Life insurance is really death insurance
10th April 2012 · 0 Comments
By Fr. Jerome LeDoux
Contributing Columnist
Have you taken out a policy for eternal life insurance?
“What kind of policy is that?” you might ask. “A life insurance policy actually does not help you live on. It helps only your loved ones whom you leave when you die.”
That is right. Life insurance benefits kick in only in the event of your death. When you are no longer alive on earth to help your family, the designated beneficiaries receive the cash award agreed upon in the terms of the life insurance policy. Said award does nothing for your life, but only helps your surviving kin bury you with little or no expense.
We puny humans can do nothing more to protect our family on earth than subscribe to life insurance. But the forever sign of eternal life insurance for us in all of history was posted high on a cross some 1979 years ago, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” This is the only true life insurance that lifts us above earthly death to eternal life with God.
This eternal life insurance issued its first policy on the first Good Friday as Jesus hung dying between two criminals. At first, as noted by Matthew 27:44 and Mark 15:32, both criminals cursed and reviled Jesus. At the end, Luke 23:40 tells a story of wonder.
“The other (criminal), however, rebuking him (his fellow criminal), said in reply, ‘Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.’
“Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’
“He replied to him, ‘Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.’”
Tradition calls him Dismas, or the Good Thief who stole heaven at the very last moments of his life. His eternal life insurance policy was made and matured within those last few minutes of his life, with immediate benefits not promised to the holiest human.
This greatest of all the stories in the Bible contains Christmas, Good Friday, Easter and Pentecost all in one. Dismas is the star of the one passage of the Bible that assures all of us that it is never too late for us, no matter what we have done or how much of our life we have wasted. If we can just say Jesus, or at least think Jesus, we are saved forever.
The horrendous anomaly of a King ruling the world from a cross — a thing that is unthinkable and abhorrent to worldly rulers –was explained by Jesus to Nicodemus in John 3:14, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
Jesus confirmed this in John 12:32, “And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” Just as Christmas is emotional, so is Holy Week cerebral.
As prudent and as foresightful as a life insurance policy is, it is nevertheless an abasing, grudging admission of the inexorable breakdown of our health and strength, and of our painfully short existence here on earth. At best, earthly life insurance is dreary.
Life insurance on earth is the groveling acknowledgement of our finiteness, of our mortality, of our inability to escape the ultimate, humiliating sting of death. But eternal life insurance enables us to say with Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:55, “Death is swallowed up in victory! Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting?”
It gets better. Our eternal life insurance policy has no disclaimers or protective clauses for the insured. Rather, it simply reads, “Paid In Full!” Many times, the benefits of an earthly life insurance policy fall short of completely servicing the beneficiaries. Creeping inflation and/or a lightweight policy can fail to cover burial expenses.
Not so our eternal life insurance policy! This heavyweight covenant with Jesus does not cover burial expenses, but readies our post-burial plans for unending enjoyment of the goodness, joyfulness and sheer engrossing wonder of the Creator of us all.
Defying all human understanding and imagination, the mind-bending phenomenon of Jesus’ Easter resurrection – one of us and yet the image of the eternal Father – gives us the one hope that will carry us safely through life’s pains, hardships, sickness and death. Our joyful rally cry is, “Till we meet again in heaven! I’ll see you on the other side!”
This article was originally published in the April 9, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper
