Death is the end of our physical existence here on this earth. People fear death because they realize that when they cease to breathe or circulate blood throughout their bodies they enter into a state of being unknown and incomprehensible to them. The fear of dying causes some people to rally every ounce of energy they posses to fight against the inevitable. This is true even if the religious beliefs of a dying person promises that the individual who dies will go to a heavenly reward. The fear of death evolves into a fear of leaving our loved ones behind or a fear of being punished for our earthly sins. The truth is besides biblical Religious beliefs may play an important role in how humans feel about death. During death we begin to decompose and eventually decay into dust.
Why do we fear death? We can look into ourselves for the answers to this question. The answers are available in our own hearts and minds. The first reason why I would fear death is knowing I would lose my life. I had always been taught about the importance and sacredness of human life in God’s eyes. The second reason for fearing death is the fear of facing a mystery. A mystery that we only attempt to understand through spiritual means. We think of ourselves as spiritual beings set apart from animals because of the gift of a soul endowed upon us by our creator. Doubt begins to erode our faith in eternal life when we are confronted with situations that may cause us to die. Our so called intelligence becomes a huge barrier to our accepting death as a natural part of our lives. No other animal on earth could understand the endless cycles of death and life the way human beings do. Even though we intellectually understand that all living things must die, we cannot accept death graciously.
The third fear reason humans fear death is that we fear consequences for acts or misdeeds we may have committed here on earth. The closer we feel to God during death makes us more accepting and yielding to the idea that we will live on after we die, but in another form. Lastly, we may be so engrossed in our financial or family problems at the time of loss that we actually fear what is going to happen to friends, families, and pets after we pass. Death then becomes not only something we fear, but an act of injustice caused by an unseen and unforgiving God.
Despite our fears about death, we do know what happens to our physical bodies after death begins. Scientifically, people are aware that physically they no longer exist, but what happens after that stage is still a mystery. We’ve all read stories from the bible that Animals who do not have the creative intelligence that people have and yet, seem to be able to sense the physical state of death in other animals and humans.
