Rotten Core but Thick Fruit

As I mentioned in last week's post, my mother died unexpectedly a few weeks ago. My biggest concern was how my father was going to handle this, they have been married for around 40 years and pretty much everything he does has her in mind. What is he going to do now that she is gone? When I first got into town my sister and I had a conversation and she said our dad is planning on going back to church. This actually made me happy, he grew up in the church and when I was growing up he always seemed to take a lot of joy in church activities. It seems like it would be good for him to get back to something like that.

I found it somewhat surprising that this is the reaction I had to my dad going to church. My opinion of Christianity is pretty low, why would I want my dad to take part in it? Well...It is a set thing to do once a week, come down to a place and be surrounded by other people. Take part in a bit of ceremony, mill about and talk to people before and after, and I think he enjoys some aspects of the actual service, such as the music. Ultimately it is the social aspect that I want for him. If he misses a week, someone in the church will probably notice and give him a call to make sure he's okay (not just because he missed a week and people there are fanatical, but because they know what he just went through). I like the idea that he will have something to do every week to keep him from spending all of his time milling about in his house by himself. Furthermore, my dad is the kind of guy to get involved in things. If the church runs a soup kitchen he will volunteer to help out, and again, it will be a good social thing for him. I don't often think about the good things that come from church, but there is definitely a good side of it. Along these lines, I also spent a lot of time observing and listening to people as well as reflecting on what I heard people talking about when I was growing up. The take-away message that many regular church-goers have is that Jesus is a good guy and they should be more like him. If that's what they get out of church I'm all for it. The church does bear some fruit, and I think there is an argument to be made the the fruit is thick.

However, the core is rotten. The central tenet of Christianity is that we are all sinners, we all deserve to be tortured for eternity, but if we ask God for forgiveness we can go to paradise instead. There are many other things about Christianity that I have issues with, but most of them vary from church to church. This one, however, seems to be pretty constant. It is necessary really, it's the reason we need Jesus. And I think this core message, the idea that we are all inherently evil, infects everything that the church does. A simple example, an aunt of mine (who doesn't know I'm an atheist) was talking to me about the importance of including religion in my son's upbringing. Within her pep talk, she randomly mentioned that we are all sinners and we all do bad things. She then quickly included "at the very least everyone has bad thoughts". Something about the offhanded inclusion of thought-crimes just to drive home the point that we are all evil really stuck out to me.

So I had these things rolling around in my head while I was sitting in the pew with my dad on Sunday morning. I got this picture of a nice thick, juicy apple that represents the church. There is plenty of good stuff in there. But the core is rotten, and that rot has tendrils reaching out for the edge. Go ahead, take a bite, you'll get some good stuff, but it's pretty difficult not to get a taste of the rot as well.

Behold my amazing artistic skills

Dealing With Death

You may have noticed that I haven't made a post in a few weeks. You may have guessed that I have simply been busy with my two month old son, unfortunately you would be wrong. The day my last post went live I got a call from my dad that my mother had passed away unexpectedly. It was quite a shock, she wasn't sick, or showing any other signs of problems (other than feeling a touch under the weather for a few days) and she's relatively young. So anyway, I grabbed a quick flight and went to visit my dad for a week. While I was there I kept a little grief journal, here's a few thoughts from it.

What is the appropriate amount of grieving?

When I first heard the news, I was more shocked than anything. I was intellectually sad, but emotionally I was mostly numb. At some point I realized that everyone other than me seemed to be distraught and while my numbness had seemed to wear off, I wasn't feeling particularly sad. What does it mean that I am not feeling like everyone else? Is there something wrong with me? Did I not love my mother? We certainly had our issues, but I cared for her. Why the disparity?

I talked to my wife about this, and she said I was being silly. I loved my mother, and there is nothing wrong with me. Judging your emotions is a bad idea, and not everyone is on the same schedule. She was right, I cut myself a little slack, and the emotions came. Especially during the actual funeral. Holy shit was that brutal. It was actually good though in a way. It was exhausting, but it was a way to get the emotions out around plenty of people for support. And it was great to share stories with people.

Now that I've returned to my regular life for about a week, things are mostly back to normal. My everyday life is pretty far removed from my parents, so the whole episode is rarely in the forefront of my mind. I do randomly have an impulse (such as "my mom would love this, I should call her about it") which is always a bit of a bummer.

What do you say to someone who is grieving?

