Death

Did you watch the Simpsons to cheer you up afterwards?

I will take a look at both of these.

I do remember seeing how many people have died in various plagues – some not all that long ago. Both my grandparents had mild polio and I have a 2nd cousin that lived for 30 years in an iron lung and was paralyzed.

I guess that is what kept populations in check in the past.

That’s another little contradiction I push through. Pre FC I was suffering from scrupulosity. I feared death because there was no way I’d be found worthy, no way. Post FT I felt a new found peace but death is still unsettling. I suppose that’s the constant.

I didn’t arrive at that peace by abandoning faith, rather if I am to believe that there is an afterlife and a final judgment I’ve got to believe that god will use it as a process to uplift rather than to damn. I’ve seen mortal men help lift people out of sin by showing them compassion rather than punishment, why wouldn’t god do the same? Either way I feel in a better place post FC. That’s a good feeling, but there’s still that itch. Sometimes I have to take a step back and remind myself that people have been struggling with this one since the dawn of mankind and it’s not like I’m going to magically figure it out in one afternoon by furrowing my brow extra hard.

For me, it happens – and I either will understand it then or not, depending on what happens.

My father’s death (and that of my father-in-law) made me think about it more than usual, but, honestly, I almost never think about it. I’m much more an in-the-moment person who plans for the future but doesn’t fret about it.

That said, I encounter moments of profound sadness when I remember I won’t see my wife or kids again and for those periods of time this life seems hollow and meaningless. I wonder if as I approach death whether the belief of no afterlife will bother me.

I am a strong proponent that our family will be together forever no matter what. I have come up with different possibilities where that will be fulfilled.

1) I like to imagine a heaven where we can stay in contact.

2) We have a family burial plott.

3) We will all meet the same fate and be reunited in our shared condition of death.

In a way, I am bending definitions to fit my parameters. I am ok with that. :thumbup:

Hey, Nibbler… great topic.

My faith crisis led me to Christianity for awhile, but eventually landed me in Atheism. For me, at least, the single worst thing about Atheism is the belief that there is no afterlife. But not so much for me. I accept that I will vanish from existence someday and I am more or less OK with that idea. Yet, when I am confronted with the death of others, that is when Death has a Sting. The other day I had a few moments, so I called and talked to one of my kids. It was a great conversation. I was so happy to have the opportunity. After I hung up, I had the thought pop into my mind that I hadn’t talked to my dad for awhile, and that I should call him. The thought lingered for about 0.5 seconds and then sucked the air out of me. My dad has been gone for years. He was a wonderful man. His sudden, progressive, devastating and short-lived illness left children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in a shock that has not gone away all this long time later. I found it an especially bitter pill to swallow because of my belief that there is no entity that exists now that was once my father. He only now exists in our memories. A new generation will rise that didn’t know him and my generation will fade; taking those memories with us. Even writing this causes the tears to well up in me. Over the intervening years, I have often thought of experiences that he and I shared together, with no one else. It is bitter-sweet to think of those things. Sweet, for obvious reasons, but bitter, because of my perspective that I alone have any recollection of those events. It is as if they only exist in my own mind.

IMO, religion probably appeared when we first became aware of mortality. It’s one of the reasons that I don’t particularly care to argue against religious belief or for Atheism. My father went to his grave believing in an afterlife and it gave him comfort. I’m happy that many of you believe in an afterlife. I hope I’m wrong and you are right. Nothing would make me happier than to wake up on the other side and find JS there ushering me toward the line heading to the Great Bar of God, and telling me, “Brother On, you are probably not heading to the Celestial Kingdom, but I think you’ll still like where you wind up. It’s glorious and beautiful.” To which I will reply, “Sounds good. Do you know if my dad is around?”

How do you cope with your own mortality? Do you still find comfort in or expect an afterlife.

Perhaps I sound cliche, but reflecting on it since my father was taken from cancer, I think it’s important to live in the present and make my days and choices count.

