The greatest error that has been made in the western world, and disappointingly so in America, is the assumption or presumption of so many people that all we are is our body and brain, and once that is extinguished, than our existence for forever more is also gone. That statement is so false, so much in error, and is the indirect or direct cause of so much tragedy and wrong in this world. It is especially unfortunate that this nation, founded by people of great religious faith, in humility to God, have seen their influence be pushed aside by the secularists and materialists of today's faith. None of this has brought much good to our country, and much of it has brought much wickedness and disgrace to this nation once as proud and honest as to declare that our essential essence comes from our Creator who is our eternal benefactor.
The most significant problem with the viewpoint that we are our body is that our body becomes the be-all and end-all of our existence. In any situation in which your body and your brain is treated as if this is your entire existence, your greed to satisfy its needs will be never be satiated, no matter the cost or the cause. Yet, it doesn't take a genius to determine from a mere cursory examination that nothing physical lasts in this world, all will decay, all will die, all will effectively disappear or will be transformed or will be absorbed. So those that are materialists have created a false foundation built on sand, which will hardly last through the tides of time that respects no physical man.
You are not your body; your body is merely the encasement of your soul and your spirit. The normal condition of he who was created by God, is spirit, not physical. The physical merely houses the spirit for a time, for a while, for a purpose, and when completed or exhausted the spirit will exit that physical realm as easily as the spirit arrived to it. If life was truly only physical, to which your body determined whether you were alive or whether you were dead, than earth itself would be a cruel trick on mankind, a game with no meaning and with no purpose. Additionally, all of the great saints would have lived lives of utter futility, because of their inability to escape the hands of physical death.
However, the message of the empty tomb of Christ or the empty sarcophagus of the King's chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza is exactly the same, that there is no death. Too many believe that physical death is absolute death, but it is not, instead it should be seen as the natural return of spirit to the realm that it belongs to, a "freeing" of the spirit from its physical imprisonment.
In the western world, the secular message is clear, that we are what we feed upon. So that if you believe that your physical needs trump all, you will live according to those needs, and when your body becomes ill, or old, or decrepit, you will cry crocodile tears of great sadness because you will believe that life as you know it is over. The correct and more satisfying viewpoint is to understand truly that your body merely encases your soul and your spirit, wisely feed instead upon those things that will bring eternal joy, and there you will find everlasting treasure and riches, never to depart.