Face it.

We all fear death. Maybe not the act of dying, but we fear the irreversible consequences. We fear losing the ability to communicate with those we love. We fear not being able to fulfill plans and dreams. We fear not being able to comfort those who mourn our passing. We fear losing all that comprises our identity – all our knowledge, all our memories, all the secrets of our lifetime. We fear taking that inevitable journey from which there is no return.

Most of all, we fear the unknown. The key to conquering the fear of death is to eliminate that “unknown” factor.

There is an expression many people use – “everything happens for a reason.” If we apply our logical thought process, we might discover the reason for death and reveal the benefits (yes, benefits) of transitioning from the human body form to the spirit form.

First of all, avoiding death is not an option. Yet why, we might ask, why would a loving God subject us to such a fate? Perhaps the answer is simply that there isn’t room or resources on the earth to support all the human lives which have existed and will exist in the future. Perhaps living a human existence on earth is a luxury for a spirit being, and limiting that experience allows opportunities for the next group of beings to enjoy that life. Perhaps each of us enjoys a life because those who lived earlier made room for us by passing on to the spirit realm.

Perhaps, in order to fully experience human life, we need to function with a limited ability to sense and recognize the totality of existence. In that state, we are blessed to always have unending goals to learn and understand all the secrets of our existence. Eventually, we reach the limits of understanding that we can absorb.

Death allows us to transition into a state where we can finally understand it all, and that is the ultimate benefit. In that state, we can fully understand the big picture – God’s big picture.

Conquering the fear of death means recognizing, and accepting the fact that, only through death, will we have the opportunity to experience the joy of full knowledge and appreciation of our existence.

When we begin to apply logic to our efforts to embrace faith, we look for evidence that justifies our faith. Once we open our eyes beyond the traditional church teachings, we might discover that there are many stories of people who have had the experience of passing beyond death’s door and returning to earthly existence. The commonalities of those stories are the clear evidence that we seek.

Among those commonalities are the expressions of unconditional love and peace, and a full appreciation of the mysteries we have sought to understand in our earthly days. Most of those stories conclude with the statement that the person who has had this experience, no longer fears death.

Once we accept the legitimacy of these tales of life after life, the unknown we feared is now the known, and we can conquer the fear of death, just by doing what faith has always taught.

Believe.

There’s no doubt that the debate between science and faith continues. Interestingly, it seems that every scientific or logical argument has an equally powerful counterpart in faith.

Think about it.

Now, consider what it takes to think about it. The analysis, the logic, the judgement, all are mental activities. Science has determined the structure of the human brain and which parts are responsible for various activities. What remains unexplained is how those divisions came into being.

When we consider the process of human development, we recognize that the human brain, like all the other organs, developed from the division of cells as the body develops in the womb.

The missing piece of the puzzle is, what process causes one cell to divide and become the cerebral cortex while another cell starts the colony that will become the cerebellum or one of the other specialized areas?

Is this another “accident” of nature that conveniently happens again and again? Or is it the result of intelligent design by a higher power? While science may be able to describe the mechanics of cell division and the growth of organs, it cannot explain the “why.” While science may conclude that all the instructions as incorporated into the DNA of our cells, it is less likely to be able to identify the trigger that initiates the shift from one type of cell to another.

Once the brain is fully developed, more mysteries emerge. With millions of brain cells busy firing off electrical impulses to its neighbors, how does the brain know which path to utilize? How are memories stored? How do abstract thoughts develop from what is basically a mechanical and chemical process? Where does “instinct” come from?

Finally, in some rare cases, people have been able to recall memories of events they could not have actually witnessed.

While we can easily accept that the brain is essentially the control center for the human body and all its functions, these indicators of conscious thought are less definable.

Perhaps the answers to these questions can only be explained as intelligent design by that higher power we call God. Perhaps the human brain, which controls and monitors the functions of the body is also akin to a radio receiver or remote computer terminal that communicates with a realm where our true conscious identity resides.

Think about it.

Contrary to what many people think, there are logical reasons to embrace faith as a key component to accepting our mortality.

As distasteful as it is, we all learn from an early age that death is inevitable. We see our pets die, older relatives, contemporaries. At some point, we realize that death has taken many who are younger than ourselves. We go through life, living as if there will always be a tomorrow. We make plans for next week, next month, next year.

And we go through life fearing death, dodging it, guarding against it, avoiding risky acts that could precipitate it. We wonder when our time will come. We hope that our end will be quick and painless. We mourn those we have lost and fret over how to preemptively comfort our loved ones when our time comes.

And that’s where faith comes in.

If we were to analyze it, we would recognize that our fear of death has two versions. The first version, which most of us experience many times in our life, is the loss of a loved one. We fear this, and we mourn when we grasp that we will no longer have the opportunity to interact with those who precede us in death. There will be no more conversations, or gestures of affection. There will be no more mutual reminiscing about past times. There will be no more comforting moments or plans for the future.

And that’s where faith comes in.

The second version is facing our own demise. We struggle to grasp the concept of non-existence, at least as far as existing in this world. We cringe at the idea that our lifetime of memories and accumulated knowledge could merely be erased as if we never existed. We suffer at the thought that, at a time when they need us most, we will not be present to comfort our loved ones who mourn our passing. We fervently hope that our passing will not involve prolonged and painful sickness that tortures our loved ones to witness as much as it tortures us in our final days.

And that’s where faith comes in.

