My 100th Hub And My Take on Life and Death

Well it has been 10 months since I joined Hubpages, and it has been a very interesting and enjoyable experience to say the least. I figured out quick that I should stay away from Religion and Politics, as they brought out the worst in me as well as in some others that were commenting on my hubs. So it really surprises me that for my 100^th hub, I am writing about Religion, not so much Religion per se but life and death and how a certain hub affected me recently.

BaileyBear wrote an interesting hub called Death-An Atheist’s Perspective and it got me to thinking about life and death, and religion, and my feelings about each of these topics, as well as how I feel about heaven and hell. .

I guess you could say that I have been confused for quite some time as far as life and death goes, and what comes after death. I certainly don’t mean any disrespect to anyone’s religion when I say that I have always had a problem with organized religion and was never a big believer in going to church, or the importance of it.

I grew up with a mother who was and still is a very religious person, and that maybe the reason for some of the feelings that I have for religion now. From the time that I can remember, my mother was taking my siblings and I to church and I remember dreading going every Sunday. I just would never get anything out of it and actually can go as far as saying that I hated going altogether.

I raised my children as Catholics because my ex-husband was Catholic and I he really was the one to want to raise my children with one religion and not have them confused about different religions, thinking that as they got older they would make up their own mind about their religious views anyway, which is what happened.

Now I’m not going to go as far as saying that I am an atheist, as that would probably put my mother in the grave along with a couple of my sisters, but I have always had the feeling that there is nothing at the end of our lives. That when we finally die, we go into a nothingness that is just an eternal sleep, and the importance and the point to our lives is what we make of it here on earth. BaileyBear said pretty much the same thing in her fantastic hub, she laid out a pretty good argument about why it isn’t so horrible to think about there actually being nothing when we die.

I don’t understand why it is hard for some people and mostly Christians to believe or contemplate that there may not be a heaven or hell, as the two seem to go hand in hand. I guess you could say that it is a comfort of sorts to me to think that maybe there isn’t anywhere to go but to ashes when we die. I mean we aren’t going to know one way or another, right? Of course there is always that argument about isn’t it better to believe in heaven and hell just in case they exist? That may be true, but how many people believe in heaven and hell only because they are afraid not to, and is that truly, sincerely believing? Sometimes to me it doesn’t seem sincere when people are worrying about whether they are going to heaven or hell and at the same time are committing the most heinous sins.

I grew up watching a mother who even while in her 40’s had always been waiting for the time when she is finally to die and to be taken to heaven. So in a sense she has been living to die for so many years. She is 76 now and still only lives for the day that she will die, because of course she will go to heaven of which she is positive that she will be reunited with her loved ones. To me this is fine if she believes this and for her sake I hope its true for her, but what if its not true? {And to tell the truth there are many people that I didn’t care for on earth, so why would I want to see them in heaven}?

What I’m trying to say is that she has been living for the time when God will finally take her home and in the meantime she has missed the entire meaning of living! I don’t recall her being the kind of person that enjoys anything really, she never wants to travel, or see places that require her leaving her own back yard, and that has always left me perplexed. For someone who has so much faith, as she claims to have, she never even seemed to get any pleasure of even being alive. To her anything that was pleasurable was considered a sin. Laughing too much, dancing, music that wasn’t religious, even drinking a small glass of wine.

I think that for the most part I am more like my father in his spiritual views. He was raised Catholic but he wasn’t a practicing Catholic by any stretch of the imagination, and would always give my mother a hard time about her religious views, in a teasing sort of way of course. But I do remember when my father was dying and how important it was for my mother for my father to give his life to Christ before he gave up the ghost and to be “saved”. I remember my dad doing this on his death bed before he died, and I have always suspected that he did it not because he was frightened that God would throw him into the depths of hell, but to placate my mother so that she wouldn’t spend the rest of her life thinking that my father was burning in hell. I think it was a very unselfish thing for my father to do for my mother.

That’s another thing that I have always had trouble with, getting thrown into hell for my sins. I have always wondered why a God would want to throw any of his children in hell for any of their sins. I have a very hard time with this one because I have often heard that God needs to punish us, the way we as parents punish our children, but there isn’t anything my children could do that I would want to punish them by burning them for eternity. It doesn’t make sense to me and I guess it never will.

Don’t get me wrong, I have always been on the fence on this, I have had spiritual experiences that I have not been able to explain and I do believe that Jesus was a man and prophet that died on the cross, but there are just so many other things that do not make sense to me, especially the heaven and hell thing. Maybe there is a God and maybe he made us but maybe that’s where it stops and there is no heaven or hell! Because as BailyBear put it, what’s the point of heaven? Wouldn’t everything eventually get boring anyway? I loved that line of hers.

I used to be afraid to die and I’m not afraid anymore, sometimes I feel like I am more afraid to live than anything else, because of so many bad things that can happen to a person in this life. I guess I’m more afraid of how I will die than the actually being dead, and maybe this is where many people have problems too, and that is understandable. But it really isn’t a problem for me to think of myself of dying and going into a nothingness forever. If I lead a good life, experience all that I want to experience and enjoy my children and grandchildren, and most importantly do not have regrets, (and if I do have regrets, I would work them out before I died), then it just doesn’t bother me to think of leaving this world.

I guess until the end of time this will be an argument that no one will truly know or understand until they are dead, but in the meantime I have made up my mind to not worry about what comes after. I feel like I am being the best possible person while on earth, of course there is always room for improvement and hopefully as I get older, I can finally be the person that I have always wanted to be. In the meantime, I try to enjoy life, enjoy my children and husband and my family. And definitely I want to be able to experience as much as possible in this world, and stop once in while to smell the roses, and I so wish that my mother would as well.

Also as an aside, I would like to thank all my hubber friends for giving me such an enjoyable time here on hub pages. When I started, I never dreamed of having 10 hubs much less 100, and although I am not as prolific as some of the fantastic writers here on hub pages, I appreciate the friendships, the feedbacks and the encouragements from all of my friends, and there are truly too many to mention. I do however feel like I need to mention De Greek, only because I have been picking on him forever in my hubs and I want him to know that its only because I respect him very much and his humor, and I definitely never mean anything mean spirited.

Also since I joined the Hubpages Elite group as a greeter, I have made many great new friends, and hopefully many more to come.

I would also like to thank my sisters:

Whidbey writer

Geegee77

Rose56

And my husband who is also a writer here on Hubpages and whom you probably have on your friend list as he is a fantastic writer, but because he is rather shy and doesn’t want to appear biased when he gives feedback on my hubs, he wants to remain anonymous. Thanks to all my family for putting up with my crazy hubs and crazy moods. And as this hub has proved, I will write about anything! I LOVE YOU ALL!!