What is the appropriate way of letting people know that an acquaintance or friend has died? This can be a real problem. As a pastor for many years, it was too often my duty to announce to the congregation the death of one of our members and friends. It seemed abrupt and unmannerly to say to worshipers, “Our friend John died last night.”

Some people use metaphors to avoid being indecorous or indelicate. They think that “passed away,” “gone to her reward,” and “shuffled off this mortal coil” — whatever that means — softens the blow.

I understand the desire to spare people pain. When I was in sixth grade, my brother died, and I carried his death inside of me, a sword that had pierced my own soul. Life went on, but the sword remained. I never wanted to think about my brother’s death, and I hated to hear other people speak about it. When my best friend’s younger brother said to me, “Your brother died!” it felt as if he had twisted the blade that was lodged in my soul.

Because of that experience, I have tried to be tactful, delicate even, when speaking of someone’s death. But I have also been dissatisfied with euphemisms like, “he passed away,” or workarounds like, “he’s gone to heaven.”

What is wrong with saying that someone “passed away,” or as some people say, with even greater economy, “he passed”? There is nothing wrong with it, but it is imprecise. They passed? Passed what? Were they driving a car? Passed where? I would understand, “They passed this way,” but not “they passed away” — away to where?

“Passed away” is not only imprecise; it has negative overtones in the Bible. St. Paul, for example, says that the world in its present form is passing away. The Apostle John claims that the darkness is passing away, as well as the “world and its lusts.” Their future is inconsequential. They are passing away never to return. Should we really use the same term to speak of friends and family members we hope to see again?

The biblical understanding of the fate of those who die in Christ is entirely in the other direction. They do not pass away, as if they slowly receded from sight and from importance. They do not become phantoms or shadows, the mere echoes of a life once possessed. That idea belongs to paganism, to Homer and the ancient Greeks, not to Jews and Christians in the biblical tradition.

The Bible teaches that God’s people, those who have received the life of the age to come through faith in Jesus, become more consequential — one could almost say, “more real.” They are said to “appear” when Christ appears. It is their “coming out” party, their debut, when they are finally revealed for who they really are.

There are biblically appropriate ways for saying that someone has died. We can say that they have “gone to be with Jesus.” This has the advantage of reflecting biblical usage, for “to depart and be with Christ… is better by far.” We can also say that “they are with the Lord,” and so echo the Apostle Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5.

What underlies our fear of indelicacy and tactlessness is a profound fear of death. We would prefer not to talk about it at all. Our culture hides death behind hospital and nursing home doors. More and more people are foregoing funeral services, choosing instead to have a “gathering of remembrance” — or no gathering at all. We, like the people of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke, “have entered a covenant with death.” We’ll avoid it and hope it avoids us. We won’t even mention it. We’ll use euphemisms instead.

It is better, at least when speaking of someone who died with faith in God, to say forthrightly, “He died.” We can skip the euphemisms. We need not fear being indelicate because we need not fear death, which was “abolished” when Christ brought “life and immortality to light.”

In the biblical view, it is death that passes away; it is not the people who belong to God. They “go from strength to strength, till each appears before God.”

— Shayne Looper is a writer and speaker based in Coldwater, Michigan. Contact him at salooper57@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Shayne Looper: How to tell people that a friend has died