You know there is no comfort or hope when told by an atheist or secularist that one is exterminated at death. This death then becomes the ultimate demise to all of life's aspirations, a threatening evil to rid one's life of all understanding and value, and the reaper who comes to strip away all one's relationships of any perpetual meaning.
History has shown that the reality of death was something that the whole family confronted together. It seems that lately, the dying are hidden away from the face of the general public. It also appears that burials are consigned to the mortuary industry. I believe there are many foolish parents who think that their children should not look upon a dead person. But it seems that children are prone to digital death, to capricious dying via the media furthering the disorientation from reality.
The trepidation of death has grown due to the fact that secularism has absolutely no answer to offer. It seems to this writer that reticence is the preferred approach by secular elites. Is this not reprehensible silence, promoting callousness about something we all will encounter? How many of us are ill-prepared?
Okay, now let's look at the origin of death. When our first ancestors sinned at the beginning, they committed universal treason; they actually led the first open defiance against God Almighty and, as a result, their souls died. They began to decay from the inside out, and their human bodies followed suit. To put this more succinctly, they abandoned their love for God (the source of all life) and did things their way instead of relying on God. Their hearts became hard and cold. Don't we see this clearly in the daily news? Just like today, our passions erupt in disorder.
As it is, this present world is a temporal one; a space of radical dying, both physically and emotionally. But now we arrive at the good news. Death has been annihilated by the second person of the Holy Trinity, in which we celebrate His birth at Christmas. Death in the scriptures is phrased as a departure, defined also as sleep; they have reached their dormition.
God has taken the punishment of death and transformed it into a benison. God did curse the serpent from of old, but gave mankind only remedial chastisement. The devil was and is the father of all lies. So as we can see, we can work ourselves back to where we have fallen from, and return to a better provision. In death the body is dissolved for the interim, so that the inherent evil will not be eternalized.
