I’m continually perplexed by Christians who fear death. If heaven is so wonderful, shouldn’t we welcome the opportunity to go there as soon as possible? A funeral today is often called a celebration of life, but for a Christian with a strong faith should it not actually be a celebration of death?
Fear of death typically comes under two categories — fear of the pain of dying and fear of the unknown.
Do you remember a parent yanking the band-aid from your skinned knee, and then being surprised that it wasn’t as painful as you expected? Dying slowly means more pain. It may be spread out over time and therefore seem like less pain (or “managed” pain, as they like to say), but it’s still more pain. If a hospice care provider says they can alleviate 100% of the pain in all cases, they’re lying.
Fear of the unknown keeps many people stuck, whether in something as mundane as an unfulfilling job or as unhealthy as an abusive relationship. Most people won’t change their behavior or circumstances until the fear of the unknown becomes greater than the pain of the known. But the converse is also true — when the pain of the known becomes unbearable, the fear of the unknown doesn’t matter.
Death is the big unknown. Or is it?
Vince was a patient in the VA hospital where I served as a chaplain resident. He was the calmest hospital patient I’ve ever seen. He had a cough that wouldn’t go away, and his contented smile remained even when the possibility of cancer was mentioned. He had a twinkle in his eye as if he’d just won the lottery but couldn’t tell anyone. When the hospital staff were out of the room, he told me about a near-death experience from years earlier, and how the experience completely erased any fear of death.
I heard similar stories from other patients, each telling of an absolute and indescribable sense of peace. No pain. No fear. My hospice patients are also typically unafraid of death. Doris was the first who said she was actually looking forward to it. She had that same twinkle.
For Christians, fear of the unknown often translates into not knowing whether they will go to heaven. In other words, fear of hell.
Many modern depictions of hell use imagery traceable to Inferno, the first part of the epic Divine Comedy written by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in 1321. You may be surprised to learn that Dante’s hell — eternal torment surrounded by flames — cannot be found in the original Hebrew scriptures, the New Testament Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, or the letters attributed to Paul of Tarsus.
The concept of burning in hell was virtually unheard of throughout Christendom until the second century after Jesus’ crucifixion. In 151 CE, Justin Martyr wrote about eternal fire, but even that was not necessarily the kind of fire we equate with flames. It could easily have been a reference to the fire associated with passion or desire, just as a thirst for knowledge has nothing to do with water.
References to eternal fire or eternal punishment appeared only sporadically for the next two centuries. In the Middle Ages, church writers invented the terms hell and purgatory (with absolutely no Biblical basis), but they weren’t popularized until Dante combined them with elements of Greek and Roman mythology to create descriptions so vivid that they became the basis for all artistic representations. If you fear death because you fear spending eternity with demons and fire, it was mostly a figment of Dante’s imagination.
I wonder if Paul had that twinkle and contented smile when he wrote to the church of Corinth, “Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting.” Maybe Paul knew what Vince and Doris knew.
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Kevin Bradley is a stress management counselor, public speaker, writer, and interfaith chaplain. He is a member of Final Exit Network’s Board of Directors and Speakers Bureau.
Great blog post! Anthropologists have written that humans are the only animals capable of being aware of their own mortality. If true, the unknowable reality of death is an inevitable part of being human. But fear or joy is optional. I want to face death with “a peaceful easy feeling” as expressed in the lyrics of the 1970s Eagles’s hit song.
Fascinating. I’ve never read the e Testament, so thought the heaven-hell nonsense came from there. Good to learn it shouldn’t be credible even to Christians. Thank you.
I should clarify — the word “hell” actually is in the Bible, but it wasn’t there until the first English translations, which incorrectly translated both Sheol and Gehenna as “hell”. Sheol was a mythical place in Rabbinic Jewish literature where everyone went after death, but it wasn’t equated with punishment. Gehenna was a valley in Jerusalem where some kings of Judah reportedly sacrificed children (sometimes with fire), and bodies of crucifixion victims were burned. It was considered a cursed place to be avoided. It probably didn’t take all that much imagination on Dante’s part to combine those two concepts into his Inferno. The fact that he wrote in both Latin and the Tuscan vernacular gave him a wider readership than others. But you’re right — any Christian interested in separating myth from fact should not consider the modern church’s teachings of hell to be credible.
I have always been bemused by the astounding lengths to which some very religious believers (of any faith) go in order to delay entering their Eternal Paradise. So I found this blog very illuminating in helping understand the mindset that may make it easier for the atheist to face oblivion, than for the believer to face judgment. Thanks for this very informative article.
I became a hospice volunteer because I had a NDE when I was 13 yrs. old. I found out how and why humans and all animals have life after death. I was dead 45 minutes and was resuscitated. Inside all humans and animals is a second body that’s not made out of the same atomic structure as physical bodies are. So when a physical body dies, the person or animal comes out in that second body. Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Sikhs know about that body. Hindus and Yogis call it the Astral Body. It’s real. It can do things that can’t be done in physical bodies. Such freedom there is in that body!! It can’t get sick and rarely can die. Many people are very frightened of death because Christians, Jews, Moslems and numerous other people don’t know about that body. It’s such a shame they don’t. My job as a hospice volunteer is to tell people who are so frightened about that body and how easy it is to come out in it and it’s not scary at all. Physical death is not the horrific thing so many people think it is. I had a wonderful experience, very interesting and I learned a lot. I’m very fortunate that I had that experience because I’m not in the least bit afraid of death and I can contribute my bit to getting people over their fear of death.
Mary — Perhaps the “soul” in Christianity and the astral body are the same thing.
Perhaps the fear is caused by some uncertainty in the belief of the promised after life.
As an ex-Catholic (left the church over 60 years ago) I still remember the horror stories told by the nuns when describing what hell would be like. The eternal anguish and suffering and the constant punishment would scare any kid. They don`t scare my Atheist mind anymore but I suspect many believers carry these stories in their sub-conscious. One nun went to great lengths to tell us how long one second in Hell would be; she said if you took a solid granite stone the size of the earth and dropped one drop of water on it once a year, by the time it took for the water to wear a hole through the granite that would equal one second in Hell. Wow ! Most polls show that the more religious a person is the more likely they are to request that they be kept alive at all costs. Other polls say that 95% of believers polled believe that they`re going to Heaven even though their Bible tells them differently. So I think part of Christians fear of death is from those horror stories about Hell deep in their sub-conscious. That`s a layman`s thoughts anyway. For me I`d like my final message to the world to be; “For billions of years I was not. For (x) number of years I was. Now I am not again….for eternity.”
Christians in a right relationship with God and His Son, Jesus Christ, do not fear death. Roman Catholics believe they may face purgatory for a time, but heaven awaits them eventually. Other Christians also know the same. If a Christian has doubts about his or her relationship with Jesus Christ, the end of life is a good time to mend that relationship. Some of the best deaths I know are those where Christians surround their love one with prayers, Scripture readings, singing favorite hymns or playing other Christian music. God willing, I’ll have a priest or deacon bring me Holy Communion daily during my dying days. If at all possible, I want to pass into the arms of Jesus with the words of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus in my ears!
Hope you get your wish Sue McKeown. As for me I`m perfectly content knowing that upon my death I will quietly enter the nothingness of death. “Our lives are but a brief flash of light between the two eternal voids.” (Not sure who said that but I agree) But for my believing friends, I wish them well and would not doubt their beliefs about the an afterlife.
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