There Are No Christians in The Hospice
A recent medical study conducted by the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that the more religiously devout a person is the more likely they are to demand to be kept alive using extraordinary measures even if such measures decreased their quality of life or put undue emotional and financial strain on others. In fact, people of faith are significantly more likely to use intensive life prolonging measures. This at first seemed a little strange to me because I would think that a person who really and truly believed that after they die, they will still be alive (in a perfect paradise of all places), they would be looking forward to an “Earthly” death and not trying to run away from death through the use of Science (of all things).
I think this study may show something deeper. I think it suggests that maybe the religious aren’t as devout believers in a Heavenly afterlife (with or without the virgins) as they may claim. Perhaps this study shows that after a lifetime of self-deception, the real truth is that no one really believes in a magical Heaven after all. I guess that if someone believes that they will live forever, they might get a little freaked out when the thought occurs to them that they are actually going to die. Death is a part of life and to quote Captain Kirk, “How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life.” It seems to me that people of faith tend to be afraid to live and so it really isn’t all that surprising that they should also be afraid to die.
While non-believers live our lives more fully with reasonable certainty that this life is all there is; we tend to be more content with the knowledge that we will one day die. And so when that day draws near, we seem to be more willing to accept it and live that last moment. Aristotle put it best when he said that it is only at the end of one’s life when we can truly judge the happiness of our lives.
