THE END
OF THE
CHRISTIAN LIFE
How Embracing Our Mortality
Frees Us to Truly Live
We’re all going to die. Yet in our medically advanced, technological age, many of us see death as a distant reality–something that happens only at the end of a long life or to other people.
In The End of the Christian Life, Todd Billings urges Christians to resist that view. Instead, he calls us to embrace our mortality in our daily life and faith. This is the journey of genuine discipleship, Billings says, following the crucified and resurrected Lord in a world of distraction and false hopes.
Drawing on his experience as a professor and father living with incurable cancer, Billings offers a personal yet deeply theological account of the gospel’s expansive hope for small, mortal creatures. Artfully weaving rich theology with powerful narrative, Billings writes for church leaders and laypeople alike. Whether we are young or old, reeling from loss or clinging to our own prosperity, this book challenges us to walk a strange but wondrous path: in the midst of joy and lament, to receive mortal limits as a gift, an opportunity to give ourselves over to the Lord of life.
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Endorsements
“Todd Billings knows what we want to forget: that we must come to an end. This hopeful book pours Christian language into the void of our silence about death. He seeks better language for how our mortality can be both a wonder and a tragedy, an aberration and a sign of hope. You will find no trite answers here and no condemnation of our fragility. This gentle and pastoral book offers a corrective to our culture’s painful misinterpretation of mortality as a failure, and asks instead what death can truly teach us about life.”
Kate Bowler, author of Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved
“Todd Billings is one of my favorite theologians. The End of the Christian Life highlights many of the reasons why. He writes out of a depth of personal experience and the depths of the Christian tradition. In this remarkable book Billings calls us out of the frantic avoidance of death that characterizes our culture and into the Christian practice of remembering our death. In so doing he charts the path of true flourishing and shows how we might find God amid our mortality, finitude, and limitations. Billings writes not only with the mind of a brilliant theologian but also with a pastoral heart, so his work is also practical and accessible. Here you will find a fellow traveler–and fellow mortal–whose deep love of God, commitment to the church, and profound wisdom are evident on every page.”
Tish Harrison Warren, priest in the Anglican Church of North America; author of Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life
“I have been waiting for this book from Todd Billings. Born from his own existential encounter with mortality and infused with his singular theological acumen, The End of the Christian Life challenges a society (and a church!) infected by both the denial of death and a culture of death. When we deny our own mortality, we also become apathetic to all the death-dealing ways we treat other people. But ultimately this book is an invitation to find life in the embrace of our mortality because of the scarred God who meets us there.”
James K. A. Smith, professor of philosophy, Calvin University; author of You Are What You Love and On the Road with Saint Augustine
“The Christian tradition has long valued learning the ars moriendi (the art of dying), not because the faith is unduly negative or pessimistic but because it has understood the inseparable connection between one’s future death and one’s present life. In our contemporary Western world, we do all we can to ignore and downplay death–but living in this denial is hurting us in ways we don’t even realize. Todd Billings offers us the great gift of a contemporary ars moriendi, providing a textured narrative that weaves together personal stories and wise theological reflection. With Todd’s help we can learn to live in the shadow of death in a way that is painfully realistic, honestly liberating, and ultimately hopeful.”
Kelly M. Kapic, author of Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering
Dr. J. Todd Billings is the Gordon H. Girod Research Professor of Reformed Theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, MI. An ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America, he received his M.Div. from Fuller Seminary and his Th.D. from Harvard.
