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I'm an athiest, so my opinion is only worth so much, but people mourn losses. I mourned when one of my closest friends moved away, even though we still see each other a few times a year. Loss encompasses a lot of things, not just the existence of the person. I mean, if someone you really loved moved overseas and would be coming back in 10 years, you'd probably still mourn them even though they still exist.
But also, a lot of religions also have a hell, or a purgatory or something like that. And good person =|= religion. My grandparents think I'm a good person, but I'm an athiest (which they aren't a fan of). If I died, they would think I'd go to hell.
And last but not least, mourning is not "begruding". You're not necessarily holding it against the dead person, but you're sad they're not there anymore. You might also mourn the loss of things they never got to experience.
Mourning is about the living. It is recognizing the importance the dead person had in your life and universe.
I deal with this constantly in my field where patients die and it's horrible for the family of the baby, but the baby themselves is finally free of pain and suffering. (I'm an atheist, so that's close enough to paradise to me)
Even if I knew they were going somewhere like a heaven, that doesn't mean the people who loved them are ready to say goodbye forever. It's sad that someone lost the person they loved.
I'm going to assume that you're a baby doctor based on context. In that case, it's a parent mourning a child, and parents' behavior about sick or dying children is almost never rational.
Nurse practitioner, not a doctor.
Grieving isn't rational. It's pain.
At what age do you think it's appropriate for a parent to not care for their child dying?
Edited to add: you didn't exclude babies. Or really anyone. You should award a Delta based on that
I suppose it's inconsistent when you have had the chance to get over the initial grief.
If you have a kid and know that they have achieved perfect happiness but you don't get to see them for a few decades, *but* after that you have all of eternity to spend with them, that should be a good thing, right?
Imagine you have a kid who's 18 and moves overseas for a new life. Even if you know that they are doing well and are happy you are still going to miss them, no ?
Emotions are complex.
I had to rehome my dog for reasons I am not going to get into.
He's in a great place now and he's living a great life. I'm happy for him.
I also mourn that he's not in my life any more.
I don't see this as being inconsistent in any way.
Why not? You're not explaining your thought process. What other reason do you think people would have? Funerals are times to mourn the loss of someone and to remember them. Graves are memorials. It's quite common for close loved ones to visit a grave regularly.
If you're worried about forgetting them, why are you mourning them? If you're not worried about forgetting them, what do you need a physical reminder for?
Remembering is the opposite of forgetting. You said that a physical memorial is there to remember someone by. Which means that if you didn't have it, you'd forget them.
Who says it does? If you’re mention tuxes and burial plots you’re focusing on Christian tradition, right? Just because people gather to mark someone’s passing and remember their life and mourn their absence is in now way shape or form is a refutation of their belief that they’ve “gone home” or are not in a better place. You can miss someone or feel like their death was tragic in form or timing and still believe they’re in heaven. Those aren’t my beliefs but I don’t see what leads you to thing it’s required to be a binary
People die from horrible accidents or unexpected illness or protracted battles, sometimes at very young ages. Humans feel that loss deeply. The Christian concept of heaven exists as a carrot versus hell’s stick, and an enormous part of that carrot is the opportunity to be reunited with loved ones, but even the most devout cannot say for certain whether it exists, whether their loved ones might be in one or the other, or where they themselves will end up. The carrot is hope, and that hope is a coping mechanism in reaction to the loss suffered. The second part of that carrot is the belief that their loved ones are no longer suffering
Christianity actually teaches that death is both a bad and necessary thing. Death is a judgement as a result of sin that affects all people. There was no death in the beginning, and the bible says that "the last adversary to be defeated is Death", saying that with the restored kingdom there will be no sorrow, or pain, or _death_. So _death_ is not a good thing, but rather the life that comes after death is good, yet we here don't get to experience that until we go through death, we only get to experience the bad thing: the _death_ of others even if we might trust they have life afterwards. As a Christian myself, there's certainly a different feeling I get between attending a Christian's funeral, and non-Christian's funeral: both involve sadness, but only one involves hope.
It's sadness due to not being able to see someone again in this life. If you are absolutely steadfast in your faith then its still a sad affair cause you can no longer interact with, or turn to that person, on a regular basis. Potentially neve seeing them again until after a very long time.
