Christian Philosophy on Death Essay

The Christian philosophy on death has long been that there is life after death. â€Å"Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.† (2 Corinthians 5: 8) We are supposed to take solace in the fact that while although our earthly body will be no more, our spirit or soul will move on into immortality. Since life after death seems like a simple enough concept, death should be no big deal, right? We should just view it as a step in becoming closer to God. While in theory, we should just take death in stride, even for those who wholeheartedly believe in life after death find it difficult to accept death. We find it difficult to visualize and conceptualize the afterlife and what our role will be in it. People cope with death differently. Some choose to combat it head on, others choose to simply ignore it all together. However most people fall somewhere in between those two extremes. â€Å"Dying person will use belief systems as the y have throughout there entire life-constructively, destructively, or not at all† This saying generally tends to hold true as one dies. All people cope with death differently however, by in large, most people go through some form of Kà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½bler-Ross model of grieving. The Kubler-Ross model contains five stages that people go through while contemplating their own death. The first stage is denial. In this stage the person grieving thinks that â€Å"This can’t be happening.† In the second stage, anger, the griever says, â€Å"Why me? It’s not fair?!† (either referring to God, oneself, or anybody perceived, rightly or wrongly, as â€Å"responsible†) The third stage is bargaining. In this stage, the dying person says, â€Å"I know its me but†¦Ã¢â‚¬  or â€Å"Please just let me live to see†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"The bargaining can be directed toward God which if the bargain is perceived as accepted can lead to a sense of hope or resignation, or anger, guilt, or fear if the bargain is perceived as denied†. The fourth stage is depression, which is arguably the hardest to go through. During the depression stage the dying person takes time to grieve his/her own death. The final stage is acceptance in which the dying person is â€Å"ready to go†. While not everyone goes through these stages in exactly this order, almost everyone goes through these stages in one form or another. They may experience the stages out of order, skip a stage, or even go through the cycle multiple times. There is also a belief that people have three spiritual needs of dying people: the search for the meaning of life, to die appropriately, and to find hope that extends beyond the grave. The search for the meaning of life takes on a higher priority when one is closer to death. â€Å"The knowledge of impeding death creates a crisis in which one reviews life in order to integrate one’s goals, values, and experiences. Without finding their life’s meaning one may feel that their life had no meaning. Another spiritual need is to die appropriately. â€Å"People want to die in ways consistent with their own self-identity.† Most people want to die a quick death surrounded by fantasy, however this is only the case for a lucky few. â€Å"People fear not so much the fact of death but more the process of dying.† The final spiritual need is to find hope in life after death. Life after death is an integral part of many faiths and religions. â€Å"We seek assurance in some way that our life, or what we left, will continue.† We all want some sort of life after death, because the thought of death being the ends of things can be an awful thing to think about. Oftentimes during class or discussions on death, I find myself questioning my own faith and trying to imagine what it would be like if I wasn’t on earth anymore. I guess to be more specific what it would be like if my mind or soul did not continue on in some way, shape, or form. The thought of the world around me going on without me often leads to a chilling feeling and a headache. I almost prefer just to shut down, effectively turning off my ears to the discussion around me. Doing that just seems easier than thinking of the what-ifs that the thought of no life after death means. I believe in God, that there is a life after death, and that my soul and mind will exist eternally. However, it is still hard for me to shake that feeling that comes with thinking about death. If I am getting these chilling feelings while thinking of death as a teenager, I can only imagine the thoughts running through peoples heads while they are on their deathbeds. While it is easy to dwell on the negatives that death presents, there are other ways to approach death. Some people handle death with much grace, accepting their fate and using the time allotted to them to try to make their last days count. No one exemplifies this more that Morrie Schwartz from Tuesdays with Morrie. Morrie rather than overly dwell on the fact that he was dying, chose to take the time he had left on earth to explain dying to the world. His advice such as â€Å"When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.† and â€Å"Love each other or perish.† are just two of the numerous tings that Morrie has tried to teach us. If we could all handle death as gracefully as Morrie did, death wouldn’t be nearly as big a deal to people. Morrie teaches us that there is a time to be three and a time to be sixty-three. Morrie tells us that death is just as much a fact of life as a birthday or getting married. Morrie sets a high standard for coping with a terminal illness. We can also look to the Bible to give us God’s take on death and life after death. The Catholic faith believes that no matter what there is life after death. Whether that life after death takes place in heaven or hell depends largely on how you live your life here on earth. â€Å"Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who†¦will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.† (Philippians 3: 20, 21) Through the belief in God and living according to his commandments we can attain a life after death. â€Å"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.† (1 Corinthians 15:51-57)