Everyone alive today has felt the ache of losing someone they love. Death is both the most feared and the most common thread in human experience—a paradox that makes it one of the most profitable industries on earth. Funeral directors play a pivotal role; without them, the grieving would be left in utter disarray. This reality forces a profound question to the surface: which truly holds greater value—life or death? In a strange twist, the reverence shown to the dead is remarkably universal, embraced by virtually every culture.
In most places, the dead seem to command more respect than the living. The quickest path to being honored, ironically, is to die. A clear example sits at the heart of Christianity, where the glory assigned to Jesus focuses overwhelmingly on His death rather than His life. Countless believers express their love for Him through the story of the cross, while the details of His resurrection often fade into the background. For some, Christianity without the cross is simply unimaginable.
If you are barely scraping by in a rural area, you might never see relatives who live far away—but rest assured, many of them will show up to pay their respects once you have passed. Some may even buy an expensive casket to demonstrate how much they cared, never once having asked how you managed to survive during your lifetime. The wealthy, as a result, are the best customers for funeral homes and monument makers. The funeral business remains unmatched in profitability. Death truly takes the crown, for the dead receive more honor than the living. Yet, in all of human history, nothing has been feared more than death—perhaps only the psychopath and the witch seem unafraid of it.
For those who genuinely believe they were created in God’s image, the death occurrence carries little weight. It sits in the equation like a zero—rarely significant. This is why assigning immense importance to dead bodies feels unnecessary. Whether a person is laid to rest in a costly casket or wrapped in an old blanket makes no real difference. Even if their remains were thrown to lions or sold as dog meat, it wouldn’t matter. What truly matters is the spirit, the life force that once animated the body.
Without a clear grasp of human origins, both religious leaders and scholars seem miles away from solving humanity’s deeper troubles. Witches and psychopaths may not receive honor after death, but they still leave loved ones who remember them. Even so, society often shows more reverence for death than for life itself. The Bible, by contrast, gives believers comfort; it explains the meaning of death in a way they can grasp—especially when set alongside life’s meaning.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:15–17, NIV).
The real question is: to whom was God speaking when He addressed the reality of death? The beings created in His image experience death differently from creatures that rely on food to survive and sex to reproduce. Adam, formed from dust, appeared to have limitations unlike his Father, and his creation came only after the rest of Creation had been finished and declared “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Tellingly, his physical body—destined to return to the earth—was not singled out as good.
God would have no need to add anything to a being made in His own image, except one thing: character shaped by free will. Death is the opposite of life, which humans instinctively try to protect—yet, strangely, people often honor death more than life. Before diving into the details of death’s meaning, it is worth pausing to ask what life really is. Why do humans value life more than death, even while treating death as sacred? Jesus’ death on the cross was meant to redeem life. But why is life worth redeeming in the first place?
The dead have no awareness of the physical world. In nature, plants and animals compete for space; they struggle to survive, but they lack awareness of anything beyond survival. A lion wants to live but does not know why. It simply eats and reproduces. The created order has not changed: the lion at creation acted as lions do today. Soil feeds plants, plants feed herbivores, and herbivores feed carnivores.
Without carnivorous species, herbivores would multiply unchecked until they overwhelmed the resources needed for survival. In both the plant and animal kingdoms, there is a remarkable balance—a wisdom in the intricate tapestry of life unmatched by anything else in the world. Yet humanity seems to tell a conflicting story within creation. Where did humans come from, and how are they to find their proper place in the material universe?
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:26–27, NIV).
Here lies the mystery of all time. In the physical universe, everything interlocks to sustain different species. The soil nourishes the grass, which feeds herbivores, which in turn feed carnivores—keeping the system in equilibrium. Whatever dies returns to the earth, enriching the soil and allowing plants to thrive. To the clear-eyed observer, no wisdom surpasses God’s, as displayed in the marvel of creation. Humans, made in God’s image, appear as having initially been placed outside this cycle.
Though entrusted with managing the earth, humans were not part of this intricate system of consumption and decay. There must be a special reason why humans were granted the divine role of caretakers of God’s creation. When viewed with a clear mind, God’s image points to something that cannot die. Applied to humans, God’s image also implies the ability to create, just as God is a creator. The Garden of Eden story illustrates what happened to a man made in God’s image, but it immediately raises a question: how could such a man fall into sin?
Without clear answers, skeptics find it easy to dismiss the Bible. To understand this, we must clarify the meaning and significance of God’s image. Anything made in God’s image reflects Him. Unlike animals that resemble their own kind, humans were made to be God-like. If God is self-sustaining, then humans, too, were designed to be self-sustaining—holding within themselves the answers to life’s toughest questions.
This reveals humanity’s true problem: ignorance. As Hosea declared, “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). Self-sustenance demands character and responsibility; it embraces freedom and independence—concepts that idol-worshippers reject. Just as sustenance requires character and responsibility, self-determination is essential for those made in God’s image, and it is upheld by ethical living. But before self-determination can be exercised, the freedom to choose must first be given. That is why Adam was presented with a choice in the Garden.