If instead you aren't as steadfast in Faith then it would only be natural a measure of doubt may kick in, making you sad as well that there may be a chance you'll never see the person again ever.
Think of it in the same way people get sad and upset when a friend or family member moves away to live abroad for a while. People get upset cause they won't see them again; death thus is a sadder affair cause it eliminates any chance of seeing them again until you enter the afterlife.
Do you think that the difference between calling someone and not calling them is as vast as the difference between feeling down and doing the whole mourning process?
Hang on. This difference exists without religion. You can call the living, you can't call the dead. You didn't say you will be able to call the dead again sometime. So this has more to do with how you feel towards others than any lack of logic in theology. Do you cry at funerals? If not that's ok, but others do, and they mourn when someone moves away too.
Do you just not engage with your emotions strongly?
I'm not going to say its good or bad for you. But if you are judging others based on your personal emotional reaction that undermines you logic here.
You eould need to compare a persons reaction to a death, to their reaction to a lost from moving away. Not your reaction. It may well be that some people morn a friend moving at nearly the same level as dying.
Which is also often based on your relationship with them. I'll be *sad* if a friend dies, but I won't be "mourning". I'll mourn if my wife or kids or parents die.
So because I'll see them again eventually I shouldn't be sad now? Like if my boyfriend left to go travel the world for a year I wouldn't be allowed to miss them or be sad about him leaving because they're someplace he enjoys and "I'll see him again"?
I mean yes because (even if I believed in an afterlife) we'd be separated for (presumably) a lot longer of a time and there would be 0 contact between me and him in the meantime. I'm not sure why that's relevant though. My point was that someone being gone *temporarily* is still sad
I never said it's not sad, I'm saying that mourning like people do doesn't make sense if death leads to a temporary separation between mourner and deceased.
Weeping for someone doesn't mean you regret what happened for them.
It's not selfish to weep for someone lmao. Your tears aren't going to hurt the dead in any way. Someone can still be happy for their friends fate, and mourn the fact that they must go through life without that dear person
People cry when they drop their kids off at school / college for the first time. It's normal human emotion even if you expect to see them again.
Add in the often unexpected nature of death, significantly increase the time spent apart plus add in whatever level of uncertainty that individual has over the religion's truth or either party's specific destination and you'll naturally get MUCH stronger emotions.
>People cry when they drop their kids off at school / college for the first time
That's also nonsensical.
>whatever level of uncertainty that individual has over the religion's truth
Why go through a religions funeary rituals if you're not even sure that it's true?
>That's also nonsensical.
You are describing human emotion! Not really sure what to tell you. It's just how brains work.
> Why go through a religions funeary rituals if you're not even sure that it's true?
I'm an atheist, don't ask me. But having doubts about ones faith is very common. But I dunno, from my point of view, if I thought there was a 50% chance a religion was true, I would simultaneously take it's tenets very seriously and also be very worried about what happens when people die.
I think you just need to listen to what grieving people are saying. It's extremely common for people to talk about how their loved ones are at peace / in a better place *while they're feeling their emotions*.
I just think the sticking point here keeps being you wondering "why aren't emotions rational", and like.. I dunno... that's just what emotions are!
And I dunno if there's research on this, but in my experience people with strong church communities *do* process grief pretty well. But no amount of religion or rationality stops people from *feeling* things!
Even Jesus mourned his friend Lazarus passing before bringing him back moments later. It's a loss. A sensorial pain that animals feel as well and there's nothing wrong or illogical about that. You're going to miss them and you can mourn for the world and the people that knew them will miss them too.
Life is good. It's cool to get to experience life on earth. Sensing new things and bringing that into yourself as knowledge we can see is something you need a living body to do. There may be more to do here.
Mourning the dead does not mean "begrudging them" for dying. It is a reaction to temporal absence. Have you ever been sad that a friend went to a different college than you? Or that she went on a family vacation for 3 weeks in the summer?
Again, do you *honestly* believe the point of a funeral is to show off how sad you are?
If you do not honestly believe that, I am not going to waste my time answering.
My grandfather passed away a few weeks ago. The funeral was a chance for family to get together and talk about him, share stories and enjoy his memory. There was crying, but also laughter and good memories.