I believe in an afterlife. I have a friend who is a nurse on a oncology floor in the hospital working mostly with patients who die while there. Many of my friend’s experiences are very spiritual, very much like the veil is thin, as she describes it, ushering the soul from one state to another. I guess I see it as part of a plan.

However, I am almost agnostic about knowing what is next…just have faith it is something. It has to be.

I read Tuesdays With Morrie.

I liked that book.

I read that book and in the same week stumbled across Elder Oaks’ talk “The Challenge to Become”. It did make me ponder about how I want to conduct myself, who I want to connect with, and what things matter to me in this world.

It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions. The commandments, ordinances, and covenants of the gospel are not a list of deposits required to be made in some heavenly account. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan that shows us how to become what our Heavenly Father desires us to become.

….

I hope the importance of conversion and becoming will cause our local leaders to reduce their concentration on statistical measures of actions and to focus more on what our brothers and sisters are and what they are striving to become.

Our needed conversions are often achieved more readily by suffering and adversity than by comfort and tranquillity…

We do not obtain our heavenly reward by punching a time clock. What is essential is that our labors in the workplace of the Lord have caused us to become something. For some of us, this requires a longer time than for others. What is important in the end is what we have become by our labors. Many who come in the eleventh hour have been refined and prepared by the Lord in ways other than formal employment in the vineyard.

…

Instead of being judgmental about others, we should be concerned about ourselves. We must not give up hope. We must not stop striving. We are children of God, and it is possible for us to become what our Heavenly Father would have us become.

These words were meaningful to me.

I look at death as a relief from things that I suffer with right now. I have circumstances I can’t change that are hard to deal with in some ways. Those will change at death. I feel this particularly when I have to battle certain kinds of challenges that overtake me for usually a couple weeks at a time.

I have a belief I will continue to exist, and when I die, there will be new information about mortality, and eternity (potentially). Not just doled out, or revealed in its entirety, but there WILL be new circumstances to deal with, and this may give further clues about issues that religion, in this life, claims to enlighten us about. There will definitely be validation or disconfirmation of Mormon concepts, which are more specific about features of the next life. And naturally, deceased Mormons there will have their own justifications about why discrepancies exist — and there MAY WELL be continued confusion.

I have a hunch that the uncertainty about truth will continue though. I am not sure why, but I don’t believe that upon death, I will suddenly know all things. That seems too easy and unlike the patterns in this life.

And regrettably, the kind of personal hell that John Milton described in Paradise Lost will likely exist there. In Paradise lost, Milton said “which way I fly is hell — myself am hell” [what satan said] will likely come with me. The ways in which repetitive thoughts cause torment to my soul — I think it’s naive to think those will suddenly disappear in the next life.

I also believe the kind of external pressure this life puts on us to keep working will exist there too. I have seen how the human spirit reacts when it gets too much, too easily. It leads to complaining, escalating demands, lack of performance — I believe the human race needs external constraints on them to keep the world functioning at a basic level [this is not an endorsement of tithing though). And in the next life, we will HAVE to work to sustain ourselves somehow. I am not sure how, if we are indeed spirits without bodies for a time, but I suspect the next world, if it exists, will have similar constraints that force us to work. Eternity, if it exists, is too long to let people sit around in laziness, and even disembodied spirits will likely have needs that are too limitless to be met, without the work of other people.

I don’t feel afraid of it at this point. I believe that on my deathbed I will be very curious. If not in too much pain, yet sentient, it will be like a new experience that I look forward to, for its novelty.

How will God react to me when I cross to the other side? I don’t know really. I hope he sees all the good I have done outside of the church, that he recognizes the many sacrifices I made to be a good Mormon for many years. The sacrifices I made for my children and my wife. And that he will acknowledge that this life is full of uncertainty about truth. We can’t even trust our own church to be honest with us about its history, or to live up to its own values on matters such as adoption, faith in members’ ability to live the commandments, etcetera.