DEATH PHOBIA - An Essential Understanding
The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews says that Jesus came to destroy him who has the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
To me, few spiritual revelations are as powerful and essential for the comfort of the human soul as this one.
In this way we learn that the devil has the power to operate through the fear of death. But he isn’t the lord of death, for only One is the Lord of all things: He Who has the power over life and death, because He is the Creator of Life, and, having died on the Cross, resurrected from Death.
Therefore, the devil has the power of death by the fear that the life-ceasing phobia creates in the mortals.
The devil has never decided who lives and who dies. The Book of Job makes it perfectly clear. However, the death phobia is the human pulsion that the devil uses the most in order to keep Adam’s offspring in bondage.
How does it happen?
It’s not important whether or not humans would experience bodily death before they had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. To me it doesn’t really matter from any perspective. What does matter is that the act of eating the fruit—reaching out to it and taking some—changed completely the humans’ perception structure, breaking their harmony with Him to whom there are neither living nor dead, for to Him all are alive.
In this way, by such breakage humans knew death in the immediate realms of perception of the physical existence. If our bodily cessation didn’t exist as a perception of “death”, this perception would cause death not to exist, because in that case we would be beyond matters as life and death—that is, before we knew/experienced death as we eventually came to know it perceptively.
If before eating the fruit they could die too, they didn’t realize it as a fact, as their perfect harmony with the meaning of life in the Creator led them not to see it as death, but as the absorption of life by Life.
On the other hand, if in the Genesis “not dying” literally meant “to have an immortal body”, then the breakage caused the same thing on the level of perception, identical to what it would cause if they died without experiencing death as “death”.
Therefore, as I said, to me it makes no difference at all. And if someone claims that the unimportance of the literal bodily death affects the meaning of Jesus’ physical resurrection and our own bodily resurrection, I’ll reply that this is not so. For in fact, Jesus resurrected in the flesh and so will we, because God, in Christ, is restoring all things. Among them is the body, which, once resurrected, will no longer be made of “this mortal flesh”, but of an undying substance.
Let’s resume the talk about the death phobia, used by the devil to keep human mortals in bondage.
Almost everything—if not everything—we do in life is done because of our unconscious, continuous “dread of death”.
As soon as the very first notions of time start to form in us, an essential anxiety in the human soul is immediately noticeable. An urge, a mysterious impatience and a thirst for living start to develop.
Sometimes this distress is already present in childhood. It was in mine, very intensely. When your teenage years come, it blows up like fireworks. It’s still the spring of life covering up the death phobia with beautiful colors.
In the first years as young adults, the death phobia disguises itself as responsibility and even neurosis. You need to be productive in order to “be someone”. In this context you need to get married, have children, make money, achieve comfort, reach outstanding positions, make yourself a name, a reputation etc… All these are also “fig tree leaves” that hide the essential phobia: the fear of death. It’s this way because more and more your mind is performing the countdown, and in an increasingly conscious way.
When middle age comes, then, as never before, your soul is wrapped up by the sorrow of looking back and see what you have not done, tasted, tried, felt, enjoyed, lived out—that is, every tree in the garden— at the same time that you look at today and almost always see it as unworthy of your inwardly and outwardly dreams. This immediately takes you to an eager search of pursuing everything you didn’t have and feel an urge to conquer in the remaining years. That’s why middle age usually brings about more changes than we can imagine, and more and more changes take place, as death phobia is now much greater.
At the beginning of old age, some despair or become bitter whereas others conform to it, get quiet or look for shelter in religion or any kind of good deeds toward others as if softening up death’s pillow for themselves.
However, even most of the conformed are conformed because they believe or hope that their “small bargains” with God, made up of almsgiving and charity will give them a place in Heaven, who knows?
Up to your first young adult years, the human existence is a continuous fight against the time you still have. From then on, it’s a distress over the time you no longer have. This is when the death phobia begins to become a conscious and increasingly enslaving panic.
The devil holds us in the palm of his hand by his power of stirring up the death fear!
Owing to the fear of death, girls give themselves over to whom they don’t want, men conquer whom they don’t desire, kill for what will not give them life, work like mad as if their effort could add them one extra day, aspire fame, a name, a reputation, distinction, power, a variety of experiences, the experiencing of new tastes, the anxiety about tomorrow, the time-related stress, the rampant search of magic pleasures, and the deadly expedition in the pursuit of the Holy Grail.
Due to the death phobia, many get shattered as they walk in their paths through making foolish choices, accepting whatever comes, not letting go of anything, trying to possess everything they can, grabbing at whatever thing as if it were essential.
The death phobia also turns us into slaves to time!
“I’m forty and I’ve never had a breathtaking love affair…”—somebody complains, convinced that a breathtaking love relationship could save his/her soul.
“I can’t be alone. I need to find someone soon…”—states someone who says he/she loves company, but actually he/she is awfully afraid of loneliness, which is also a psychological daughter of the death phobia.
“I’m unable to be alone. I take anyone home…”—announces somebody, as if it were a virtue.