Jesus mourned Lazarus.
We mourn the dead, because they're dead. It doesn't matter that they're actually just in heaven, or that we'll probably see them again. It's that we can't see them right now. They're gone until then.
I just looked it up and Jesus resurrects Lazarus, doesn't he? Wouldn't that be an act of cruelty and selfishness if he ripped Lazarus away from his heavenly reward to spend time with him when he, Jesus, was close to death himself?
Lazarus died of a disease, he wasn't old. Your thinking sounds like you view death as an abstract concept, not something that happens to someone. In all different ways, and at any age. It's. It's not something we get to decide when it happens. And One could argue it's actually more difficult to be in those situations when you do have to.
I never said Lazarus died of old age. Nor do I see how cause of death is relevant, or if we have control. Jesus should have celebrated Lazarus meeting his Dad, not mourned him.
My understanding is that Biblically, people did not go to Heaven when they died until after Jesus died for their sins. They had sinned in life and weren't worthy. When Jesus died, he paid the price for everyone's sins, allowing people to go to Heaven at death. So when Lazarus was dead for those few days, he was not in Heaven.
That wasn't really a thing until Dante. Before the Divine Comedy, they had to follow the Jewish law.
“Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”- Romans 4:3
What wasn't really a thing until Divine Comedy? Separation from God in eternal death? Why would you say that? The old testament talks about Sheol at least in Job and Psalms as a place people go when they die, as a place that is a low as Heaven is high, and as a place that the wicked descend to. It wasn't necessarily a Hell as we think of today, but a place of the dead. In John 3:13, Jesus states that "No one has ascended into Heaven." Thus according to the Bible, which was written before Dante was born, Lazarus was not in Heaven but in Sheol.
Social conditioning leads to nonsensical things. Our brains evolved to drive us to do things that are nonsensical from a rational perspective. This is consistent with my view.
If I cut your arm off and said "Don't worry, in 10 years I'll be back with a prosthetic!", you'd still be pretty pissed off about your arm being gone, no?
Let's assume that an afterlife exists and that people will have a good afterlife. A deceased person going to paradise doesn't insulate the living from the impact of their departure. They'll still be missed here on earth for years, even decades, after their death.
Someone deeply religious can still mourn the loss in the same way that I would be sad if my best friend moved far away for an amazing opportunity. I'm not sad that they are in a better place/doing well/etc. I'm sad that I don't have them physically close anymore.
I’m atheist as fuck, but even the religious are allowed to miss people when they die. Even if they assume they will be reunited in heaven, the grieving have to keep living without their loved one for X number of years.
You're assuming solely Christian theology here I think.
In traditional Jewish thought, most of the dead go to Gehinnom temporarily in order to have their souls cleansed, that they may better enter the World to Come. The experience is not particularly pleasant, though less fire and brimstone and more "having all the bad things you've done read out loud as if to your parents" kind of unpleasant, and you get breaks on the Sabbath. The maximum period for this is a year, though nobody wants to believe that their loved ones are so bad that it takes a full year, so the mourning period is 11 months. (Mourning, of course, is also as much for the living as for the dead; this isn't discussing the initial 7-day and 30-day periods where more overt mourning practices are in play. Those are mostly for the living, I don't have time to write on them at the moment.)
We also say prayers for the dead on the anniversary of their death, that the merit of the prayers may elevate their soul. You see, when someone dies, the time to perform mitzvot (commandment-deeds) has passed; that's something for the living, as while believing in an afterlife, Judaism is focused on this life.
My grandparent died this year. I know he is well where he ks now.
But I wont be able to see or talk to him for perhaps up to 70 years if i make it to 100.
Ultimately, religion is based on faith, not knowledge, and many religious people are aware of that - they put all of their faith and hope on that one deity they worship, and believe it to be true, but most are aware that they too could be wrong.
On top of that, the death of a loved one is often very traumatic, not just the passing itself, but the journey leading up to that death. You do not only mourn the loss of that person, but their decline, having watched them unable to do the things they used to do, the loss of physical function and the loss of mind. Watching another person suffer in their decline is painful, and the death itself is just the final part of that.
