| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺東大學 === 教育學系(所) === 97 === Abstract
This study focuses on how current Christian elders think about life’s meaning and their attitude toward death. The relationship between the mentioned two is also included.
The study aims to understand what is the meaning of life for a Christian elder; to explore a Christian elder’s concept of death;
to understand a Christian elder’s attitude toward death; to explore
the relationship between the meaning of life and the attitude toward death.
Adopting qualitative research methods, the researcher interviewed ten Christian elders with a pre-designed questionnaire and took a recording after receiving consent from the interviewees. Analyzing the verbatim based on the recording, the researcher concludes:
a. Christians elders hold positive attitudes toward life, including
“the completion of family responsibility”, “people-helping”, “health-
Keeping”, “belief-searching”, “life-growing”.
b. Christian elders’ concepts for death include “Death is a transitional stage for eternal life”﹐“It is the Heaven that one can go to
after death”, ”the revival and the eternal life”.
c. For Christian elders, they face death easily, give themselves to God and are obedient to God, for Jesus’ assured lead .In other hand, they are not afraid of death but full of hope to the world after death. At the same time, they faced families’death replacing blessings with sadness, being glorious for them, wishing to meet them again in Heaven. Death means “approach-oriented acceptance; that is, they are not afraid of either death or resistant and are willing to lose their life even if Jesus tells them to do so.
d. There is a negative correlation between a Christian elder’s concept of life meaning and the attitude toward death. According to the research, we found that Christian elders’ life experience provoked a reflection of life and death. That is, their death inspired life. Life are forced to be prepared for death. The certainty to life make them face death frankly. A Christian elder is always ready to go no matter when God picks him up.
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