The one absolute certainty in life is the end of it. Perhaps that is the greatest incentive for embracing faith. In the course of a lifetime, each of us comes to accept the death of other humans or even pets. When it comes to our own death, while we accept the inevitability from a logical viewpoint, emotionally we struggle. We cannot accept the notion of non-existence.
Enter religion.
Some would argue that humanity invented religion to cope with our inability to comprehend the possibility of non-existence. Others would propose that our belief in an “afterlife” is actually an instinctual memory and that faith is our effort to recapture the knowledge of existence in the spiritual realm.
In other words, we came from the spiritual realm and we return there upon death.
It is interesting that young children seem to have a stronger connection to the spirit realm than adults. They seem to communicate with invisible beings or playmates which we adults dismiss as fantasy. Untainted by adult experience and logic, perhaps children have an edge in believing.
Since most of us seem to lose our ability to experience a connection to the spirit world as we age, logic takes over and we rely on the narratives of those who claim to have temporarily crossed over and returned to life.
Or, we embrace the message of our spiritual leaders.
Either way, we grasp at the straws of hope that enable us to function without the specter of death distracting us from daily living. We use that hope as a means of dismissing the concerns for our inevitable fate.
Perhaps this is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. In addition to free will and self-awareness, He allows us the tools to experience a human existence while unencumbered by the fear that human existence must end. The emotion of fear and the ability of fear to disrupt our lives is subdued.
Perhaps the common expression “light at the end of the tunnel” has a greater meaning than we attribute to it. Perhaps that expression has its roots in the instinctual understanding that death is merely an inevitable fork in the road for the journey of a spiritual being.
It is interesting that many of those who have experienced the moment of death and returned to life with tales of the afterlife have a common viewpoint.
They no longer fear death.