The primary component in our fear of death is the false belief that death is an end point rather than a transition. It is our ignorance of what lies beyond that moment of passing. It is simply, fear of the unknown.

For those of us fortunate enough to achieve senior citizen status, we know the clock is ticking. The final countdown has begun, but something akin to instinct may kick in. In addition, we recognize that death is necessary in a world with limited space, limited capacity to produce food, and limited ability to avoid conflict. Death is a natural and necessary step in the cycle of life that we have had the privilege of experiencing and, if we lived it right, we have had the opportunity to contribute.

And that is where faith comes in.

Once we embrace it, our faith provides the peace of mind we need to confront our own mortality. Faith means having confidence in our continuing existence beyond our earthly role. Faith means confidence that there is balance in our world and beyond, and that we are part of that balance. Faith means accepting that there are aspects of our existence that we cannot understand while in human form, and looking forward to the revelation that can only come when we transition into our new form of existence.

Faith means realization that we will all be reunited with our loved ones in that indefinable moment after our last earthly breath.

Faith marks the difference between hoping that there is an afterlife, and knowing for a certainty that there is. And that is the ultimate power of faith.

Ever wonder how God could possibly communicate with all the different languages spoken in the world? It turns out, He has help.  As of September 2020 the full Bible has been translated into 704 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,551 languages. Over the centuries, human agents of God have been hard at work spreading the word.

So, does God speak all those languages? Does He understand prayers recited in all those languages?

The answer is quite simply – yes.

In our efforts to communicate with other cultures, other nationalities, and other tribes, we struggle to translate by finding words in each language that refer to the same object or action. Quite often, we find that a direct word-to-word match is not possible, because multiple words in each language might represent the same idea, but with a twist.

Sanskrit, a classical language that has influenced modern South and Southeast Asian languages, has 96 words for love. Each word represents a different subject, circumstance, or type of love. And that alone is the key to understanding God’s native tongue.

God’s native tongue does not involve words, or spelling, or accent, or emphasis. God’s language, and the foundation of all languages, is an image or interpretation of abstract concepts or actions.

If we reflect on our own mastery of our native language, we will recognize that we learned to associate a word with a particular image or action. We learn that “chair” represents a particular type of furniture. We learn that “come” and “go” represent movement, but one toward us and the other moving away. Over a period of time, we learn what seems like an immense collection of various methods of expressing a thought.

If we analyze each word in our vocabulary, we will find that they all represent an image, an action, or even an abstract idea.

And that is how we communicate with God. If we say a prayer, every word of that prayer can be linked to a thought that exists in every other language. Those thoughts, regardless of what label we put upon them, are universal.

If we expect to hear from God, we need to receive His message in the same fashion. While we are busy listening for that booming voice from the heavens, we are missing out on the subtle messages that are directed to us every day.

Those moments when we feel guilt or shame for bad behavior, or compassion for an innocent animal which has been abused, or sympathy for someone’s misfortune – that is the voice of God, speaking to us in his native language – speaking, not to our ears, but to that underused organ, our conscience.

Probably the most famous opening line of any book ever written – “In the beginning…” Ironically, it is both the beginning of our spiritual journey and simultaneously, the beginning of our doubts. Even more ironically, it is the first opportunity to apply logic to our understanding of the messages of the Bible.

For hundreds of years, the Bible was considered to be the irrefutable word of God. Yet, as mankind’s understanding of science expanded, doubts about the accuracy of the Bible expanded as well. The very first lines of the creation story suggest that the creation events took place over the course of only a few days, yet modern tools of science provide evidence that the process took place over the course of millions of years. Does this mean that Genesis is just a fairy tale?

The Bible tells us that Adam and Eve were the first human beings. Yet when their two sons come into conflict and Cain kills his brother, Cain is banished from the home front and complains that “others” might try to kill him. What others? Then he finds a wife and starts his own family. Where did she come from if Adam and Eve were the first family of humanity?

A few lines further along, we read about Noah and the flood when Noah rounded up a mating pair of every animal to save them from the rising waters. Since this story takes place in the Biblical lands, we can’t help but wonder how Noah came to find kangaroos and koalas that only exist in Australia.

Does all this cast an enormous shadow of doubt over the messages of the Bible?

Fortunately, the same logic that cast this shadow also shines a new light on these age-old stories.

The combined power of logic and scientific understanding shows us that there is new reason to embrace these critical tales of the Bible. We now understand that the texts of these Biblical stories were recorded by human hands, using the language of the time, and as such, are subject to distortions and misinterpretation as they are translated into contemporary language. When we are describing the creative actions of a Supreme Being, is it possible that a “day” to God is different than the day we experience as a single rotation of the earth?

We might also consider the probability that some of these texts are records of symbolic literature, the same way we might use satire to make a point in contemporary literature. Is it possible that, in his enthusiasm to convey a historic message, the recorder of the book of Genesis embellished a few details to strengthen the impact on his fellow human beings?

While our logic suggest that interpretation, translation, and even exaggeration may have distorted our view of the opening message of the Bible, there is one factor that stands out as proof of the divine source of this critical information.

In the days before the sciences of chemistry, geology and archeology, the writer of the book of Genesis managed to record the sequence of creation the same way that contemporary science would describe it. Since no human would have been alive to witness that sequence of events, that description alone is solid evidence of knowledge that predates human existence. It is also solid evidence that, despite possible human distortion in recording it, the message came from God.

Logic supports it.