By choosing death over life, Adam may have unwittingly set the stage for God’s children to grasp the true value of life. The command to avoid the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was aimed squarely at Adam’s physical being—hence the words, “For dust you are and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19, NIV). The phrase “son of the soil” aligns with that verse and applies, ultimately, to unbelievers rather than to God’s children.
All living things return to the earth, following the natural cycle of birth, growth, decay, and ultimately death—the pattern we see in animals and plants. However, death in that final sense does not apply to those created in God’s image. The warning about dying from eating the forbidden fruit was meant for the physically aware Adam. Spiritually, that death meant separation from God, reducing Adam to an animal-like state.
Some believe that life in the dust was allowed as a way to build character and encourage self-determination. God’s plan of salvation through Jesus addresses precisely this. Jesus never compels anyone to follow Him; it is always a matter of personal choice. That is the essence of self-determination—God lets everyone decide freely. Jesus’ sacrifice simply opened the way for those who choose to accept it (John 3:16).
Although all-knowing, God chooses not to be all-knowing when it comes to the exercise of human will. In Revelation 20, Satan is imprisoned only to be released later to deceive humanity again. Why would God permit this, if not to allow humans the freedom to choose? Even after experiencing the altruistic conditions of Satan’s confinement, many would still follow him. The lake of fire is clearly designated for those who reject God’s Kingdom.
Grace is offered to all, but hardened sinners who side with the devil will still embrace his ways. Who are these people? Before tackling that question, it is important to note that love never forces the willpower. Salvation is fundamentally a choice between altruism and self-centeredness. Final judgment comes at the end, but the consequences of self-centeredness are already disappointingly visible in places like Zimbabwe.
Some people are comfortable with the way things are, while others lose sleep over it. Interestingly, there are believers on both sides. Still, a selfless person cannot feel at ease with Zimbabwe’s governing system, even if it benefits the self-centered. This reflection does not claim to pronounce who will enter God’s Kingdom, but it does make one thing clear: those who invest their energy in death are not the same as those who invest in life.
Those who seem to respect death, and even fear it, are tied to this world—hence the saying, “You reap what you sow.” This world operates like the cycle of plants: sprouting, growing, withering, dying, only to start again. People trapped in that cycle cannot truly flourish, living under conditions that were meant to reflect God’s image.
In time, they find themselves on an unavoidable path toward destruction. Those not of this world do not fear death. To the spiritually aware, death is seen as a gateway to freedom. They are like David, who prayed and fasted for his sick son but, after the boy’s passing, stopped mourning and stopped fasting. People tied to this world could not make sense of David’s actions.
David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and spent the nights lying in sackcloth on the ground. The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground, but he refused, and he would not eat any food with them.
On the seventh day the child died. David’s attendants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they thought, “While the child was still living, he wouldn’t listen to us when we spoke to him. How can we now tell him the child is dead? He may do something desperate.”
David noticed that his attendants were whispering among themselves, and he realized the child was dead. “Is the child dead?” he asked.
“Yes,” they replied, “he is dead.”
Then David got up from the ground. After he had washed, put on lotions, and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. Then he went to his own house, and at his request they served him food, and he ate.
His attendants asked him, “Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!”
He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.” (2 Samuel 12:16–23, NIV)
Fundamentally, a being made in God’s image is not overly concerned about physical death. They survive in this world solely to gather the knowledge they need for salvation. Pain, experienced in the physical body, does not touch the awareness of the human soul. The physical self only matters in relation to the physical world. David understood that a life connected to God outweighs a death tied to the Earth.
For most people, death impacts the genetic body, but the inner self—created in God’s image—died when Adam ate the forbidden fruit: “for on the day when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:17). That moment marked the spiritual death that came from breaking God’s command and underscored the need to rise above a purely physical existence.
Some speculate the forbidden fruit was tied to sexual activity, but that remains conjecture. What is certain is that the man of dust is not the same as the man of the Spirit. We know sex is a natural part of the animal kingdom for reproduction purposes, linking the man of dust firmly to that realm. Yet Galatians 3:28 and Matthew 22:30 make it clear that God’s children are not defined by gender.
When Jesus said nothing is impossible for the faithful, He was speaking about the uniqueness of humans in their original state as God’s image-bearers. This was not about vanity or the current human condition, but about the equal potential that all people have to return to God’s image—regardless of race, skin color, or gender.
In short, nothing surpasses the truth that humans were created in God’s image. Death simply refers to being separated from the God who made humans in His likeness. While the proud may suppress this truth, there is no reason to lose sleep over death itself. What truly deserves our sleepless nights is life itself—and how we choose to live it while we walk this earth.
Andrew Masuku is the author of Dimensions of a New Civilisation, laying down standards for uplifting Zimbabwe from the current state of economic depression into a model for other nations worldwide. A decaying tree provides an opportunity for a blossoming sprout. Written from a Christian perspective, the book is a product of inspiration, relieving those who have witnessed the strings of unworkable solutions, leading to the current economic and social decay. Most Zimbabweans should find the book to be a long-awaited providential oasis of hope, in a simple conversational tone.
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