Condolences

“May the deceased rest in peace.
They must have gone to a better place.
They’re probably looking down from heaven.”

Fools believe that at least one of these three phrases is a matter of courtesy. If you believe in science and think there’s no afterlife or soul, and that death simply means the cessation of existence, then out of respect for that worldview, shouldn’t you say something like, “They must have peacefully ceased to exist now, as if they never existed in the first place”? But if you get angry when you hear such scientific and rational words at a critical moment, doesn’t that mean deep down, no one truly believes in science? Perhaps, intuitively, everyone knows that an afterlife or spiritual world exists in the depths of their hearts, but they deceive themselves by saying, “I believe in science,” just to avoid troubling thoughts and chase the pleasures of the flesh.

At my grandmother’s funeral, the funeral director scattered rice grains, spoons, and coins while saying, “Please place three grains of rice in her mouth so she can go to a good place. We’ll also put some money in her pocket for her journey.” Hearing that made me feel sick to my stomach without even eating anything. It made me realize that humans believe even souls need rice and money to go to a good place.

If spiritual beings like gods, demons, or angels truly exist, their most defining traits would be the ability to see through human thoughts and the fact that they don’t need money. Therefore, it’s easy to assume that whether a human soul goes to a “good place” or a “horrible place” in the spiritual world would depend entirely on what that person’s heart and conscience have to say. Every action, word, and thought from their lifetime would exist like video files stored on a hard drive. How would spiritual beings view humans who, even in death, try to use money to reach a good place? If there’s a place overflowing with people who paid for entry, would that be heaven or hell? What if the funeral director had said this instead:

“Family members, please hold onto the hope that the deceased has gone to a good place. Humans cannot know the judgment of God. And for the time we have left, let us promise never to sell our souls, to uphold our conscience until the end, and to one day reunite with the deceased in a good place.”

No matter how you think about it, this is the right thing to say. But if he had said that, the funeral director would probably lose his job due to customer complaints. The human heart is deceitful, self-deceptive, and self-contradictory, so savoring the truth often feels like suffering.