RE: ‘Death’

Here’s a good article(or perhaps a mini-essay) about death. The author is an ER doctor and has seen death so many times, he has become desensitized to it. He hasn’t become desensitized to the grief,though.

Several comments say that that is what’s important: sensitivity to grief, not death. Perhaps that is the way to look at it. After all, it is those grieving that are helped/hurt by your response. Virtually everyone agrees that people after death are not affected by us down here.

A tangent of this is something that has been a topic of fierce debate at Slashdot pretty much whenever a death is the topic. Basically, every time there’s a death people get into a debate whether they, not having known the deceased or their families personally, should post their sympathies. An additional part of it is that slashdot’s intent is not to have a number of posts that are all the same, expressing their sorrow.

I personally feel that while Slashdot’s intent was never to be a repository of people’s informal eulogies, death announcements are so rare that the harm of deviating from Slashdot’s goal is offset by the chance to show the deceased and their families respect as well as let others know of their contribution. Those that do not have or feel any connection to the deceased should either be respectful or not post at all.

Anyway, I digress. As a Christian, I believe that those without faith will be condemned, and so I think the death of an unbeliever should cause Christians some sorrow. However, if a Christian dies who we do not know, I think we should realize that they’re in heaven and we should feel happy, but also sad, because even if we do not feel the person’s absence, someone else does, and is in deep pain.

Of course regardless of faith or belief, the feelings toward the death of a stranger I think depend on the person, and the level of exposure to death. Since both are partially out of one’s control, I don’t think you can condemn someone for not feeling strongly when a stranger dies. I think we have to ignore stranger’s suffering to an extent to even survive. We cannot cry continously because somewhere, someone is dying every second. Yet, I think it times of great tragedy, I think we can afford to open our hearts, to bear the burden, and maybe even to cry.

One thing we must remember is that feeling sad about a stranger and forgetting soon after does no good. So even if we have some sort of emotional response to it, it is not valuable if we do not offer our help or support. So as it turns out, I think ER doctors like this blogger do a lot more good, because they may be numb emotionally, they still act and try to save lives.

I wish that this post was insightful, but more importantly I hope it was sensitive and not insulting to those whose problems I touched upon. Finally, as a Christian, I would like nothing more for you to have faith and be saved so that your death is not just a time of mourning, but also of rejoicing as your fellow believers know you entered eternal happiness with God in heaven.