esp if you’re one of the devout ones who think they’ve been really good
It was actually her obsession with the afterlife and the coming of the end times that led to me cutting off contact with my mother in 2014 and me renouncing my faith.
My mom was a devout Christian my whole life, but she went full-on fire-and-brimstone Bible thumper during her divorce from my dad. My dad had cheated on her multiple times and she’d finally had enough of it.
She hated my dad for walking out, but vehemently denied that fact and instead projected her hatred onto God himself. She would always say my dad (and anyone who supported him on his side of the family) would be judged harshly for his actions in the next life. By the way, she said this about basically anyone she didn’t like, including people she disagreed with politically or morally; it might not surprise you to learn that she was quite a bigot as well.
In the last few years I knew her, she started to obsess over the prophecies in Revelations. She’d constantly send me chain emails about how the various conflicts in the middle east were a sign that Jesus Christ was about to return, or a misquoted article about the US government looking into identity microchips was Obama (the Antichrist, obviously) giving his followers the Mark of the Beast. The last time I spoke to her was in 2014 so I never got to ask her what she thought of Trump and his MAGA hats, but I have a strong feeling the irony would have been lost on her; I once had to explain to her that an article she showed me from The Onion was satire and her response was, “they shouldn’t be allowed to say those things.”
She died in 2020, but not from COVID. Two years earlier, she had let a kidney stone get infected which then progressed to full-on sepsis. It responded to the treatment at the time but the infection damaged her heart, which ended up killing her. For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine why she didn’t see a doctor because a kidney stone would have hurt like hell, but then I realized she probably felt that it was just God calling her home.
So yes, anecdotally speaking there are religious people out there who are obsessed with the afterlife. I think people are still inherently afraid of death, though, so they’re not exactly in a hurry to die. But for a religious person who’s ready to die, it’s likely nearly all they can think about.
There is a comfort in knowing that we shouldn’t feel like we have to take revenge on those who wronged us because God will judge them
Or, you could spend your whole life dreaming of the day that God judges your enemies for you, instead of listening to your loved ones telling you to move on and find your own happiness, or you know, learning some actual conflict management skills.
