The Importance Of Death

WED., JULY 14, 1993, 9:58 AM
OFFICE, PULLIAM HALL

Death is a normal and natural part of the earth scene. As you often state… and you did so just this morning… continuing life depends on continuous death. Live forms of protoplasm must die in order to be food for forms that live on. The earth cannot expand, and presently uninhabited places would require too much technology to make life comfortable to be practical answers to an increasing population. You are quite aware of how dead organisms put into the soil rather quickly decompose and become an inherent part of that soil again.

Death offers a closure to a human earth life. Your friend Roye led an active life during the working portion, but now he has passed on, in a quick but gentle fashion. His earth life now has both a beginning and an ending: He can be remembered as one active almost until the end and not existing on into disability, pain, and suffering. Your friend Art was quite ready to leave the earth, but a bit apprehensive about his latter day agnosticism and what that would “cost him.” He was both surprised… and not surprised.

You read in the Scriptures of men living more than 600 years (but not more than 700). Then there is the proclamation that life should be limited to 120 years, and, later in a Psalm, that 3 score and 10 should be the expectation, with perhaps 10 more years for “good behavior.” Now you hear, more recently, that there are natural, spiritual ways to prolong life and therefore postpone death. That may be popular with a few, but it does not push Me to retract My assertion that death is important. Many earth resources are wasted in prolonging the lives of some elderly. It is a mistake to assume that I approve of such wasteful extensions.

And I would say the same for procedures that save and prolong the lives of infants, babies, and children with severe handicaps. Though it sometimes can be a worthy spiritual experience for a soul to go through such invasive treatment, it is not a human action that has My general approval.

As you know, I am not enamored of “resources.” Yet the use of resources requires transformation of energy and the production of waste that increasingly imperils the pattern of life I have created for this earth. I am for simpler living, living that is more in harmony with the rest of life and the non-living environment. This is not popular, even among many Christians, but I continue to offer this assertion to you.

You have completed your Survival assignment for this term, and you do not look forward to doing the multiple lectures again. You probably could find out when you actually began this contribution to undergraduate education, so that you could realize the beginning and the end. I agree that it is time to conclude that chore, for that is how you increasingly perceive it. It is a symbolic example of a death making more life possible.

In a secular sense death is final and absolute. The body dies and is disposed of. Legal rights cease. Some memories persist, while others fade. Yet in the reality of spirit death is merely a transition or a translation to a more familiar, easier life. It is not uncommon for elderly souls to come across with the observation “Why did I try to stay in the earth so long?” “Why didn’t I come across earlier?” Death presents you with knowledge and perceptions beyond what you’ve had in this earth life. Death is a return to a fullness of living that is possible only in moments in earth life.