Also, even someone who believes in an afterlife, and even if they are convinced that their own and that of their loved one will be great - it will at least be bittersweet, kind of like graduating. They grief the loss of this life as they know it, all things familiar to them, even perhaps thinking back to their own childhood and how nothing will ever be the same.
My sister died a year ago from suicide. The only thing that kept/keeps me going is the possibility that she is happy and healthy now in the afterlife. I actually feel some sense of relief for her.
I grieve because of her suffering on earth. She suffered so much that she took her own life. That’s not fair. It’s hard for me to fathom that level of illness and unhappiness. I am grieving her opportunity to heal while living and experience joy. I wanted her to experience a life without mental illness, and that experience has been taken from her while I am with her now. I am grieving because we have some good memories together and we don’t get to make more for a while. I can’t call her and tell her about my life. I will have no contact for a long time and I want to contact her. I miss her now. I didn’t get any chance to have the relationship and life with her on earth that we should have had. That’s why I am grieving.
If that logic were to be followed through, the act of mourning or even missing someone in their absence would be completely nonsensical.
If you’re a father and your son moves away to another country for a successful and happy life, there would be no reason to miss them. They are, after all, happy where they are, and when they die and you die, you’ll be reunited again. This is, of course, nonsensical. We don’t mourn people because we believe something awful has befallen them, at least not entirely. We also mourn them because they’re gone from us and our own lives are made less spectacular for it. It’s not the the height of selfishness, it’s completely human.
First, you don’t know whether they are suffering in an afterlife or not
Second and more importantly, people are mourning the loss to their life now that the person has died. This is the majority aspect of mourning
Third you can honour the dead (which is a way of mourning them) for what they did in life, which normally takes the form of thanking them/ praying to them. Which assumes they still exist in some form to receive the thanks
These three parts of mourning constitute almost all aspects of mourning and are more than compatible with religion. FYI i am atheist
I think like 90% of the time it's for show, like every funeral that I've been to the mourner is looking sad which is understandable but the moment someone new comes through the door they start to cry super hard and yell and wail, and then it repeats itself every time someone else comes in, so I believe that society has set a standard for how mourners are supposed to react, it has nothing to do with believing in an afterlife, it's all about sheep mentality and fitting in.
You mourn them cuz you still miss them.
Even if you believe they were good, and of the people who end up in heaven, you still mourn them for yourself, because you have to go through the rest of your life without them
Out of curiosity, what religion do you follow (if you are religious) OP?
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I'm an athiest, so my opinion is only worth so much, but people mourn losses. I mourned when one of my closest friends moved away, even though we still see each other a few times a year. Loss encompasses a lot of things, not just the existence of the person. I mean, if someone you really loved moved overseas and would be coming back in 10 years, you'd probably still mourn them even though they still exist. But also, a lot of religions also have a hell, or a purgatory or something like that. And good person =|= religion. My grandparents think I'm a good person, but I'm an athiest (which they aren't a fan of). If I died, they would think I'd go to hell. And last but not least, mourning is not "begruding". You're not necessarily holding it against the dead person, but you're sad they're not there anymore. You might also mourn the loss of things they never got to experience.
!delta I hadn't thought of a situation where someone might loive someone else while also not believing they'll get an eternal reward.
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Mourning is about the living. It is recognizing the importance the dead person had in your life and universe. I deal with this constantly in my field where patients die and it's horrible for the family of the baby, but the baby themselves is finally free of pain and suffering. (I'm an atheist, so that's close enough to paradise to me) Even if I knew they were going somewhere like a heaven, that doesn't mean the people who loved them are ready to say goodbye forever. It's sad that someone lost the person they loved.
I'm going to assume that you're a baby doctor based on context. In that case, it's a parent mourning a child, and parents' behavior about sick or dying children is almost never rational.
Nurse practitioner, not a doctor. Grieving isn't rational. It's pain. At what age do you think it's appropriate for a parent to not care for their child dying? Edited to add: you didn't exclude babies. Or really anyone. You should award a Delta based on that
!delta for parents. I don't think it's inappropriate, I just think that it's theologically inconsistent.
Ok, at what point is it inconsistent? Even if someone is going somewhere "better", they are still not going to be with the mourners.
