I'd hope lingering pernicious doubts regarding failing to observe dietary restrictions, wearing linsey woolsie clothing, handling deadly serpents, and/or divorce-remarriage coupled with scripture itself guarantying Salvation for only 144,000 souls would have most all Christers pondering just how bad those upcoming eternal boiling magma enemas are going to hurt.

I think fear of death is pretty instinctive. We may *know* we will be going on to the next life, but it still takes a tremendous amount of faith in order to not be afraid of something we are instinctively meant to be afraid of.

With that being said, there have been plenty of Saints who were not afraid of death and were martyrs.

Well that's the story, isn't it.  The truth of it is another question.

The odds of being in the 'correct' Christian denomination are tiny*, and if it turns out some obscure sect of Zeus-ism is correct, then those odds for all Christians are absolutely zero.

Zip.

Nada.


*and any one of them we've ever discussed here since my arrival is demonstrably false due to the inevitable demonstration of at least a single internal inconsistency, and in some instances (LDS springs to mind) we've discovered virtually the entirety of the founding documents to have been subsequently debased and many were hideously flawed to begin with.

(January 29, 2016 at 3:17 pm)Old Baby Wrote: In my 30+ years of Christianity, I never understood why Christians who were so confident in their eternal destiny would panic over illness and fight so hard to cling to life.  I honestly believed that I would thank God if I ever contracted a terminal illness, because that would mean I was close to my eternal rewards.  You would think that everyone would have felt that way -- that a cancer diagnosis would just mean that God has marked them either for a miracle or at very least a promotion to eternity. 

Instead, I watched through the years as people immediately turned to science to save them (giving God credit of course) and going through the same chemo and radiation treatment as all those folks who didn't have heaven to look forward to.  Then, if they died the brethren would say "The Lord healed them by taking them home to their glorified body" or if they recovered we would praise God for a miracle, even though the sick person was treated by doctors just like everyone else.

Easy. They were hypocrites. Most people in America are as religious as I am, i.e., not at all. But that means they haven't done the mental homework and realized that it's amazing they lived at all. Too bad for them.

I think there was a song that goes "Lord I want to go to heaven, but I don't want to go today". People who enjoy this life are not going to want to leave it behind even if they think they're going to heaven. And of course most people are agnostic about their faith anyway. It's hard not to be.

Same reason everyone else is.

The show's over...
It was nice while it lasted.

Thank you mother nature for busting your guts for 4 billion years to give us a small glimpse of your wondrous universe.

Hmm.   I did have a great-aunt who . . . seemed without fear, even joyous. 
She was 94 years old, and contracted pneumonia, and refused any major treatment.  She told family and the doctors that she was old, she was tired, and she wanted to see her family and friends in heaven and meet Jesus.  So they just gave her pain meds and whatever made it a bit easier to breathe.  I was holding her hand at the end, and she seemed to know the moment - she told everyone in the room, individually, something that she thought made us special and that she loved us, she looked around the room and said "I love you all", and then closed her eyes.  She was gone a minute later.
     I really hope I get to do the same thing when it's my time - without the "meet Jesus" part.

(January 29, 2016 at 6:59 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: I think fear of death is pretty instinctive. We may *know* we will be going on to the next life, but it still takes a tremendous amount of faith in order to not be afraid of something we are instinctively meant to be afraid of.

With that being said, there have been plenty of Saints who were not afraid of death and were martyrs.

I agree. Instinctive is the key word. We all want to avoid pain, and with death there will be pain no matter what. No one really knows exactly what will happen, no matter what anyone says or thinks. Some think nothing will happen and it will just be the end of thinking and consciousness. We are all humans, even Christians, Jews, Muslims, Atheists all have an idea or faith in what they think will happen, but who really knows, that's what makes it scary. The closer you are to death, the more real it becomes. Why would an atheist who believes nothing will happen be afraid to die? Even they would fear the unknown, or not being able to be in this existence.

How many people here have been close to being killed for example? I have. I worked at a fast food restaurant, and after closing one night, two guys broke in to rob the place, with one holding a gun to my head threatening to kill me repeatedly, while the other broke into the safe. I knew of near death experiences, but at that moment it all became real where I really thought this could be it, I actually might die, and I wasn't prepared for it.

(January 29, 2016 at 8:34 pm)Chad32 Wrote: I think there was a song that goes "Lord I want to go to heaven, but I don't want to go today". People who enjoy this life are not going to want to leave it behind even if they think they're going to heaven. And of course most people are agnostic about their faith anyway. It's hard not to be.

This, maybe?