Japanese Buddhists who take their faith seriously anticipate a time when the souls of those who die will lose their identity and merge with the oneness of the universe. Secular unbelievers resign themselves to the extinction of the planet millions of years from now when the sun flames out like a dying match. In contrast, Christians place their hope in a time when death, or what the Bible calls "the last enemy," will be destroyed. At that time, God will sort out evil from good and death from life, and resurrect both bodies and souls in a final resolution. As Jesus said in the last book of the Bible, "Behold, I make all things new."

As an example of our hope in Christ to overcome the enemy of death, I attended the funeral of a child in Chicago in which the pastor shocked the mourners by glancing down at the coffin and interrupting his eulogy with the sudden exclamation, "Damn you, death!" Catching himself, he quickly added, "Not God— it's death I'm damning. And God, too, has promised to damn it."