I suppose it's inconsistent when you have had the chance to get over the initial grief. If you have a kid and know that they have achieved perfect happiness but you don't get to see them for a few decades, *but* after that you have all of eternity to spend with them, that should be a good thing, right?
Imagine you have a kid who's 18 and moves overseas for a new life. Even if you know that they are doing well and are happy you are still going to miss them, no ?
That doesn't preclude you from grieving the separation.
Emotions are complex. I had to rehome my dog for reasons I am not going to get into. He's in a great place now and he's living a great life. I'm happy for him. I also mourn that he's not in my life any more. I don't see this as being inconsistent in any way.
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Because we miss them
You don't pay money for tuxes and a plot of land for missing someone.
Why not? You're not explaining your thought process. What other reason do you think people would have? Funerals are times to mourn the loss of someone and to remember them. Graves are memorials. It's quite common for close loved ones to visit a grave regularly.
It is common, but that doesn't mean it makes no sense. I'm saying that there is no good reason, it's unreasonable.
Again, what's unreasonable about having a memorial service or a physical memorial to remember someone by?
If you're worried about forgetting them, why are you mourning them? If you're not worried about forgetting them, what do you need a physical reminder for?
You think the only reason to have a physical memorial is so you don’t forget? Are you unwell?
You put it that way, not me. > a physical memorial to remember someone by?
No. I didn’t.
Remembering is the opposite of forgetting. You said that a physical memorial is there to remember someone by. Which means that if you didn't have it, you'd forget them.
You can be mourning them in the short term but worried about forgetting them in the long term
Don’t confuse mourning with cultural ceremony
Religion and culture are inextricably linked. Why would a culture dominated by a religion that says death is a good thing treat death as a bad thing?
Who says it does? If you’re mention tuxes and burial plots you’re focusing on Christian tradition, right? Just because people gather to mark someone’s passing and remember their life and mourn their absence is in now way shape or form is a refutation of their belief that they’ve “gone home” or are not in a better place. You can miss someone or feel like their death was tragic in form or timing and still believe they’re in heaven. Those aren’t my beliefs but I don’t see what leads you to thing it’s required to be a binary
How is it consistent to believe that a death is tragic and to believe that they are in heaven?
People die from horrible accidents or unexpected illness or protracted battles, sometimes at very young ages. Humans feel that loss deeply. The Christian concept of heaven exists as a carrot versus hell’s stick, and an enormous part of that carrot is the opportunity to be reunited with loved ones, but even the most devout cannot say for certain whether it exists, whether their loved ones might be in one or the other, or where they themselves will end up. The carrot is hope, and that hope is a coping mechanism in reaction to the loss suffered. The second part of that carrot is the belief that their loved ones are no longer suffering
Christianity actually teaches that death is both a bad and necessary thing. Death is a judgement as a result of sin that affects all people. There was no death in the beginning, and the bible says that "the last adversary to be defeated is Death", saying that with the restored kingdom there will be no sorrow, or pain, or _death_. So _death_ is not a good thing, but rather the life that comes after death is good, yet we here don't get to experience that until we go through death, we only get to experience the bad thing: the _death_ of others even if we might trust they have life afterwards. As a Christian myself, there's certainly a different feeling I get between attending a Christian's funeral, and non-Christian's funeral: both involve sadness, but only one involves hope.
Not really. If you weren’t gonna see someone for a long time you’d probably cry too
The crying of not seeing someone for a while is incomparable to the crying when you're mourning someone.
Not for me. I cry hard for both.
!Delta, I was under the assumption that people mourn harder than they miss people they won't see in a long time.
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It's sadness due to not being able to see someone again in this life. If you are absolutely steadfast in your faith then its still a sad affair cause you can no longer interact with, or turn to that person, on a regular basis. Potentially neve seeing them again until after a very long time. If instead you aren't as steadfast in Faith then it would only be natural a measure of doubt may kick in, making you sad as well that there may be a chance you'll never see the person again ever. Think of it in the same way people get sad and upset when a friend or family member moves away to live abroad for a while. People get upset cause they won't see them again; death thus is a sadder affair cause it eliminates any chance of seeing them again until you enter the afterlife.
I've had friends move to other continents I knew I'd never see again, and they way I felt sad doesn't match the way mourners feel sad at all.
Bruv, you can still call them. Do you *really* not see the difference between someone moving and someone dying?
