It's Christmas time and you know what that means? Christmas music! I love to sing so really, I love any kind of music I can sing along with, but Christmas music is one of my favorite. Frankly, even thought I am just shy of being an atheist for five years now, I will sing along with any and all Christmas music from Frosty the Snowman to O, Holy Night to Away in a Manger. I mean, I sing songs about Yellow Submarines and Ziggy Stardust and neither of those things are real either. But I definitely have some favorite and I am going to share my top 10 Christmas (non-religious) songs with you.
0 Comments
I've written before about how intimately familiar I am with sickness and death. I've had friends and family die from old age, drunken car accidents, stroke, drug overdose, and lots of cancer. Cancer is horrible. The treatments for cancer are horrible. I've seen enough people die from it to know that there isn't a magic cure through a doctor or a god. Last night I learned that my aunt, only a few years older than me, probably has breast cancer. This is terrible news for anyone, made worse by her age, newlywed status, and the fact that he best friend just died of breast cancer three years ago. She is trying to find comfort in any way she possibly can. Some of the things she said to me last night: God will be glorified through my death. God will be glorified through my life. I think they already have a cure for cancer. My doctor is really amazing, but she wasn't very reassuring. I'm not going to do radiation, it doesn't work. My mother-in-law is a 15-year cancer survivor and she did radiation. I believe God will heal me. I don't know why God didn't heal my friend. I don't want to be a cancer survivor. This isn't a battle I want to fight. I tried to just listen to her. I offered one sloppy attempt at reassurance and immediately regretted it. This information is too new. She is testing out what "thing" will make her feel better. Being religious, she'll probably land on something god-related. Even if she is cured through medicine or surgery, she'll still give the glory to a god. I've seen it over and over again. Even on their death beds, these people will say that they know God is going to heal them. When my ex-boyfriend died of brain cancer, people were angry because his wife wouldn't allow any visitors who were coming to say goodbye. You had to believe, or at least pretend to believe, that he was going to be healed. No goodbyes. People were upset because they loved him and in the end, they were denied an opportunity to see him one last time because they didn't believe God was going to magically heal him. Side note: That widow is now an anti-vaxxer who does raindrop therapy and is a vegan. Watching someone slowly die of cancer changes your view of doctors, medicine, healing, alternative medicine, etc. You realize that doctor's are just people who make educated guesses, which, when you are dying, never feels like enough. You want there to be a bad guy, someone to blame for your illness. Some blame a devil or think that their "sin" created their sickness. Others blame Big Pharma or the unknown researches for holding out on them. "I would be better if only medicine wasn't such a business. Someone has the cure and they are just a money-grubbing asshole who is allowing over half a million people to die every year in order to make money." I personally, find the cure conspiracy theories to be the most ridiculous things because it shows an extreme lack of knowledge in how cancer works. Even if a cure was found for one type of cancer, it doesn't mean for all. For example, we do have a cure for HPV (a fact that many conspiracy theorists seem to ignore). Having a vaccine with a very high success rate doesn't seem to matter though because people still die of brain cancer, therefore all researchers are holding out on us. I also find this thought process personally offensive, because I have several friends who work in various forms of research for cancer and AIDS. They are good people. All of them are Christians too. There is nothing in the world that would make them happier than to see a cure in their lifetime and there is no way that they would accept a pay off if they did. When someone says that Big Pharma already has a cure for cancer, they are also calling into question the character of anyone (my friends included) who are out there doing medical research. There is a fantastic Humans of New York interview series at a children's hospital. One man has been researching the same child brain cancer for 30 years. It has a 100% mortality rate. This man has devoted his life to trying to find a cure. The heartbreak he expresses at not having found a cure and that all his patients die, is terrible. To look at that man and say that you think he is just holding out on you implies that you think he wants his patients to die. It makes him into a monster. Easier to blame a monster than accept that your body is frail. Sometimes our own DNA betrays us. Sometimes it has to do with our environment. It isn't anyone's fault. My aunt has breast cancer because sometimes, particularly as women age, some women get breast cancer. It may or may not be caused by something in her environment or some drug she has been taking. A doctor will give her options and it is up to her how she chooses to fight, even thought this a fight no one wants to be in. She can work with modern medicine despite its flaws or she can try alternatives which are a crapshoot at best. If she finds solace in a god, then more power to her, but it won't matter. Half a million people dying of cancer every year in the US tells me that this particular god isn't in the healing business. I love my aunt. I don't want her to die or be sick. I don't want to watch yet another loved one slowly succumb to cancer. There is a very real possibility that this could be her last Christmas with us. This makes me so incredibly sad. This could also be a quick surgery, one boob less, and she is on the road to recovery. But I refuse to play this game of make-believe where I think there are magical answers in either science or religion. Ahhh, Thanksgiving. A