Almost as universal as the fact of death is the fear of death. The American film producer Woody Allen famously said, ‘I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens’, but this was just his quirky way of twisting the truth.
Most people are reluctant to talk about death and try to avoid doing so. Death troubles and torments them, frustrates and frightens them, the Bible going so far as to say that ‘through fear of death’ some people are ‘subject to slavery’ (Hebrews 2.15).