Are you afraid to die?

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I admit Mormons do have some very strange beliefs but to be honest the Mormons I have met were very nice people and didn't seem as judgmental as the Baptists I was used to being around. There were two mormon ladies who used to walk around our neighborhood and they once saw me and my brother struggling to move a heavy carpet into the back of my Mom's truck and they offered to help me and him move it.

I've also heard people say bad things about Catholics but the ones I have met seemed pretty nice and I hear that Catholic charities do more to help people in need than any other charity organization.

Recently the Mormons are experiencing many of their kids and teenagers committing suicide due to the extremism of the religious order. It's a tragic epidemic that reflects the extremism from the leaders and many of the people within.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin ... 98286.html

Personally, I'm a Jesuit - the most liberal branch, but at the time it was less advanced on some things - that had to go through four years of a highly focused religious training and prep work for a private high school. The "if you don't believe, you go to hell" notion extreme branches had was always seen as just that - extremism.

I think it's interesting how Christains view suicide as an unforgivable sin but in Japan it was traditionally viewed as a way of redeeming yourself if you were a failure (probably one of the reasons why suicide is so high among the population in Japan).

But I think any human being deciding to end their own life is very tragic and I have been down that path before myself. Sometimes it's hard to talk people out of suicide if life just plain sucks for them.

Here's the thing - stringent thinking in that again is extremism.

In high school when our teachers (whose focus is religion, many of which were priests) were asked, they'd say that while suicide is seen as a sin, God would show mercy if that person otherwise led a good and productive life in the service of others. Basically God isn't going to send Ghandi to hell just because he got depressed and killed himself (he didn't, but theoretical).

Keep in mind, I'm a Jesuit.

Part of me wants to believe that if God really does exist and he is as merciful and forgiving as people say he is than he will forgive anybody of any sin as long as they are truly sorry about what they did.

I feel like some people who commit suicide have hit rock bottom in their lives and want to die because they feel some sort of unbearable guilt and they don't think they deserve to live anymore. If they were bad people all their lives but they decided to take their own lives because they felt guilty about it then maybe they would be forgiven just as long as they were truly sorry?

Maybe I'm actually more agnostic than I am atheist.

I think my own biggest fear goes along these lines:

When I was six or seven I was a really big-hearted kid. That got scraped away over the years. By my teen years I may have had 3/4 of it left, by my late 20's maybe 2/3's of it left, by my early 30's maybe half of it left, I sometimes think I'm dipping closer to 1/3 remaining. I sometimes wonder, if I die in my 80's and things continue on this trajectory, what will be left of me? Such things, as the weathering involved, aren't necessarily always a matter of choice and my best efforts to stave that off may only get me so far. It would deeply grieve me if I ended up some place really bitter, nasty, etc. because it's never what I've wanted for myself and I've fought the push down that path tooth and nail.

You know I think the reason some people fear the idea of no longer existing after death is because while you may no longer experience the bad things like pain, hunger, and sadness you also will no longer get to experience the good things like pleasure, love, and joy.

When you are dead you won't consciously exist anymore and everything you have ever possibly cared about and everybody you have ever loved will disappear. You also will leave behind unfulfilled dreams and wishes that will never come true.

You may no longer experience the bad things in life but you also won't experience the good things in life ever again.

It's a really terrifying and depressing thought.

^^^that is one of the reasons why I believe in reincarnation.

Only when I'm happy. When I'm sad I don't mind that I'm going to die.

As much as I fear death I think I wouldn't care about dying if my life was completely destroyed. Like if I was locked away in prison for the rest of my life or everybody in my family was killed or if I ended up homeless with no hope of ever getting back on my feet.

If you sit on a beach and watch a wave crash ashore, you might think it's destroyed in the process. However, if you consider the true nature of waves, they're made entirely of water. When the wave breaks, that's just it's outer form; the water isn't hurt at all; it simply returns to the ocean from whence it came, and from whence it never really left. So it is with us.

Over 150,000 people die every day; nearly two every second. It's as natural a part of life as birth. There's nothing to fear from death.

There's lots of things to fear from death imo. The physical pain, leaving loved ones behind (especially if you have children I imagine), realizing that you will never get to fulfill your goals or dreams, never getting to experience earthly joy or pleasure again, etc.

You may no longer experience the bad things about life once you are dead but you will never again experience the good things about life either.

I would separate the act of dying from being dead. I think everyone to a person would fear the act of dying.

The only thing I fear about being dead is any pain or sadness my wife and kids would feel and any struggle they may have getting on without me.

If I was exactly the same person as I am now but without having any family, I would have no fear of being dead at all. When I'm gone, I'm gone.

I think the one thing everybody fears about the act of dying is the pain and the fear.

There really is no "painless" way to die, only quick death or slow death. People always put up a struggle when they are dying no matter what that method of dying is.

Also I think the idea of not knowing what happens to us after death can be terrifying for some people.

Some people do die in their sleep. Others die in a manner that's so instantaneous that their nervous system doesn't have time to register pain.

My father was in a coma for nearly a month and regained consciousness. He claimed to have been back to his childhood home in _____, and that he had 'flown' there with wings. He didn't believe us that he had been in hospital the whole time. He was adamant that he was with his parents playing with his dog, and being a little boy. No one had ever heard of my father's family having a dog. In fact, my father and his parents didn't like dogs at all. But, my father insisted and said it had been a big black dog named _____. (His parents had passed by this time and couldn't confirm). Dad described flying over the hospital and how nice it was to go back in time. Of course he wasn't 'dead' during this but it still gives me comfort. This was 17 years ago. About two years ago my family found a black and white picture of my father as a four year old boy sitting on a front step of a house with a big black dog behind him. I'm debating attaching it for you guys.

When my father was in the stages of final death (8 months after the coma), he reported he was on a cruise ship watching the waves and that his parents were there waiting for him. I hold these memories dear. He wasn't in imminent pain at the end. In fact, he was quite at peace mentally.