"My brother died and was not a believer"

Someone wrote a short post about their brother.

He was murdered. Brutally, they said. He was thirty-three, and he was at work when it happened. They say he did not have a relationship with Christ. He believed as a child. As an adult he never showed any interest in it again. Then they say something they clearly expect to be argued with, so they argue it themselves first. He was a good man. He helped people. And they add, in the same breath, that they know good works don't save anyone. They say they don't believe you can pray someone out of hell. They say it flatly, like a door they've already checked is locked. Then this.

"It torments me thinking about him suffering again for eternity."

They say that before they gave their life to Christ, they had comfort in the thought of seeing him again one day. That he was in a better place. And now they've come to believe that comfort was a misconception, and facing that is hard. Their other brother and their father have both become atheists since the death. They're trying to help them and it isn't working. When they try, the men in their family get angry with them. And then the last line.

"I am not a biblical expert by any means, this is just what my understanding is."

There are two things in that post. They are not the same thing. The first is a doctrinal question. Where is my brother? What is the eternal state of a man who believed as a child, lived as though he didn't, helped people, and was killed at thirty-three. That's the part they argued. Point by point, objections answered in advance, because they've had this conversation before and they know how it goes. The second is one sentence. Buried in the middle. No argument attached to it at all. It torments me. Those are different questions. Scripture does not treat them the same way.

The first one, Scripture does not hand over. There is no verse where a living person is told the eternal outcome of a specific dead person by name. Not one. The judgment of individuals is held by God and it is not published. That is not a comforting evasion, and I won't turn it into one. It is not a hint that everything is fine. It is that the file is not open to us. This person is torturing themselves with a verdict they have not been given and cannot get. The second question is different. It isn't asking for information. It's asking what a person does with unceasing pain about a dead man they loved, in a house where everyone else has gone angry, and nothing in the situation is going to change. That one has prayers written for it.

There was a man who stood in front of God and argued about who was going to be destroyed. Genesis eighteen. God is on his way to Sodom, and Abraham has family there — his nephew's household, his own blood, living in a city that is about to be wiped out. The text says Abraham came near. That's the detail. He didn't pray from a distance. He walked up. And he said: will you consume the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous in the city. Will you not spare the place for the fifty? Then he said the line the whole scene rests on. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? And then he starts counting down. Suppose there are forty-five. Suppose forty. He apologises for continuing and continues. Let the Lord not be angry, and I will speak. Suppose thirty. Suppose twenty. Suppose ten. He stops at ten. The text doesn't say why. It doesn't say he lost his nerve, or made his point, or was satisfied. It just stops. And then this. Yahweh went his way as soon as he had finished speaking with Abraham. And Abraham returned to his place. That's the end of the scene. God leaves. Abraham goes home. He is not told the outcome. He is not given a number. He does not get to watch. The next morning he goes out and looks toward the valley and sees smoke going up like the smoke of a furnace, and that is all he sees. Smoke. He isn't told who was in it. The thing worth staying with is not that Lot was spared, because Abraham didn't know that. It is that a man argued with God about the fate of his own family, out loud, to God's face, and then walked back to his tent without an answer — and the text does not treat that as a failure. It treats it as prayer.

Paul is in the same place in Romans nine. He says he has great sorrow and unceasing pain in his heart over his own people, his own flesh and blood, who have not believed. He says he could wish himself cut off for their sake. That's an apostle, and he does not resolve it. He turns and says the mercy is God's to give and not ours to assign. Neither of them got the answer. Both of them said it to God anyway.

There is a psalm that asks about the dead. It asks God directly. It does not get a reply, and it does not pretend to. Psalm eighty-eight. Written by a man named Heman.

Yahweh, the God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before you. My soul is full of troubles. My life draws near to Sheol. I am set apart among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more. They are cut off from your hand. Do you show wonders to the dead? Do the departed spirits rise up and praise you? Is your loving kindness declared in the grave? Or your faithfulness in Destruction? Are your wonders made known in the dark? Or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? But to you, Yahweh, I have cried. In the morning my prayer comes before you. Yahweh, why do you reject my soul? Why do you hide your face from me? You have put lover and friend far from me. My friends are in darkness.

That's where it ends. There's no turn. Every other psalm of that kind has a but somewhere near the end, where the light comes back in. This one doesn't have it. The last word is darkness. Now set the two things side by side. The post says: I do not believe we can pray someone out of hell. It's a hard truth to accept. The psalm says: is your loving kindness declared in the grave? Are your wonders made known in the dark? Those are not far apart. They are the same territory. A person looking at death and asking whether God's kindness reaches into it. The difference is one word. The word is YOU. The post is a statement about God, made to a forum, at one in the morning, by someone who has already lost the argument with themselves. The psalm is the same weight, turned around, aimed at God's face, using his name. Heman did not get an answer either. The psalm is in the book anyway. God kept it. It is there to be used.

So here is the one thing. If you are in this. If there is someone dead that you cannot place, and the thought of it wakes you up. Take the sentence you have been saying about God, and say it to him instead. With his name in it, and your brother's name in it. [slowly] Not a better sentence. That one. The one that torments you. God, I don't know where he is. God, it torments me. God, is your loving kindness declared in the grave. If your own words won't come, Heman's are available. [whispering] They were written to be borrowed. I am not going to tell you it will lift, or that you will feel him near, or that you will get clarity by morning. Heman didn't. Abraham went back to his tent with nothing. This is not a technique for making it stop. [thoughtful] It is the difference between carrying it alone in the dark, and carrying it in front of God in the dark. That is the only difference on offer. It is not nothing.

They wrote: I am not a biblical expert by any means, this is just what my understanding is. No, they're not. Neither was Abraham. He came near anyway and asked the Judge of all the earth to his face whether he would do right, and God did not send him away for asking. And then Yahweh went his way, and Abraham returned to his place.