I’m afraid to die

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I’m afraid to die

Psychologists tell us that even young children are afraid of death. There’s nothing wrong with you if you’re afraid to die; maybe there’s something wrong with you if you aren’t!

There are two reasons why we’re afraid to die. One is that death is the great unknown, and we naturally fear the unknown, like a dark room. Christianity sheds light on this darkness (Prov 14:27). Christ assures us that there is life after death by preaching it (Jn 3:36), but most of all by showing us the Resurrection from the dead (Mk 16:6).

The second reason we fear death is that we’re afraid to meet God face-to-face because we know, all of us, deep down, that we don’t deserve God or Heaven. “There’s a little bad in the best of us”, and the best of us are the first to admit it. “Death gets its power to hurt from sin” (1 Cor 15:56).

Would you like to meet God face-to-face right now, with no defenses, no hiding, no evasion? That’s like asking whether you would like it if every thought that you have thought today, every desire and feeling that you have had today, were played on the six o’clock news for the whole world to see.

Jesus came into this world to take care of the sin problem. The essential message of Christianity is that Jesus saves us from sin. He paid the price for sin: death. In the King James Version, 1 Corinthians 15:56 reads, “The sting of death is sin”, and that sting was put into Christ on the Cross. Death is now like a bee without a stinger: it can’t hurt us. Death brings us into God’s presence, and we have a Savior who has reconciled us to God, made peace, bought Heaven for us.

God has changed death from a monster to a mother. Instead of a monster waiting to devour us, it is a mother giving birth to us. This whole world is like a giant womb, and when we die it is like being born into the far greater world, God’s world. He is waiting with arms ready to receive us.

It’s O.K. if you’re afraid to die. But remember Jesus’ promise, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though he dies” (Jn 11:25).

God did not make death. When a loved one dies, do not say, “God took him.” Death took him, but God took death. God tamed the monster. This was foretold in the Old Testament when Isaiah the prophet wrote, “The Sovereign LORD will destroy death forever! He will wipe away the tears from everyone’s eyes” (Is 25:8). It was accomplished by Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead. Because we belong to him who conquered death, Saint Paul can say, “I am certain that nothing can separate us from his love: neither death nor life … there is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is ours through Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38–39).



Kreeft, P. J. (1994). Your Questions, God’s Answers (pp. 22–24). Ignatius Press.

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