by Mysterious 20 Replies latest jw friends
JW's say they are the only ones not afraid of death because only they have a hope. How wrong, most people have a hope in an afterlife and ressurection.
As a JW I used to be terrified as I got older because I kept being told I was never going to age. Now I look forward to the natural progression of life, aging and death. I have no fear of dieing, I would only be sad of leaving loved ones behind.
It's a long weekend so it's time to bring out a big issue, death. I know it's something most ex-jws (at least for a while) struggle with when they exit the organization
We can all see that when we die this physical body deteriorates and disappears. Some of us hope that our spirit, soul moves on to someplace better. No one can prove that we do as far as I have seen. Given the above I try not to spend to much time thinking about it. If you have your health enjoy the life you have today. Dont worry about the life you may or may not have 100 years from now.
Last week I lost my grandmother. She was 85. She loved me very much, and I was very sad and cried some time, until her funeral's end.
From her point of view, I thought she fully enjoyed her life after her husband passing away 20 years ago. She was very outgoing and lots of friends, contributed to local activities. So her death makes me ponder about how I live until the end.
When I realised that my dream of living forever was no more than that, it took me a while to reconcile myself to the fact that one day I will actually die, but I've kind of got used to the idea that that will happen sooner or later, hopefully later, and I don't really think about it much. I certainly don't fear it as much as I did when I was a jw.
Yeah, the thought of death freaked me out when I first left. My boyfriend at the time said "everyone dies eventually" and he couldn't understand that I was born thinking I was never going to die and was going to live forever. It took some time, but I now know I am going to die one day and I am okay with that. My husband says "If I live till I'm 80 I will be doing good".
Purza
Windchime-I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your grandmother!
Being a nurse for so long, I've had to deal with every kind of death there is. I thought I had accepted death as part of the cycle of life. But when my dad died last month, it really hit. I mean I still know it's just part of life's circle- birth, living, dying......But, that made me look at myself. I've tried to get along better with my mother. Yea, she's a jw, and gets under my skin, but I love her.
Everyone has their own take on what happens after death.
Like Tim McGraw says "gonna live until I die!"
shelley
Have faith in what God says. He says in the Bible there will be a Paradise, New Heavens and a New Earth. Have Faith. DO not judge yourself. Only God and Jesus can make that call. They can see a lot more than we ever will be able to. I see your only 31. I didnt realize when I was 31 that the bible was just a book of contradiction and confusion.
I was right around 40, and still a JW elder, when I realized I was going to grow old and die - just like everyone else. It really threw me for a loop, and was the beginning of the end for me as far as the JWs were concerned. Before the end of that decade of my life, I was long gone from the Witnesses.
It's part of why I took the name Seeker4 - I was seeking for some answers to the REALLY BIG questions of life.
The answers have been interesting: The Bible is an awkward collection of myth, rewritten history and just plain madness, as is true with most sacred texts, and it's a very serious mistake to take them as literal or divinely inspired. There are no gods, and there is no life other than this one. Some will say, "Well, we don't really know that for sure," but, considering the total lack of evidence to the contrary, I feel pretty safe in drawing those conclusions! Anyone who believes contrarily is just deluding themselves, and you've got the right to do that.
We need to live the life we've been given now to the very best of our ability. Good work, good friends, creating, loving, laughing - whatever it is that gives us satisfaction and joy. No one is really going to change the world all that much, but we should do what little we personally can to make it a better place for our having been here.
I've come to see death as an integral part of all this. I don't fear my death, but I do want to feel that I've lived well. I am saddened, not at the prospect of going out of existence, but of losing contact with my family, friends, this lovely earth and my work.
We didn't exist, we appear for a short moment in time, and we disappear again. Make the best of it. And it seems likely, if anyone watched the 20/20 program last week, that at some moment in the next few billion years, a cosmic fart of enormous proportions will engulf us in a massive gamma ray bombardment that will snuff all life out in a nano-second, and we'll never see it coming.
S4
Born again Christians don't worry about it.
And just as it is appointed for people to die once—and after this, judgment — so also the Messiah , having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him. Heb 9:27-28
Do not be amazed at this, because a time is coming when all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come out—those who have done good things, to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked things, to the resurrection of judgment. John 5:28-29
...if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9
For me I am not sure I really could comprehend living forever, I could think about being alive today and I would want to be alive tommorrow so I could carry that through and so living forever was maybe okay.
So it was not an issue that bothered me on coming out. I still feel that I want to be alive tomorrow and so on. I may be wrong, but as you get to an old age you will start to accept and come to terms with death. Having said that, I feel very sad at funerals when you see and feel the pain of bereaved ones somehow death doesn't seem fair.
Sseeker4 sums it up for me
We need to live the life we've been given now to the very best of our ability. Good work, good friends, creating, loving, laughing - whatever it is that gives us satisfaction and joy. ;No one is really going to change the world all that much, but we should do what little we personally can to make it a better place for our having been here.
