One downside to living in a small town -- this one, anyway -- is that Christian religiosity is turned up to 11. Though it's a small paper, copy must be hard to find, so the local newspaper fills out its columns with devotional writing, prose and verse, by local writers. This becomes a bit hard to take after awhile, but I'm a big boy and I don't mind diversity - I just wish for more of it.
Another irritant is the convention of beginning obituaries with the claim that the deceased went to Heaven to be with his or her Heavenly Father. It's a convention, not to be taken seriously of course. I know some of these people, and I wouldn't be so sure of their posthumous destination, very much the opposite -- but then, what do I know? Racism and general hatefulness may be qualifications for Heaven. I'm afraid I upset one young librarian recently when, checking out a book after a surfeit of obituaries, I remarked on this trope and said that when I go, I want my obituary to begin by kvelling that on such and such a day, I descended into the welcoming fires of Hell to be with my Lord and Master Satan for eternity. I'm not really going to require such a thing, because I don't believe in Hell any more than I believe in Heaven, and since I won't be around to observe people's reactions, it would be a pointless gesture. But I'd settle for something like this (via).
If people are comforted by these fantasies, it's not for me to pick on them I suppose, and for that reason I feel bad about upsetting the young librarian. (For all I know, though, she's a hateful Trumpian in her personal life - it's all too likely anywhere in Indiana -- and if so, I'd happily upset her more, but not while she's on duty.)
NPR's Morning Edition has been worse than usual this week, with some fatuous academics distorting history and generally dishonoring their professions. On Fridays there's always a segment from Story Corps, the oral history organization, and they're usually inoffensive enough. Today's featured a man who, as a 7-year-old boy, was hit by a van while riding his bike. He spent some time in a hospital in an induced coma, but eventually recovered and is now a chef. Most of the conversation was between his mother and one of the EMTs who brought him to the hospital. They formed a bond and became friends for several years, then lost touch. They met again when the EMT heard a familiar voice at a nurse's station, and lo! it was the boy's mother, who'd become a nurse.
The mother reflected:
It's interesting because when I was a little girl, my dad used to tell me, you're going to be a nurse. But when this accident happened, I said, maybe this is God's way of saying, you know, your father was right. I enrolled in nursing school ....
At that point, I exclaimed "You people are sick!" So God sent that van to nearly kill her little boy in order to "tell" her she should be a nurse? The amorality of popular religion, the kind of theology ordinary laypeople invent (often to the horror of clergy and academic theologians) always appalls me, and this bit was a sort of booster shot. It's harmless enough, compared to much faith, but I'm amazed that this woman could calmly say something so heartless with a straight face. And not about distant strangers, but about an event that directly affected her and her son.
This brings to mind what someone said, that they'd prefer a universe without gods to one with a god who sits above, watching people suffering, and does nothing about it. This feels obviously right to me; but I especially find no comfort in a god who causes suffering to achieve some obscure and uncertain aim. Yet many (most?) people do find comfort in that belief, and are horrified at the idea that no Supreme Being is out there, and things just happen. This can't be something that evil priests forced on them; if there were no priests or churches, they'd invent it on their own.
