By Banji Ayoola
Death, the inevitable end of all human beings on earth, provokes fear, worry, and anxiety almost everywhere. Unlike other subjects, people generally do not like discussing death whether in their serious or leisure hours.
The elderly abhor it. They discourage the youths and children from touching it. There is an inexplicable fear almost everywhere over the subject. Some people even avoid mortuaries, cemeteries, and funerals.
It is a subject that people so much like to parry or avoid altogether. Yet death is inevitable and must come for every earthly human being one day, one after the other.
Whenever the news of the death of a relative, friend, or acquaintance is broken to us, we are shocked, touched, and moved. We often break down in grief for days, weeks, months, or even years mourning the one who has just left us.
Sad as it is, this moment that sneaks in on us, usually confronts us with the certainty of our own inevitable death one day, though we usually avoid the subject like a plague.
And the moment during the usual dust-to-dust rite at the graveside often touches many human beings deep within. This becomes so moving that many often shed genuine tears while saying a heartfelt goodbye to the departed.
Some may even be moved deep from within to ask themselves many serious questions about life, to which they will find answers on their own if they seek seriously further.
But, unfortunately for many, this is where the matter ends. Else the usual inexplicable fear about the subject of death persists. Else the harmful falsehood, erroneous opinions, and confusion that have prevailed on earth among human beings on this important subject over many years continue to blossom needlessly.
The greatest harm caused by these erroneous opinions is the falsehood that life ends after physical death, or that physical death settles everything for a human being.
It is regrettable that on this wrong foundation of false opinions, many build and live their earth lives, meting out horrors, injustice, pains, sufferings, wickedness, and similar other evils to their fellow men and women.
Such human beings, who are often placed in positions of certain power and authority, or endowed with earthly wealth above their fellow men, go on believing wrongly that with their physical death whenever it comes, everything is ended and settled for them.
But surprisingly, he who while on earth believed wrongly that everything or life ends for him at death will discover that he continues living even after physical death; but in a finer body that is not of this earth.
In fact, we will all be held accountable for all our deeds while on earth, good or evil. And in strict accordance with the perfect Declaration by Christ, we shall all reap whatever we once sowed on earth, sweet or bitter.
The truth is that life goes on after this earth-life and the human being continues living in the Beyond even after physical earthly death; but in a lighter and finer body that belongs to the Beyond.