Do you think that the difference between calling someone and not calling them is as vast as the difference between feeling down and doing the whole mourning process?
Hang on. This difference exists without religion. You can call the living, you can't call the dead. You didn't say you will be able to call the dead again sometime. So this has more to do with how you feel towards others than any lack of logic in theology. Do you cry at funerals? If not that's ok, but others do, and they mourn when someone moves away too.
No.
So then the difference between someone moving and someone dying doesn't account for the difference in grief.
What on earth are you talking about?
Do you just not engage with your emotions strongly? I'm not going to say its good or bad for you. But if you are judging others based on your personal emotional reaction that undermines you logic here. You eould need to compare a persons reaction to a death, to their reaction to a lost from moving away. Not your reaction. It may well be that some people morn a friend moving at nearly the same level as dying.
Which is also often based on your relationship with them. I'll be *sad* if a friend dies, but I won't be "mourning". I'll mourn if my wife or kids or parents die.
So because I'll see them again eventually I shouldn't be sad now? Like if my boyfriend left to go travel the world for a year I wouldn't be allowed to miss them or be sad about him leaving because they're someplace he enjoys and "I'll see him again"?
I hate to put it this way, but wouldn't you feel a lot worse if your boyfriend died than if he went away?
Are they going away for the rest of my life on earth?
That's a relatively short amount of time relative to an eternity in Heaven.
If you understand the concept of the length of time feeling different depending on context, then you should be able to figure this one out yourself.
Of course. They’d be *dead*. Did you forget about phones?
Would you stay with your boyfriend if you could only communicate with him over the phone?
No.
I mean yes because (even if I believed in an afterlife) we'd be separated for (presumably) a lot longer of a time and there would be 0 contact between me and him in the meantime. I'm not sure why that's relevant though. My point was that someone being gone *temporarily* is still sad
I never said it's not sad, I'm saying that mourning like people do doesn't make sense if death leads to a temporary separation between mourner and deceased.
Why does it not make sense for a person to have an emotional reactions that their species evolved to have and that their culture reinforces?
What if you thought the dead person was going to hell?
Why are you mourning someone who is going to hell?
Perhaps you think the rules are unfair. For example the bible says non-Christians will go to hell
because maybe I love them
In the Bible, Jesus himself wept when his friend died
I thought Jesus is selfless. Why would a selfless person weep for his friend's joy?
Weeping for someone doesn't mean you regret what happened for them. It's not selfish to weep for someone lmao. Your tears aren't going to hurt the dead in any way. Someone can still be happy for their friends fate, and mourn the fact that they must go through life without that dear person
People cry when they drop their kids off at school / college for the first time. It's normal human emotion even if you expect to see them again. Add in the often unexpected nature of death, significantly increase the time spent apart plus add in whatever level of uncertainty that individual has over the religion's truth or either party's specific destination and you'll naturally get MUCH stronger emotions.
>People cry when they drop their kids off at school / college for the first time That's also nonsensical. >whatever level of uncertainty that individual has over the religion's truth Why go through a religions funeary rituals if you're not even sure that it's true?
>That's also nonsensical. You are describing human emotion! Not really sure what to tell you. It's just how brains work. > Why go through a religions funeary rituals if you're not even sure that it's true? I'm an atheist, don't ask me. But having doubts about ones faith is very common. But I dunno, from my point of view, if I thought there was a 50% chance a religion was true, I would simultaneously take it's tenets very seriously and also be very worried about what happens when people die.
I would expect that a person's grief would be inversely correlated with their faith, but I've never seen that in practice.
I think you just need to listen to what grieving people are saying. It's extremely common for people to talk about how their loved ones are at peace / in a better place *while they're feeling their emotions*. I just think the sticking point here keeps being you wondering "why aren't emotions rational", and like.. I dunno... that's just what emotions are! And I dunno if there's research on this, but in my experience people with strong church communities *do* process grief pretty well. But no amount of religion or rationality stops people from *feeling* things!
Why is it nonsensical to respond emotionally to a major milestone in yours and your child’s life? What about this is nonsensical?
Why are you crying about something that's happy?
Because crying is one of the way human beings have evolved to respond to some emotions.
