A Question without an answer...

**Sybil Corvax** Wed May 19, 2010 7:08 pm

A Question Without An Answer No Matter Which Way You Look At It

It’s disconcerting to me when people claim that they know exactly what’s to come when they finally kick the bucket.

The vast majority of the people I have come to speak to in my lifetime claim that there are such places as Heaven and Hell. Heaven is where you go if you’ve somehow managed to go your entire life without sinning (fat chance unless you manage to never leave the house) and Hell is where you go when you have sinned and don’t regret any of it (apparently).

I’m not Christian or Catholic and I’ve never once read the Bible, nor do I ever plan to. My vision of the afterlife, I honestly don’t really have one as there isn’t a way for me to know what’s there unless I happen to become a lifeless shell myself. I know that it’ll happen someday and I’m accepting that, though I honestly don’t want it to happen any time soon (though others probably say that it hasn’t happened soon enough). However, it’s something that I’m pretty curious about, Death is.

We don’t know where we’ll go once the skeletal man comes for our souls, scythe in hand. We know where our bodies go. Right back into the earth, even if we choose to burn our corpses using the term “cremation”, but we know not of where our very souls go. If they go anywhere.

I often wonder if these unknown things are how the ideas of Heaven and Hell were spawned by the different religions. Because we don’t know the truth of the matter and we as human beings fear what we can’t even attempt to understand or explain (as is one of our many flaws, though we don’t care to admit that we are not, in fact, perfection itself). We like knowing the answers to things, so in such cases we do not have the answers to everything under the sun, we create those said answers.

Though, I’m not bashing at the idea of Heaven and Hell. It makes sense for those who are considered “evil” to be separated from those who are “good”, but I also question it (which may or may not be my downfall as I question a lot of things).

God is supposed to be merciful, so would he not forgive those who have wronged, despite what today‘s society thinks? That is what mercy is, am I wrong? Though, society always has trouble deciphering the difference between wrong and right anyway so this point just might be irrelevant all together. Then again I could just be one of those scientific idiots too focused on “real” answers instead of just simply accepting that God’s word is law (and yada yada). You can be religious, but still realistic and reasonable (though many people forget this).

Deism, I believe it’s called; to believe in a spiritual being, but to also have the ability to reason and question the said being, which many people completely lack (seriously). I’m not saying that there’s no Heaven, Hell, or God. I just wonder if our human need for answers is what spawned such beliefs about Death and the afterlife.

For all I know, the Ancient Egyptians were completely correct in their beliefs concerning said afterlife (I mean, it’s a completely cool idea, so why not?), but I don’t and that’s the exact point.

Many claim to know what happens when Death comes to collect our souls for his pretty soul necklace. These people concern me and I often wonder how disappointed they’ll feel if they so happen to be wrong about their beliefs. Then again, that’s just if they happen to feel at all whenever that time happens to come.

Death is just another one of those unexplainable things that only those who have met personally will be able to explain and a lot of people are afraid to finally meet the man beneath the black hood (walking skeletons are creepy). Even when we finally do croak it, people don’t just rise from the dead and start telling of how it is on the other side. They’re dead and they’ll stay that way. So, it turns out that Death is just another one of those questions that can’t be answered. No matter how hard you try.

Unless you’re a zombie, but nobody likes zombies.