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Apr. 27, 2005 Is dying such a bad thing? Whether or not you’re a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Atheist, dying is not all that terrible. I figure you can look at it from several views. The believer’s viewpoint and the nonbeliever’s viewpoint. The believer’s viewpoint hangs on the idea of a reward after death. If you have followed all the teachings of Jesus and walked as well as you could in his footsteps, you are heading for the golden gates, streets of gold, and all that stuff. If you haven’t lived up to your Jesus-like potential, you will subsequently burn in an eternal fire. The Atheist’s viewpoint is that when you die, you’re dead, no pain, no hell, no heaven…an eternal peace. Of course, it’s not that simple with every religious sect. The definition of what a good a Christian life consists of is debatable. For example, Catholics can commit a million sins and confess them on Saturday, die on Sunday, and go to heaven sometime Sunday afternoon if enough prayers are said. The Mormon Church believes that you must jump through about thirty-two hoops in order to have a decent hereafter (most of the hoops have something to do with giving money to the church). Jehovah Witnesses believe that only a specific amount of their members are going to the main place, the others are stuck on a purified earth (which could only happen if no one lived here for a millennium).
I am generalizing because I don’t know
the complexities of each religious sect in this
country, nor do I want to know them. I do know
many Christians and other religionists practice
their religion in word only. They go to church
on Sunday, pray like hell, and beat their
children senseless on Sunday night. They wake
up Monday morning and testify to their coworkers
how God has lifted them to a higher plane of
existence. I think they call it witnessing. I
know one such Christian. He stands in front of
the choir and flails his hands to some
modernized version of “How Great Thou Art” and
on Monday, he’s hitting on his boss’s wife.
Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of
Christians out there in Christendom that are
sincere in their beliefs and do walk that
invisible line of “goodness and righteousness.”
Still, because one believes in a principle
sincerely does not make the principle in truer.
Just the other day I had a friend tell
me, It all rests on that last statement, the definitive statement for Christianity. “Because it’s in the Bible.” What my friend had a difficult time understanding is that the Bible is called into question. If the Bible is a bunch of poppycock, then religion has no legs. “You must believe it on faith,” is usually a good argument given by believers. It doesn’t hold much water though. I can believe until I’m blue in the face that I’m going to hit the lottery, but my chances of being hit by lightening are greater. Now for the nonbeliever’s point of view, it’s simple. You die and rot. You don’t go to a mythical burning hell, a purified earth, a purified water bottle, or a heaven filled with a bunch of your old Catholic drinking buddies wearing a set of gossamer wings and singing Glory Be To God. The Atheist believes that you lie quietly beneath six feet of soil refurbishing the earth with Carbon (a basic element in almost all things). Personally, I prefer the crematorium. I want my ashes spread across the Wabash River.
Death is a personal thing. I want to
keep mine that way. If it makes you feel better
knowing you have a shot at eternal life, go for
it. Me, I’ll take an eternal sleep and never
wake up. I love to sleep.
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