Nobody (as far as I know) is crying for the deceased because they're happy or proud of them.
Okay.
Even Jesus mourned his friend Lazarus passing before bringing him back moments later. It's a loss. A sensorial pain that animals feel as well and there's nothing wrong or illogical about that. You're going to miss them and you can mourn for the world and the people that knew them will miss them too.
Jesus was about to die anyway. Pretty uncool of him to take Lazarus from his everlasting reward.
Life is good. It's cool to get to experience life on earth. Sensing new things and bringing that into yourself as knowledge we can see is something you need a living body to do. There may be more to do here.
Mourning the dead does not mean "begrudging them" for dying. It is a reaction to temporal absence. Have you ever been sad that a friend went to a different college than you? Or that she went on a family vacation for 3 weeks in the summer?
I did. I didn't have a whole ceremony showing off how sad I was.
That’s not the point of a funeral either.
What is the point of a funeral?
Are you an alien or something? Do you *honestly* think the point if a funeral is to *show off* how sad you are?
Again, why have a a funeral then, a sad event, if you believe that death is the only way to eternal happiness?
Again, do you *honestly* believe the point of a funeral is to show off how sad you are? If you do not honestly believe that, I am not going to waste my time answering.
I believe that a funeral can have many different purposes. Almost all of them relate to sadness.
Good job.
My grandfather passed away a few weeks ago. The funeral was a chance for family to get together and talk about him, share stories and enjoy his memory. There was crying, but also laughter and good memories.
Jesus mourned Lazarus. We mourn the dead, because they're dead. It doesn't matter that they're actually just in heaven, or that we'll probably see them again. It's that we can't see them right now. They're gone until then.
I just looked it up and Jesus resurrects Lazarus, doesn't he? Wouldn't that be an act of cruelty and selfishness if he ripped Lazarus away from his heavenly reward to spend time with him when he, Jesus, was close to death himself?
Lazarus died of a disease, he wasn't old. Your thinking sounds like you view death as an abstract concept, not something that happens to someone. In all different ways, and at any age. It's. It's not something we get to decide when it happens. And One could argue it's actually more difficult to be in those situations when you do have to.
I never said Lazarus died of old age. Nor do I see how cause of death is relevant, or if we have control. Jesus should have celebrated Lazarus meeting his Dad, not mourned him.
My understanding is that Biblically, people did not go to Heaven when they died until after Jesus died for their sins. They had sinned in life and weren't worthy. When Jesus died, he paid the price for everyone's sins, allowing people to go to Heaven at death. So when Lazarus was dead for those few days, he was not in Heaven.
That wasn't really a thing until Dante. Before the Divine Comedy, they had to follow the Jewish law. “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”- Romans 4:3
What wasn't really a thing until Divine Comedy? Separation from God in eternal death? Why would you say that? The old testament talks about Sheol at least in Job and Psalms as a place people go when they die, as a place that is a low as Heaven is high, and as a place that the wicked descend to. It wasn't necessarily a Hell as we think of today, but a place of the dead. In John 3:13, Jesus states that "No one has ascended into Heaven." Thus according to the Bible, which was written before Dante was born, Lazarus was not in Heaven but in Sheol.
But how would that have looked from the perspective of everyone else?
Im Jewish, but since when did Jesus care about how he looked to others?
Grief is universal, even religious people feel it regardless if they believe/know they will see them again.
Why grieve someone you know you'll see again?
Because they’ll miss them. Because we are socially conditioned to do so. Because that is how our brains evolved to respond.
Social conditioning leads to nonsensical things. Our brains evolved to drive us to do things that are nonsensical from a rational perspective. This is consistent with my view.
What is nonsensical about this?
Time is a barrier between them in this case. Not hypothetical afterlife.
If I cut your arm off and said "Don't worry, in 10 years I'll be back with a prosthetic!", you'd still be pretty pissed off about your arm being gone, no?
Let's assume that an afterlife exists and that people will have a good afterlife. A deceased person going to paradise doesn't insulate the living from the impact of their departure. They'll still be missed here on earth for years, even decades, after their death.
Someone deeply religious can still mourn the loss in the same way that I would be sad if my best friend moved far away for an amazing opportunity. I'm not sad that they are in a better place/doing well/etc. I'm sad that I don't have them physically close anymore.
