Choice

How do you look at death?  Here are a few options:

"I have long known that the devil would trip me. Now he will drag me to hell. Would you prevent him?"

'"By my honor, friend," answered Zarathustra, "all that of which you speak does not exist: there is no devil and no hell. Your soul will be dead even before your body: fear nothing further."

The man looked up suspiciously. "If you speak the truth," he said, "I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than a beast that has been taught to dance by blows and a few meager morsels."

"By no means," said Zarathustra. "You have made danger your vocation; there is nothing contemptible in that. Now you perish of your vocation: for that I will bury you with my own hands."

When Zarathustra had said this, the dying man answered no more; but he moved his hand as if he sought Zarathustra's hand in thanks. (Thus Spake 20)

Translation: There is no heaven or hell. In the end there is no judgment. There is honor in life when you live honorably. Don't shed tears over the end.



Here is another option:

"[With death] no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined for extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins." (Bertrand Russell)

Translation: Again shed no tear or drop of sweat over death. There is nothing to fear because there is nothing. Accept be a man about it, but keep living for now.



Here is another option:

Death frightens us all. It is an unknown abyss. There might be a judge at the ground floor, a doorman, or nothing at all. In any case it scares us. We can try to laugh it off, like Woody Allen (It's not that I am afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens), but the fear remains.

Something inside of us longs, even demands for life and love to last. If this is it, love is a tease. And the only way we can ever know one way or another is if someone stood outside the all of humanity's house of life and death and told us what it was like outside.

Jesus tasted life and death. He entered the house, experienced life and death, and now stands outside, the conquering one. He frees us from the fear of death by offering a life that continues. He can only do this because he died the death we should have died. But now there is no fear, life and love can continue like we long for them to.

"Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death - that is the devil - and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." (Hebrews 2)

You can probably guess which one I choose.