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Often people who have lost close ones feel overwhelmed by all sorts of emotions, including guilt - whether over mourning too much or mourning too little. "Is it
by swombat 11y ago
Often people who have lost close ones feel overwhelmed by all sorts of emotions, including guilt - whether over mourning too much or mourning too little. "Is it ok that I'm still grieving? Should I still be expressing this grief to people I meet? Do people expect that I should be moving on now? Am I moving on too soon?"
By declaring the length of the mourning period, religion does there one of the things it does best: give us a sense of ritual and assuage potential guilt at those very important moments in life: yes, it's ok to still be mourning. Yes, it's ok to move on now.
These are not mandates. They're not marching orders. They're a guideline so you don't have to add guilt about mourning too much or too little to what is already a crushing amount of sorrow.
- Dewie3 11y agoSo religion tries to reduce guilt. Well I guess I learn something totally new every day... Admittedly I'm not familiar with Judaism except through the limited view of the Bible and comparing it to Christianity.
- swombat 11y agoReligion is a pretty complex thing. I totally agree that christianity tends to be, as Alan Watts described it, "institutionalised guilt"... but that's just one dimension of it. Religion is a huge topic. It's many things to many people. It's never helpful to intelligent conversation to reduce a big thing to a single axis.
- beagle3 11y agoDepends on how observant you are, in Judaism, it is mandates / marching orders. The "shiv'a" (literally, "seven") is a lot more than just the mourning period - it is also the period when others are required to come and comfort the mourners. It also officially stops if a holiday happens to fall inside it - thus, it might last as little as half a day, at which Judaism tells you: "It's time to stop mourning". (with the implied statement that the deceased has semi-saint status, and that's why you don't need to mourn as long). It's not uncommon for people to mourn longer than specified (e.g., the whole 7 days even though there's a holiday that should have terminated it) and for other people to be critical of them for disobeying the letter of the "law" I don't think it's about reducing guilt; It's about establishing something that's easy to follow for people whose world just collapsed. Guilt management is, perhaps, a small part of that. During the whole following year (if mourning a parent; 3 months if mourning your child, one month mourning a spouse or a sibling), the mourners are instructed to not enjoy - modern interpretation is to not see movies, shows, attend weddings, etc. I think it's about mourning etiquette much more than it is about guilt.