Changing our Perception of Death

The ancient Middle East was terrified of death.  Death was often represented in the ancient Middle East through unstable waters, like floods.  Most Middle Eastern cultures had stories of great floods that resulted in death and destruction.  Middle Eastern cultures developed rituals to placate the gods and powers that they thought were responsible for death.  Mythologies arose that attempted to explain the nature and significance of what lay beyond this world.

Our culture is terrified of death too.  We respond in different ways than in the ancient world, but we remain terrified of death.  We try to deny the aging process with medical procedures.  We romanticize youth and health.

In the Christian tradition, through the resurrection of Christ, we know the truth about death that the world does not know.  We know that death is not a monster to be fought or to be feared, because it has no power over us.  Death, in the sense of being perceived as an end and termination of existence, is an illusion.  What we perceive as death is simply a transition from one form of existence to another.  We are eternal beings whose existence does not end.  It just changes.

The early Christian community saw this changed perception of death revealed in symbolic form in the story of Jesus calming the storm when the disciples were trapped in a boat.  As ancient people, there was nothing so terrifying as unstable water.  Jesus revealed to the disciples that God controls the waters, and symbolically, death.  We are God's people now living under God's dominion, and when we pass from this world, we will remain God's people living under God's dominion.  We don't have anything to fear.