The Grand Canyon
Dad thought Dave and I were going to hell,
since we had left his fundamentalist
God. My brother sent me Bertrand Russell,
“Why I am NOT a Christian.”
Atheist,
he–liberal Presbyterian, me–
stood at the rim and watched the rising sun/
paint all the colors far below. “Maybe
there is a God…” Dave said. But his was one
cry like “O God!” at orgasm, sincere,
but not a creed. My faith was mixed with doubt.
Before he died Dad told his own pastor
to preach to us, his sons, to call us out
at his funeral. So “Just As I Am”
was played. We never felt so far from him.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, September 16, 2012
Views from the Edge 
Moving. But, at the funeral of the one they both loved, a effort that pushed away rather than brought together in that time of grief……. So often our best intentions have the opposite effect.
LikeLike
Karin, This was deeply hurtful to both Steven and Dave. For their father to orchestrate an altar call complete with “just as I am” was, as you say, well-intended (obviously their father thought he had one last shot at saving his sons from hell), but it was mean, cruel, and just plain bad religion. Not even in the casket could their preacher father just be “Dad”. Very sad. Bad religion does horrible things…very inhman things…in the name of a punishing God who “loves us”.
LikeLike
You just said what I was being too nice to say. The idea that their father did not seem to believe that they were right with his Lord, must have cut very deeply indeed. Still remember my aunt wanting me to say the sinner’s prayer so I could be in heaven with her. With her attitude towards my mother, her sister-in-law, and her coveting the child that was my mother’s and her trying to make me hate my mother, she has left a doubt in my mind of what her final reward is/was. I do not think about that because.I do not want to be in the position of judging her as she so often judged others. She is probably the reason why I can internally react so negatively to criticism.
LikeLike
Hi Karin, I hear you. The presumption of spiritual superiority coupled with belief in a god who punishes is hurtful and, in its own way, violent. Violence is not confined to the first. Words and concepts are also weapons of violence, though that may not be the way those who speak them or believe them intend them. Your aunt wanting you to speak the words of “the sinner’s prayer” to “make it” into an eternal reward may have been well-intended (and I emphasize “may”), was a case of such violence. A priest once observed of a pope that he (the pope) hated the previous pope so much that he became the pope he hated. Your aunt’s scars are still there, of course. Your job all these yeats later is to release her grip on your soul by reminding yourself over and over again that you are not the child of your aunt; you are a child of God. Grace and Peace.
LikeLike