“I wonder why I only choose scoundrel guys…”—says a woman who chooses whoever she runs into just to avoid being lonely.
“All goes wrong to me. As soon as I get rid of trouble I get into new trouble!—confesses someone who gives himself/herself up for any trifle as if he/she had bad luck all the time.
“I worked nonstop and didn’t see my children grow up…”regrets the father or the mother who, owing to their death phobia, gave themselves over to the Pharaohs’ Syndrome.
“I achieved all I wanted, but I’m still unhappy!”—speaks out a rich person who lives in continuous death panic.
“C’mon! Life’s short! And you’ll be the husband of one woman only?—hint the female zombie friends, who just can’t get over the fact that someone doesn’t have death phobia and doesn’t accept a companion without love.
“What a waste! A woman like you—beautiful, not committed, at 39—can’t be like that, alone. Not at all!”—it’s the way poorly loved female friends demand solidarity from a woman, or her male friends who think nobody can die before “trying that thing” demand “participation”, and they want to “try that thing” with her.
And so on and on…
And everyone ends up going into a trap. All because life will end.
Then the person becomes a slave to everybody and almost everything, even those that he/she hates or have nothing to do with him/her. They can’t afford to waste time; death is coming.
Because “death is coming” most people choose death itself to sleep in their beds, get married to, be their worries, their fights, their distresses, their separations, their marriages and re-marriages, their new and weary plans, their mad battles stirred up by envy…
Envy… Is also something born of the death phobia. After all, they think: “We will all die, but he has this and that and I don’t.” Therefore, “I want to be like him” or maybe, “I want to have what he has” or worse yet, “I want to possess what is his!”
Death phobia is what makes everything happen; even the things we often deem as more than legitimate. In fact, all our sense of dignity, honor, rights etc, come from the fact that this is the only life we have according to our way of “feeling”. So, if not everything is straightened out here, what will become of us, our memory, our name, our dignity?
Death phobia is the cause of everything that happens, even the things we often deem as more than legitimate. In fact, all our sense of dignity, honor, rights etc come from the fact that this is the only life we have according to our “feeling”. Thus, if not everything is straightened out here, what will become of us, our memory, our names, our dignity?
In 2003, when I started this website, out of each 100 letters (e-mails) I got, about 10 were offensive.
Their basic “thesis” was: “You lost the right to preach because you got a divorce.”
Later on, out of each 100 letters, one was like that. Today it became rare, except when I say something about some “apostle” or “father-postle”. 2 Then, to my surprise, out of each 100 replies saying “That’s just it!”, about 10 are “custom-made critics”, as to this day I’ve never got mail other than from their “employees”.
But why am I saying this?
Because I found out very quickly that those who e-mail me don’t believe too much in God, neither eternity, or truth, or the heart-related things. They value image as power for today. That’s why, too, all the “prosperity” they seek ranges from a BMW to a Limousine. They seem to have completely forgotten about eternity. Their “god” feeds on earthly food.
When it became clear to me that they wrote what they wrote owing to being so enslaved to death and the powers to be obtained in this world—especially a “large church” and an “anointed image”—before death comes, and as I also noted that they weren’t interested in truth itself, I started to reply to them the following way:
“Dear brother (or sister),
I could say lots of things and with no difficulty deconstruct your foolish arguments typical of one who isn’t interested in truth. Therefore, just you wait a few years, for soon we will all be in eternity, right before the Eternal Throne, in all light and in all truth. Then, once there, ask my Lord what was true and what wasn’t.”
It’s amazing! Either no one writes back or some write asking me to forgive them!
Why does it happen?
People forgot about eternity because of their fear of death. So they keep “playing God” on the Earth and ruining other people’s minds. In this way they unconsciously become allies to the devil, because they carry out his desire.
That happens because the devil’s desire is always to feed fear, no matter what kind of fear, because in God there’s no fear as love casts out fear.
But those people who wrote me were reminded that I’m not “playing God” here, and that in fact I know we will all be face to face before the Throne, and very soon! After all, what do some decades—at most—mean? Then they quickly gave up their foolish talk, because they realized that the real issue is eternal.
Death phobia! Yes, this is what rules it all!
However, Jesus came to strip the devil of this power. And as far as Jesus is concerned, such a power was and is neutralized—stripped-in-itself.
The problem is that Christianity didn’t understand the Word of the Gospel neither accepted Jesus. So, a mad thing was created that uses the name of Jesus to instill in men the fear that feeds the devil’s power. For the devil eats the death fear as a cold dish, but he loves the pastries made of religious guilt, and that are spiced with panic regarding God. This is the devil’s total victory granted to him by religion, because religion keeps the devil alive, the guilt resurrected and the law killing the soul.
If we understand this, ah!, what a gigantic change will come about!
Today I’m tired. I’ll stop now. But a good book could be written on this subject. The material is unending in its developments. However, think it over yourself. I know God will give you the understanding of it all!
In Him, who freed us from the time distress before the death distress,
Caio
