(Previously in Swedish on this webbsite 2016)
In
recent years, I have frequently attended church. Both the church
services and concerts. This is because I have two children who sing
in church choirs. Sometimes is also one of the children involved as
musician on services. The last six months beat all records. But I
actually think it’s quite relaxing and nice to go to church. It is
often good music and I get myself sing, which I think is nice. In
addition, frequently involves the content in the service interesting
aspect of the life for me to reflect on. Often it is just to remove
God from the content. The paradox that I start to see the
congregation that something nice is that I do not believe in God. I’m
not even an agnostic, I’m an atheist. This I believe is the very
foundation that I do not feel upset that the church is spreading
fallacies and lies. I see instead the church as a provider of a
declaration that gives hope for the life built trauma, life’s
finiteness, death. To be surrounded by a belief of eternal life, and
this belief is confirmed every Sunday as part of a standardized
ritual along with a, mostly by the state (in principle), sanctioned
authority, together with other like-minded people is a very powerful
defense against death anxiety. Then the story limps questionable is
the worship and the priest’s task to conform to its own logic.
But
we do use strategies to repress death. The most common way is to
occupy our time with the actions and thoughts that allow thoughts of
death does not come up to the surface (also faith in God and worship
services can work in this way). We fantasize, we listen to music, we
plan, we consume, we compete, we read, we learn, we seek the
attention of love partners, we are abusing drugs or gambling. Most of
what we do in our lives do we do to keep the knowledge of our own
death at a distance. Another type of strategy is to worship someone
or some more concrete. A kind of religion one can say where the
metaphysical element is not as apparent. Everyone has their own
strategy. Without an effective strategy, we can not live. If you
remove a strategy, it must be replaced by a new, otherwise revert to
the old ingrained strategy or you become crazy.
Think about what
your strategy is, often this is what you focus on or do when you do
not have anything special to focus on.