Death: And Why Man Fears It.

Plagiarism: “the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.”

Today’s article’s body of text is not mine. I found it doing research on the word “obey”.

More on that later.

Sometimes I run across things, that are written so well, I think, “Why re-invent the wheel?”

And I always make sure to give props to the original writer.

When I read this, some men in my life came to mind, who have been dealing with the loss of close friends and family recently.

If you are dealing with the loss of a loved one, or experiencing depression please take the time to read this.

I think our Western culture so often… pits a mans natural emotions against an unrealistic ideal of what manly behavior is… and that has caused a schism, a break, a gap in truly understanding, accepting, and learning the necessary skills to deal with our emotions as they occur throughout our life.

Life happens… and when we don’t have the skill set to manage our emotions at the proper times, appropriately… Life Happens HARD!

I’m currently studying the book of Hebrews, Chapter 5, this commentary stopped me cold. I felt moved to share it, as I found it, to ENCOURAGE, EQUIP & ENGAGE with someone who may need to hear it.

This is taken from https://biblehub.com/commentaries/hebrews/5-14.htm

“2. It is not unmanly to weep; Hebrews 5:7. The Son of God poured out prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears.

He wept at the grave of Lazarus, and he wept over Jerusalem. If the Redeemer wept, it is not unmanly to weep; and we should not be ashamed to have tears seen streaming down our cheeks.

Tears are appointed by God to be the natural expression of sorrow, and often to furnish a relief to a burdened soul.

We instinctively honor the man whom we see weeping when there is occasion for grief. We sympathize with him in his sorrow, and we love him the more.

When we see a father who could face the cannon’s mouth without shrinking, yet weeping over the open grave of a daughter, we honor him more than we could otherwise do. He shows that he has a heart that can love and feel, as well as courage that can meet danger without alarm.

Washington wept when he signed the death-warrant of Major Andre; and who ever read the affecting account without feeling that his character was the more worthy of our love?

There is enough in the world to make us weep.

Sickness, calamity, death, are around us. They come into our dwellings, and our dearest objects of affection are taken away, and “God intends” that we shall deeply feel.

Tears here will make heaven more sweet; and our sorrows on earth are intended to prepare us for the joy of that day when it shall be announced to us that “all tears shall be wiped away from every face.”

4. It is not sinful to dread death; Hebrews 5:7. The Redeemer dreaded it.

His human nature, though perfectly holy, shrank back from the fearful agonies of dying. The fear of death, therefore, in itself is not sinful.

Christians are often troubled because they have not that calmness in the prospect of death which they suppose they ought to have, and because their nature shrinks back from the dying pang. They suppose that such feelings are inconsistent with religion, and that they who have them cannot be true Christians. But they forget their Redeemer and his sorrows; they forget the earnestness with which he pleaded that the cup might be removed.

Death is in itself fearful, and it is a part of our nature to dread it, and even in the best of minds sometimes the fear of it is not wholly taken away until the hour comes, and God gives them “dying grace.”

There are probably two reasons why God made death so fearful to man:

(1) is, to impress him with the importance of being prepared for it.

Death is to him the entrance on an endless being, and it is an object of God to keep the attention fixed on that as a most momentous and solemn event. The ox, the lamb, the robin, the dove, have no immortal nature; no conscience; no responsibility, and no need of making preparation for death – and hence – except in a very slight degree – they seem to have no dread of dying.

But not so with man. He has an undying soul.

His main business here is to prepare for death and for the world beyond, and hence, by all the fear of the dying pang, and by all the horror of the grave, God would fix the attention of man on his own death as a most momentous event, and lead him to seek that hope of immortality which alone can lay the foundation for any proper removal of the fear of dying.

(2) the other reason is, to deter man from taking his own life.

To keep him from this, he is made so as to start back from death. He fears it; it is to him an object of deepest dread, and even when pressed down by calamity and sadness, as a general law, he “had rather bear the ills he has, than fly to others that he knows not of.”

Man is the only creature in reference to whom this danger exists. There is no one of the brute creation, unless it be the scorpion, that will take its own life, and hence, they have not such a dread of dying.

But we know how it is with man.

Weary of life; goaded by a guilty conscience; disappointed and heart-broken, he is under strong temptation to commit the enormous crime of self-murder, and to rush uncalled to the bar of God.

As one of the means of deterring from this, God has so made us that we fear to die; and thousands are kept from this enormous crime by this fear, when nothing else would save them.

It is benevolence, therefore, to the world, that man is afraid to die – and in every pang of the dying struggle, and everything about death that makes us turn pale and tremble at its approach, there is in some way the manifestation of goodness to mankind.”

Death awaits us all.

There is no point in worrying about that fact… you cannot alter or ignore that appointment.

I appreciate the commentators directives… “prepare for it,” and “don’t rush into it.”

We only struggle with it because we truly don’t understand it, or God, or His plan.

The Emerging Man and his goal to ENCOURAGE, EQUIP & ENGAGE… also has him stepping out on a limb once in awhile… but that’s only because I can’t reach you from here.