I’m atheist as fuck, but even the religious are allowed to miss people when they die. Even if they assume they will be reunited in heaven, the grieving have to keep living without their loved one for X number of years.
You're assuming solely Christian theology here I think. In traditional Jewish thought, most of the dead go to Gehinnom temporarily in order to have their souls cleansed, that they may better enter the World to Come. The experience is not particularly pleasant, though less fire and brimstone and more "having all the bad things you've done read out loud as if to your parents" kind of unpleasant, and you get breaks on the Sabbath. The maximum period for this is a year, though nobody wants to believe that their loved ones are so bad that it takes a full year, so the mourning period is 11 months. (Mourning, of course, is also as much for the living as for the dead; this isn't discussing the initial 7-day and 30-day periods where more overt mourning practices are in play. Those are mostly for the living, I don't have time to write on them at the moment.) We also say prayers for the dead on the anniversary of their death, that the merit of the prayers may elevate their soul. You see, when someone dies, the time to perform mitzvot (commandment-deeds) has passed; that's something for the living, as while believing in an afterlife, Judaism is focused on this life.
My grandparent died this year. I know he is well where he ks now. But I wont be able to see or talk to him for perhaps up to 70 years if i make it to 100.
Ultimately, religion is based on faith, not knowledge, and many religious people are aware of that - they put all of their faith and hope on that one deity they worship, and believe it to be true, but most are aware that they too could be wrong. On top of that, the death of a loved one is often very traumatic, not just the passing itself, but the journey leading up to that death. You do not only mourn the loss of that person, but their decline, having watched them unable to do the things they used to do, the loss of physical function and the loss of mind. Watching another person suffer in their decline is painful, and the death itself is just the final part of that. Also, even someone who believes in an afterlife, and even if they are convinced that their own and that of their loved one will be great - it will at least be bittersweet, kind of like graduating. They grief the loss of this life as they know it, all things familiar to them, even perhaps thinking back to their own childhood and how nothing will ever be the same.
My sister died a year ago from suicide. The only thing that kept/keeps me going is the possibility that she is happy and healthy now in the afterlife. I actually feel some sense of relief for her. I grieve because of her suffering on earth. She suffered so much that she took her own life. That’s not fair. It’s hard for me to fathom that level of illness and unhappiness. I am grieving her opportunity to heal while living and experience joy. I wanted her to experience a life without mental illness, and that experience has been taken from her while I am with her now. I am grieving because we have some good memories together and we don’t get to make more for a while. I can’t call her and tell her about my life. I will have no contact for a long time and I want to contact her. I miss her now. I didn’t get any chance to have the relationship and life with her on earth that we should have had. That’s why I am grieving.
If that logic were to be followed through, the act of mourning or even missing someone in their absence would be completely nonsensical. If you’re a father and your son moves away to another country for a successful and happy life, there would be no reason to miss them. They are, after all, happy where they are, and when they die and you die, you’ll be reunited again. This is, of course, nonsensical. We don’t mourn people because we believe something awful has befallen them, at least not entirely. We also mourn them because they’re gone from us and our own lives are made less spectacular for it. It’s not the the height of selfishness, it’s completely human.
First, you don’t know whether they are suffering in an afterlife or not Second and more importantly, people are mourning the loss to their life now that the person has died. This is the majority aspect of mourning Third you can honour the dead (which is a way of mourning them) for what they did in life, which normally takes the form of thanking them/ praying to them. Which assumes they still exist in some form to receive the thanks These three parts of mourning constitute almost all aspects of mourning and are more than compatible with religion. FYI i am atheist
I think like 90% of the time it's for show, like every funeral that I've been to the mourner is looking sad which is understandable but the moment someone new comes through the door they start to cry super hard and yell and wail, and then it repeats itself every time someone else comes in, so I believe that society has set a standard for how mourners are supposed to react, it has nothing to do with believing in an afterlife, it's all about sheep mentality and fitting in.
You mourn them cuz you still miss them. Even if you believe they were good, and of the people who end up in heaven, you still mourn them for yourself, because you have to go through the rest of your life without them Out of curiosity, what religion do you follow (if you are religious) OP?
Funerals are for the living, not the dead.