Christian Memes Thread
- Thread starter Cynllo
- Start date
I've thought about this a lot in the last few years, and it mostly had to do with much older people dying (let's say 80s and older). That is historically rare at this current clip, and can you imagine, back in the first millennium? I bet people mostly forgot within weeks to months about others, since life was far more brutal in terms of survival, and shorter overall.
I think they still grieved, but there were different expectations. We don't expect people to die except of extreme old age. If someone dies from illness, accident, or violence, it seems unfair that we lost them.
Before modern times, as little as 200 years ago, anybody could die suddenly. Even non-believers had to accept it on some level as the will of God. There was absolutely nothing that could be done to avoid it.
Under the circumstances it still hurt, but people knew at a fundamental level that these things happen and you have to keep going.
Did not Christ say, "Let the dead bury the dead?" Is that not a call for the Living to tend to the Living? We can't blame others for forgetting the dead when Christ himself seemed so dismissive towards death, no?
I don't think he was. I don't think we're blaming anyone for anything, just pointing out how quickly one is forgotten when he dies, so as to understand what Chrysostom said when he was trying to show that the esteem of men is nothing, live for eternal things/God.
Iakobos
Orthodox
I once heard a priest remark that the modern equivalent of this would be renaming someone "Rocky." Made me smile.