time for food, family, and awkward conversations about religion. To give them credit, my in-laws are actually pretty good about avoiding politics and religion. My mother-in-law is a staunch Trump supporter who hates Obama/democrats and yet manages to not bring this up 97% of the time. So I'm okay with this. My husband's cousins on the other hand, just can't help themselves. *Abby is one of those people. She once came in while we were on the couch and was weeping over how wonderful the church service she just came from was. She was also the person who talked about there being a "witch" that they prayed over in service. Abby was concerned that our son has been going to a Unitarian fellowship. "Aren't you worried that those other beliefs will rub off on him." I'm counting on it. She was surprised by this. I explained that my kid has made up his own religion that is absolutely ridiculous. I hope people challenge him in those beliefs. I hope people call him out when something sounds religious. I'm glad they are encouraging him to learn more about all religion because he knows nothing about any of them and refuses to learn from me. I didn't bother to mention that the kind of church she goes to, the one that believes in demons and witches, is the exact kind of church I am avoiding. Since I don't feel like vetting every Christian church out there, it felt smarter to take him somewhere where he would be free to explore his beliefs in an environment that doesn't play on his dark fantasies. Then she shifted the conversation to talking about hearing the voice of God when it came to jobs. Now, this is where I should let you know that Abby has had a rather tumultuous professional life. She doesn't have a career and bounces every few years to various clerical jobs. Nothing wrong with this, but there is clearly no plan in place on her end. Her past two jobs have ended because of layoffs, which she admits that she saw coming but didn't "feel peace" about leaving. This is Christian-eeze for, I felt uncomfortable leaving and didn't have another plan so I just stayed. It doesn't matter if things worked out well or not, these people always find a way of spinning it so that their decision was good. Which explains why she was so miffed when I told her that I have never heard the "voice of God". Ever. Even when I was a Christian, I never felt like God was speaking to me. In fact, it often made me wonder if I just wasn't praying hard enough or not listening hard enough. What I didn't trust were my own thoughts, because those sounded suspiciously like my own thoughts and almost always aligned with what I wanted. From what I read in the Bible, it seemed to me that if God wanted me to do something really important, that not only would I know that it absolutely came from him, but it may not always align with my own feelings on the matter. Of course, I used to Christian-eeze phrases like "the Lord led me" and "I felt called". In truth, those were just decisions that made sense. So I told Abby this. That I have never heard the voice of God. "But, how do you make decisions?" she asked, completely mystified. Easy. I weight the pros and cons, talk it over with friends & family, and make the best choice based on the available data. I don't trust my own gut feelings, because life has taught me that feelings are fickle and should only be used when feeling danger. And just like Abby, some of those decisions have been beneficial and some have not. Here's an interesting thought experiment: Where do you think you would be right now if you only listened to your gut feelings and inner voice? I live in the Bible belt, which means that there are five churches within one mile of my home. One in particular has had the same thing on their church billboard since we moved in almost three years ago. All it says is 'COGIC FIRE'. That's it. So one day I asked aloud, "What in the world is that?" A quick Google search revealed that it stands for Church of God in Christ and 'Fire' was a conference that was done in 2015. Now here is my question, what is the point of that sign? Why advertise something that is basically in code? Obviously the sign doesn't change that often, but someone at some point thought it was a good idea to make sure that the people who drove by knew about it. Not all of it, but they felt the need to let everyone know about it. This inevitably led me to a bunny trail where I started to pay attention to church signs.
Now, I don't give a shit about the dumb quotes that are posted. I know for a fact that they make books full of them, just for churches to copy. They aren't original or interesting. No, what interests me is the advertising. A Pentecostal church down the road from me had an advertisement that read: Brother Greg Coone. Friday, September 18. 7pm. Who has ever driven down a street, seen an advertisement for some random traveling preacher and thought, I don't know who that person is but I am going to that? A church right up the road from me is constantly putting up expensive looking banners about BBQs and Men's Breakfasts and Homecoming. Has anyone who doesn't go to that church thought, hmmm....I would love to go to that random church where I don't know anyone because I might get some free BBQ? Okay, there probably are one or two, but your average person just isn't going to do that. I used to be a Christian and I NEVER drove past a random church advertising a revival, preacher, group, or event and thought about going. It didn't even cross my mind. So who are those signs for? My working hypothesis is that those churches are using these signs as a lazy form of evangelizing. Anyone who lives in the south knows that the churches here are segregated and insular to the extreme. If all five of the churches down the road closed, it would have absolutely no impact on our community whatsoever. The members would find other places to go and their minimal impact on their communities would be absorbed by other churches doing the exact same thing. |
AuthorThis is a personal, but secret, blog archiving my deconversion from a Christian to a non-believer. Archives
December 2020
Categories |