Do Christians fear aging and death

1. Introduction - suicide

Suicide - a topic that our society still does not like to talk about ...
There are many reasons for leaving out this topic. First and foremost is probably the fear of death in general. In our world of thought, aging is not discussed with pleasure, nor is dying dealt with. The Christian religions also contributed to the fact that death was fraught with fear. After all, according to the Christian understanding, dying is the decisive interface - whether I am awaited by eternal damnation or the kingdom of heaven. Even the way I die is critical to Christian religions. According to the Christian view, suicide inevitably leads to damnation, since I could neither get confession nor absolution (Catholic Church). In addition, the survivors were severely damaged in their reputation and reputation (exclusion from the social environment; economic ruin).
Today religions no longer have the same influence as they did in the Middle Ages. The fear was passed on through the generations.

But the "modern" view of the world deliberately omits the subject of suicide or death and aging. This is reflected, for example, in the advertising that we see every day. We are shown an image of man that has the following attributes: young, sporty, successful, dynamic - just simply beautiful. Sporadic commercials that show the other side of human existence (war, illness, old age, death) usually only want to shock people and bring themselves into conversation as a company or their products in this way (Beneton advertising ).

Another reason to make the subject of »suicide« taboo are the traumatic experiences that many people have gone through. It is not easy to observe a suicide (or attempted suicide) by chance. The loss (and the way that person dies) is even harder to cope with when it comes to someone with whom there are close relationships (parents, spouse, children, close friends, etc.).
But people who have attempted suicide (the number must be enormous!) Must continue to deal with it afterwards. After an unsuccessful suicide, fear, despair and usually the unsolved problem that led to the suicide attempt remain behind.

I cannot describe the full scope and problematic of suicide in this text. The cases I know are too individual for that. It starts with the cause (trigger) that leads to a suicide and ends with the (not always present) farewell letters.

I would like to achieve as objective a discussion of the topic as possible in order to gain understanding for the sad situation of »suicide«. What will certainly not appear in this text is a magic bullet that can prevent a suicide attempt. This recipe will never exist because the people concerned have very individual previous experiences or are very different in their emotional stress.

The analysis of "suicide" is also made more difficult by the fact that it is largely taboo in our living space. All statistics should be read with extreme caution as they are heavily influenced by traditions and social environment. Certain trends can be recognized - but the number of unreported cases is enormous on this topic.

I myself will always speak of "suicide" in the texts. Other terms such as »suicide« or »suicide« contain valuations that I cannot always share ().