When I got past the shock and disbelief of losing my mother, my concern went right to my dad who just lost his wife of roughly 40 years. My dad much used my mom for motivation for pretty everything he did. He loved tinkering around the house and in the yard, but even when he was just screwing around with his own little hobbies, he always had an eye out for things that my mom would like. Losing her would be absolutely devastating for him. What the hell do I say to my dad in this situation? How can I make things better?

Of course, I was on the other side of this a lot in the following week. My friends and family were searching for things to say to me to, many of them said things like "I just don't know what to say" just as I had to my father. Here's the thing, there is nothing to say. Nothing will fix things, no words will really make things better. However, the simple fact that people want to help and are searching for things to say is nice. A simple "I'm sorry for your loss" is good. Many people also offered to help in any way they could. "If you need someone to talk to please don't hesitate to call me", that's also nice, and I did take a few people up on that as did my dad. Another thing that a lot of people did that was really nice was to drop by food and drink. It's nice to not have to worry about grocery shopping during all of the craziness, and it also gives people an excuse to drop in and just hang out with us for a few minutes.

She's with God now

There is one thing that I heard a lot, in many variations from many different people "God must need her in heaven". Many atheists take offense to these statements but I obviously didn't as very few people in my family know I'm an atheist. But I'm not sure it would bother me even if they did, everyone is trying to cope. And as I said, it is hard to know what to say, in fact at the beginning of the trip I found myself wishing that I could have said such a thing to my father. I never did of course, but it seemed like it would have been nice.

But would it really? As I was watching so many people say these types of things, I was wondering if such words really help, and I don't think it did. Nobody seemed to be comforted by these words any more than they are comforted by anything else. People nodded and said "thank you" as they would have to "I'm sorry for your loss", but it doesn't make things better.

One angle I see a lot of atheists take with this type of thing is to submit it as evidence that they don't really believe what they are saying. It's not terribly uncommon to hear "If they really thought she was in heaven they'd be happy about her dying." I've nodded along to this before without thinking about it too hard in the past, but now I'm not so sure. Consider this analogy.

Suppose you were a really poor person in a really poor country. You have a wife and family that you love and your life is good given the conditions, even though you long for the better life. Suddenly some rich person swoops down to your village and says they will take one of your loved ones to live in a rich country in a mansion. They will be living the good life. You can come too, but you have to wait 5 years. 

In this situation, you are going to be happy for them, but you are still going to be sad they are gone. You will look forward to the reunion and being able to join them in the good life, but nevertheless, you will be sad for the time you have to spend apart. Furthermore, just observing my extended family, they really believe what they are saying. They Some of them really believe that my mom is in heaven, they are still sad they will never see her again (until they die).

Anyway. I should get back to a somewhat normal posting schedule starting next week.

Do We Concede the Ground on Death Too Easily?

So I read a post by Greta Christina which I also stole this title from. (If you don't read her stuff you should start, she is pretty awesome). In this post she was responding to the claim made by some atheists that religion will always win on the topic of death. That atheism will never be able to comfort people in the same way that religion does. She then spent the post talking about how heaven is really only comforting if you don't think about it very hard.

I thought this was a really good angle, and she made some very good points, but when I read her title my thoughts went in the opposite direction. Not only can we win this argument by pointing out that heaven isn't so great as she does, but we don't have to worry about the possibility of hell.

One of my uncles died about ten years ago and it turned out that he had killed himself. I was sad when he died, but when I got the new information that he had killed himself it didn't really make much of a difference. I had already been dealing with his death for a week or so, the fact that he had felt the need to kill himself was sad, but for me it was so overshadowed by the simple fact that he was gone that it didn't have much of an impact. I remember my mom being upset at the doctors who did the toxicology report saying that it was impossible. I also remember being shocked at her reaction as he had dealt with depression for years and he was pretty down on his luck at the time. At some point I realized that for my mother, my uncle died twice. Once the toxicology report came back and we learned he had killed himself, there was no longer the possibility that he was in heaven. He killed himself, he is in hell.

So for me, my uncle died and I had to deal with the fact that I would never see him again. It sucked. For my mom, she had to deal with the fact that she would see him again, but was comforted by the fact that she would see him again after she died. Then after the tox report came back, this minor comfort was stripped away and was replaced with the idea that not only would she never see him again, but he will be tortured forever.

So I ask, whose belief system has the edge here?