종교교육의 텍스트로서 죽음 동화와 죽음의 의미

Abstract

This article deals with the topic of death as an elementary subject of religious education, which has been regarded as negligible, especially in the area of faith education or religious education. For this purpose, this article will select some of Children’s stories with regard to death, find the death motif in them and explore the meaning of death as one of the subjects of religious education. Korea Church has had its imbalanced focus upon the indoctrination of church dogma. Religious education or faith education has been criticised in that it does not reach at the experience of transcendent being deep within human mind or at any praxis to change one’s life. Thus, it has not much dealt with the subjects such as ‘death’ and ‘mourning.’ However, the subject of death is a very important elementary topic in religious education as well as general education. Taking death as the subject of religious education does not mean any doctrinal or theological approach to life and death, but it rather mean an exploration of an integral or multidisciplinary possibility of religious education motivating sympathetic understandings of sorrow and mourning. In this context, death education may be called education for the completion of life. The four selected children’s stories with regard to death show the motif of meaningful death with regard to religious education. First of all, I Will Be With You (original tile: Ente, Tod und Tulpe) by Wolf Erlbruch and I Am Death (original tile: Jeg er Døden) by Elisabeth Helland Larsen disclose the very everydayness of death, which is very close to us and interferes our today. In Scab on the Knee (original tile: La Croȗte) by Charlotte Moundlic, the main character ‘I’ shows the life process of overcoming the sorrow and longing for Mom through the process, in which the scab on the knee was healed. Finally, The Most Wonderful Funeral in the World (original tile: Alla döna små djur) by Ulf Nilsson playfully describes the funerals of animals by three children who gradually understand and experience death. The four children’s stories of death reveal the meaning of death as the subject of religions education. First, they show a possibility of reflection on life. Children can grasp the sense of the wholeness of life through the topic of death, improve their self-esteem and gain the power to overcome troubles and hardships in their present. Second, death may be understood as the completion of life. For Christians, death is not the end of life but its completion and thus a form of life. In this sense, death becomes the goal of our life as one of factors in life. Last, children have their right to experience death. By participating in funeral, children can reduce the fear and anxiety from death and nurture their sympathetic attitude when they feel sympathy with other’s sorrow. In short, death education is none other than one for life. Especially, death education through children’s story offers chance to reflect upon religious question by enabling them to indirectly participating in the experiences of characters in the stories, and, in so doing, to imagine their hearts.