by sizemik 32 Replies latest jw friends
The fear, in my case, is that it will come before I am ready. Everyone knows it is coming; nobody wants it to come too soon.
If you want to read a good tale about what fear of death can do to individuals and to a society, Tolkien addressed it quite well in his writings on Numenor. The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, appendices to Lord of the Rings, and the Histories all have stuff on the topic.
More than two billion people living today believe that humans have an immortal soul that lives on after the death of their physical body. Within this belief system, eternal torment is one destination. This alone is responsible for some of the fear. How could it not be?
Fear of death?..
How do you know when your dead?..
How can you fear something your never going to know about?..
..........................;-)...OUTLAW
We do it every time we take a nap or go-down for the night,..........
Fear of sleep,....maybe
I don't know if I am scared of death exactly, other than if it would be painful, but rather, it's the shortness of life that is sad.
"Everyone wants to go to Heaven...but nobody wants to die to get there!"
The Apostle Paul said this in Philippians 1.
21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. 22 If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! 23 I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; 24 but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. (NIV)
I'm not afraid of being dead. I'm of the belief that SOMETHING, some energy from us, goes on after death. You can't kill energy. It's what we're made of. It has to go somewhere (that's just my non-university-educated opinion, mind you). Heaven and Hell? Nah...those don't exist. My "Heaven" would be staying around for awhile and watching my children have children...being around them ALL the time without the barriers of distance and someone telling me I can't.
I also believe in re-incarnation. That person you met that you just "clicked" with...the person you started dating that you feel like you've known your whole life...I believe you HAVE known them you're whole EXISTANCE and that's why they are so familiar to you. Your energies have been intertwined in the past. For instance, my mother may have been my daughter in a past life...I have felt more like the rational adult in our relationship than I have the child. My boyfriend? Well, he may have been my husband through several past lives, who knows? I look in his eyes and I KNOW him. He feels like home. I don't know WHY he's so familiar to me...he was from the moment I met him. We've been inseparable ever since. I've read several case studies involving past life regression and most people describe eerily similar experiences following their deaths. Some people think it's a load of bullshit (in fact, I had a guy I work with call it just that...he's a Christian, so I asked him how it is that he can believe good people's spirits go to heaven, but that they cannot come back as someone else...how is that not crazy thinking as well? His answer "There are lots of examples of people who died and came back and saw heaven"... Mine: "Yes, and there are lots of examples of people who have died and REMEMBERED their deaths from their past lives and what they described was very much like what those who had out of body experiences described...So how is one more plausible than the other?". Silence. LOL). I'm still reading and researching the concept, but it "feels" right. And it's a purely scientific thing...no hocus-pocus or god needed. I'm still an Atheist LOL.
I used to be afraid that I wasn't good enough to get to heaven. Not because I had done anything wrong (well not much) but because I knew I was too pathetic a human being to do much good, in other words I felt the weight of failure that pressed upon me because I felt responsible for things outside my scope of influence (starving babies in Africa for example.) Even if I sold everything I had, sacrificed any family hopes I had, focused solely on my career in order to earn more money just to send to Africa and then spent my spare time campaigning for political office so I could influence policy toward helping the starving, still I would be pathetic and would not even scratch the surface of a problem that was outside of my sphere of influence.
The problem was that I could not even justify myself because I knew I would selfishly waste my time in mediocrity, selfishly seek my own happiness and welfare and probably do no more than throw a few coins into a collection box. Faced with this knowledge of myself as fairly powerless but also utterly unjustifiable individual I knew deep down that heaven had no place for me - not because some saviour couldn't pay me in by the back door - but really because I'd know I never deserved it, heaven would be an ever existing reminder of my own failure - like the expensive restaurant dinner you can never pay your share of.
I feared judgement day. I feared the consequences even more. Neither heaven or hell seemed a place where I could call home. And of course I still feared the moment of death , the moment of cessation.
Now - devoid of faith - I no longer fear the aftermath of death. The actual moment still craps me out though.
We could split hairs over whether it's the moment of death, not accomplishing all we would want, or whatever might take place beyond this life . . . but in general . . . death holds out only fears.
If a man says "I'm not afraid of death" . . . and yet after a narrow escape says "I feared for my life" . . . what is he in fear of?
In the moment, most people are probably afraid of death. Survival instinct in us. Some people are ready for it though (terminal sickness; pain - physical or emotional), and accept it gladly.
Some other people live in fear of death.
I am afraid to leave people behind who need me still, namely my children. But even then, afraid isn't the right word... I am sad to think of it, worried about them, worried about things I should have but haven't yet taught them. So I guess that's fear. I know I have no desire to die painfully, but even then the pain is temporary and then its done.
However, I have no fear of being dead.
Peace,
Tammy
