When a person dies, there is little that is more fatuously stupid than saying that the person will live on in the memory of those who loved him. A few months ago when I attended a funeral at a Diocese of Niagara church, that is more or less what the priest told the mourners: no mention of the Christian hope of resurrection at all. If it were not for the inconvenience of having to recite the liturgy, I suspect he would not even have mentioned God.
The priest in question, while appearing to enjoy the pomp and pageantry his office affords, gave a passable impression of a functional atheist who hasn’t yet come out; after all, he wants to continue to collect his salary. For an evangelical atheist who has to try and make sense of mortality, it’s even worse: the memory that lives on is nothing more than the mechanistically meaningless firing of a collection of synapses. Nevertheless, that is how atheists – the champions of reason – choose to comfort themselves and their children when faced with death.
From here:
For Julie Drizin, being an atheist parent means being deliberate. She rewrote the words to “Silent Night” when her daughters were babies to remove words like “holy,” found a secular Sunday school where the children light candles “of understanding,” and selects gifts carefully to promote science, art and wonder at nature.
So when she pulled her 9- and 13-year-olds together this week in their Takoma Park home to tell them about the slaughter of 20 elementary school students in Newtown, Conn., her words were plain: Something horrible happened, and we feel sad about it, and you are safe.
And that was it.
“I’ve explained to them [in the past] that some people believe God is waiting for them, but I don’t believe that. I believe when you die, it’s over and you live on in the memory of people you love and who love you,” she said this week. “I can’t offer them the comfort of a better place. Despite all the evils and problems in the world, this is the heaven — we’re living in the heaven and it’s the one we work to make. It’s not a paradise.”
This is what facing death and suffering looks like in an atheist home.
What tedious people. I’m going to go listen to ‘Silent Night’ now. Merry Christmas to everyone.
The Apostle Paul wrote;
“The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing…”
St. Augustine wrote;
“It is better to believe so that you understand, rather than try to understand so you can believe.”
They do not believe, they can’t understand, and they are perishing. May they believe some day.
Thanks, Terry, for the St Augustine quotation. And, Happy St Stephen’s Day ~
It occurs to me that as believing practicing Christians, we have become the minority in the west. I confess that much of my railing is against this trend. Often I delude myself that we can shape the world. Thankfully it is at these times that I remember that I am not part of this world, but the next.
Merry Christmas all especially including our “annoyers”.
Peace,
Jim
Shaping the world is what we are called by the Great Commission to do, have done it and will do it again. We just seem to be in a down cycle.
The other thing I shake my head at is the expression in response to some tragedy or another’s personal loss, usually on the part of unbelievers, “My thoughts are with you.”
Well, so what? I know it is probably a sincere expression of sympathy, but bottom line is… big deal. What do thoughts accomplish? And as you rightly point out, what, in the end, in the atheist worldview, could possibly be of any significance of ‘thoughts’?
I would much rather have a believer’s fervent prayers (James 5:16) than an atheist’s sincere thoughts any day.