Carl Trueman on Death and Meaning

To celebrate life at a funeral or memorial service is a nonsense. It is an insult to the bereaved relatives who, at best, are surely only kidding themselves that the death is made somehow easier by the fact the life was worth living in the first place. Surely that makes the death even less of a context for celebration. It is also a ridiculous contradiction in terms: if life has meaning, then death is an outrage; if death is not an outrage, then life has no meaning. In either case, what is there to celebrate? And those of us who believe that life has a meaning have even less cause to celebrate than those who are `narrating themselves into their own storylines.' Let's keep funerals for grieving and lamentation at the outrage that sin has perpetrated on the world. Keep the happy endings for Disney's sugar-coated castration of classic fiction.