A Report From Me About What Preachers Say


Like all people my age I go to a lot of funerals. I will keep going to them until I myself am dead. I went to one yesterday in the Methodist church of a small town. I attend to honor the deceased and often there are friends and relatives I enjoy chatting with. Not feeling any relationship to the religion that is ever present I pass the time in the service by listening carefully to how the preacher maneuvers around his/her required message. The required message is that the deceased is in heaven. 

They all handle is a little differently. Some hedge a bit. Others talk of something else leaving the implication the dead person is in heaven but not declaring it a fact. One said she never knew the deceased but from what she knew thought there was good reason to believe she is in heaven. The preacher yesterday said she had known the dead and joked about her eccentricities and her good deeds. Then she said, "I believe she is in heaven." She wasn't as certain as some preachers are. 

Last year I went to a small graveside service with a few close relatives. One of these relatives dislikes this blog and everything about my lack of religion. The person who had died was this relative's mother. I had the impression (maybe overestimating my own importance) at the gravesite the preacher had been told to give me a stern lecture on "truth" of Christianity. The five minutes graveside comments were not about the deceased new residence in heaven but were about how ridiculous it is there are nonbelievers. How could people not believe in the Resurrection, he said, when there were eye witnesses who saw Jesus alive afterwards. Of course, the story passed along from person to person was there were eye witnesses but no eye witness ever came forward to say claim seeing Jesus personally. 

Atheist die as often as Christians and no one claims the atheist is anything but dead. Everyone, friends and family, are satisfied with that. There is not more grieving nor less. For some reason Christians, or at least preachers think this, find it necessary to tell everyone he/she believes the dead person is in heaven. Remarks to the grieving are most often, "He/she is in a better place." 

If atheists are fine with the person being dead why can't Christians accept that also?     

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