Today, my family and I gathered in Big Spring for a funeral. My brother-in-law Philip's twin brother,
Tom, passed away last week, and today was the day we said our final goodbyes to him. I was rather indignant listening to the young man eulogize Tom as "a person who may not have been close to G-d," and it just upset me because how dare the person assume he knew the relationship Tom had with his Maker. It also made me angry when the young man said that "whenever you feel hurt, lonely, broken, or sad, just look to G-d and the church for answers." I thought that was making one hell of an assumption with tons of hubris attached (and ignorance) to think, for one, that everyone in attendance was a Christian. The young man never even allowed for the probabilty that some attendees may have been Muslim or Jehovah Witness or even Agnostic or Atheist. He made no mention of Abba, Allah, Elohim, El-Shaddai, Goddess, Jehovah, or Yahweh. Besides, it is profound that religion is failing people every fucking day by the masses. Hell, as an LPC-I, I see way too many people in my counseling practice who are so screwed up because of religion and overtly and ridiculously religious people. I wanted to tell the young cleric/minister/parson/whatever his title, this:
You might want people to turn to G-d, church, and religion when they are sad, lonely, lost, broken, and in need of help, but every fucking day, counselors like myself have to clean up your fucking mess and help the poor people you failed to recoup their lives.
Oh, and people are NOT BROKEN! Stop saying that!