, and not just by the way of being around dead bodies or something at funeral homes. I mean, watching people's emotional responses through the journey of death, the person dying and their loved ones. I mean, look, I've been around people that died with incredible grace and peace where it was just clearly a supernatural gift that they knew they were dying and they were okay with that. And they knew they were going to go be with Christ and it's still hard and it's still difficult, but man, there's a beauty there. And watching the family in those moments can be a glorious testimony.
But then I have to admit, it's not always that way. I've watched people die and they weren't okay with it.
Joe Fontenot: The people dying.
Jamie Dew: The people dying and their family. They're genuinely not okay with this and even up into the final moments they are disturbed by this reality. And it's super easy for people to infer things about those dying people as whether or not... That I think that's unfair. Even if this brother or sister was clearly a born again Christian and we have every reason to think that he or she's in heaven right now, what I'd want to say to those families is this is a disruption. So it's not going to be surprising, therefore, that people may very well wrestle with those things.
And so, but those that factor right there, do they have a peace about it before God or did they not? Man, you watch that happen enough times, it'll rattle you and the cumulative effect of all this over time. So it definitely had an outsized proportional weight in my mind. But the other side of that was, I think it's because I was feeling that massive weight and trying to process it with the typical cliches and bumper stickers that, frankly, against the weight of all of that just sort of melt away. And yeah, I didn't find that our standard ways of saying things, our cutesy things that we'll say about things in death were helpful or encouraging.
Joe Fontenot: God needed more angels.
Jamie Dew: Yeah, things of that nature. Our theology can get very strained in these moments. Now I don't want to be critical or a jerk to those people that say that. They're just coping.
Joe Fontenot: Sure, exactly. Right.
Jamie Dew: Because this is a heavy thing and people will say things that can be not helpful. But I think all of what I'm trying to say here is that, look, I do think we have to allow... I've said this on some other podcasts, you have to allow each moment to have its place. There really is something genuinely heavy and disruptive and hard about this moment and we've got to let ourselves grapple with that, own that and feel that for a moment.
But then we also do have to, at some point, turn our minds now and our hearts now to the hope of Christianity and the hope of Christ. He does say to Lazarus' family, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me though he shall die yet he shall live. Do you believe this?" And that question, do you believe this is I think the question we've got to come to. Given a season where there's real weight there, do you believe this? And if so, we turn our hope now first Thessalonians four, "Because of that hope we don't grieve as those who have no hope." We do grieve, but we don't grieve as those who have no hope. We believe this. He will come again. He will raise us up and Paul says, "Comfort each other with these words."
Joe Fontenot: So last question on this, that's helpful theology and a good theology. But as you said, you started out struggling. Excuse me. Looking back, what helped you get from there to a healthier place? Was it time? Was it experience?
Jamie Dew: Yeah. I mean, the honest answer is time and the experience were absolutely part of that journey, but that second part of what I was just saying a second ago, you have the place where you do grieve with it and struggle with it, but then you have to make a choice.
Joe Fontenot: A choice.
Jamie Dew: To where you're going to turn your mind, what you're going to set your mind on again and again and again. The apostle Paul tells us to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. We turn our minds towards those realities and we let our minds stay there. We force our minds to stay there and I think as you do that over time, and with that experience, those two things for me personally. Now that might not work for everybody else but for me personally, that's ultimately what did it. Those three things, time experience and putting my mind in those places.
Joe Fontenot: That's really helpful. Thanks for talking about that.
Jamie Dew: Yep.
Hey everybody. This is Jamie and Joe again. If you like this podcast, would you leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts? That helps other people find it. And if you have any questions, we'd love to hear about them. Just go to Jamiedew.com/questions and send them in that way and we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions and give them a shot.