How Bad Is Death?

Next week, my primary class is learning about the Three Degrees of Glory. This topic is both comforting and troubling for me because, no matter how you slice it, the underlying message seems to be that death isn't actually all that bad.

The Three Degrees of Glory, ranked from best to worst, are the Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial Kingdoms, but even the lowest degree of glory, the Telestial Kingdom, is described as being much nicer than Earth. In fact, I've even heard it said that if everyone knew how good the Telestial Kindgom was, there would be mass suicides to get there.

That's where this topic gets troubling for me. Life stinks. In fact, life in Earth is so bad that even the worst place any of us a capable of ending up is better than here. Yet, we really don't want to leave this mortal life early. Mortality is the only way we can gain the experiences we need to grow. Unfortunately, most of those experiences are painful ones, which is why we couldn't have had them in a Celestial world.

So, on the one hand, death isn't too bad because we end up in a nice place, even, potentially, a heavenly place, depending on our decisions, but on the other hand, death is still kind of bad because it means an end to the opportunities created by a mortal life. Dying isn't the worst thing that could happen to us, but we should still put it off as long as possible, for our own sakes if no one else's. I'm just a bit fuzzy on how bad dying really is.

I suppose it depends on the context. If one dies after a long, full life, that's not so bad, but if a person dies early, that is bad. But it's hard to know what counts as "early" in this context. Some people die by accident, but some of those "accidents" may turn out to have been acts of God. I suppose only God knows when it's a person's time to die. If a person dies when God determines their life on Earth is over, that's not a bad thing, but if a person dies before that time, it is. But it's difficult, if not impossible, to know whether or not a person's time was truly up, so it's difficult, if not impossible to know whether their death is a relief or a tragedy.

Of course, this is far too heavy a subject to bring up in a class full of 8- and 9-year-olds. Odds are, the lesson on the Three Degrees of Glory won't go far beyond describing the three kingdoms and which kinds of people go to which kingdoms. But I can hardly help wondering how we, who know the meaning of life and the nature of death, are supposed to feel about death. Is it to be shunned as an end of necessary mortal experienced or embraced as a long-awaited return to our heavenly home? The answer may depend entirely on whether or not the death comes early, but I'm afraid only God knows when each person's "early" ends.