Chine’s sorrow & empathy for her friend’s loss are, well, what friends feel. She can only cry with her because that’s all she can do. That sense of powerlessness itself is very hard to bear.
Chine says her IMF sobs along with them but can it share that sense of powerlessness? Can it understand what it’s like not to be powerful (no, Jesus doesn’t count – he was just acting a part in a play which it wrote for its own amusement)?
Believers take on the love & caring for others in the name of their IMF when they should take the credit for that goodness themselves.
Even if an IMF exists, it deserves none of our respect.
It’s difficult for any Christian apologist to counter the ingrained messages that the church has trotted out for centuries, and Chine fairs no better than any other of her contemporaries. Following long-established custom, people are still ‘comforting’ those who lose children with ghastly platitudes like “God only takes the best and most beautiful,’ ‘He/she is in the arms of Jesus,’ etc.
She is correct, I believe, in her view that community (i.e. family and friends) are probably of more comfort than scientific (medical) answers, but the current issue here is that potentially a medical verdict could be helpful in understanding what has happened – and instructive for future practice. But perhaps she’s hoping that faith in her IMF will qualify as ‘community’ support for the bereaved.
In truth, of course, her IMF hasn’t a very creditable record on child birth / death – we’re only a few decades along from the time when babies’ corpses were being dumped in neglected corners of Convent grounds, by heartless God-botherers and mothers being told that the loss of their children was a punishment for their formicating ways.
Infant mortality, still-birth, cot deaths – another highly sensitive area to which religion adds…. nothing.
Gargantuan conceit and astonishing degree of cognitive disonace here as exemplified by the lady vicar of my Middle England CoE church who said to a jam packed funeral congregation that the 15 year old boy who had died of a brain tumour had gone to a much better place with god. She was lucky to escape without a hefty slap in the face from more than a few mourners for that astonishingly horrible piece of invective. Many in the congregation actually gasped. What better place for a young man than with his family.
It’s a bloody good job that god is able to comfort bereaved mothers, as he hasn’t done anything else about it in the last few thousand years.
Humans, on the other hand, have successfully and massively reduced the number of mothers who become bereaved, not just by ignoring the platitudes, but by actively dismissing them as wrong. God takes… etc? Actually no, it’s preventable, a part of nature, absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the supernatural. We can just be thankful for those people who rejected the platitudes and tried to find the truth instead.
Chine McDonald barely rose above the banal and obvious this morning. The only “item of current news” that she referred to was the report about coroners being encouraged to carry out inquests on stillbirths; but why bring this up in the first place if all you are going to do is dismiss it on the grounds that people need sympathy not science?
In addition to the good points made above, it was mildly interesting to hear her admitting that religious cliches are not much help when people are freshly bereaved. TftD speakers tend to get all self-critical like this when they know they are skating on thin ice. Chine is no exception.
Platitude of the Day 
” The old ,worn,Christian platitudes don’t work any more. Here are some less hackneyed platitudes to try.”
God experiences intense pain,apparently. I hope he’s having treatment for his problem with self-harming.
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God’s self harm is infinitesimally insignificant relative to that he has inflicted upon humanity.
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Chine’s sorrow & empathy for her friend’s loss are, well, what friends feel. She can only cry with her because that’s all she can do. That sense of powerlessness itself is very hard to bear.
Chine says her IMF sobs along with them but can it share that sense of powerlessness? Can it understand what it’s like not to be powerful (no, Jesus doesn’t count – he was just acting a part in a play which it wrote for its own amusement)?
Believers take on the love & caring for others in the name of their IMF when they should take the credit for that goodness themselves.
Even if an IMF exists, it deserves none of our respect.
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It’s difficult for any Christian apologist to counter the ingrained messages that the church has trotted out for centuries, and Chine fairs no better than any other of her contemporaries. Following long-established custom, people are still ‘comforting’ those who lose children with ghastly platitudes like “God only takes the best and most beautiful,’ ‘He/she is in the arms of Jesus,’ etc.
She is correct, I believe, in her view that community (i.e. family and friends) are probably of more comfort than scientific (medical) answers, but the current issue here is that potentially a medical verdict could be helpful in understanding what has happened – and instructive for future practice. But perhaps she’s hoping that faith in her IMF will qualify as ‘community’ support for the bereaved.
In truth, of course, her IMF hasn’t a very creditable record on child birth / death – we’re only a few decades along from the time when babies’ corpses were being dumped in neglected corners of Convent grounds, by heartless God-botherers and mothers being told that the loss of their children was a punishment for their formicating ways.
Infant mortality, still-birth, cot deaths – another highly sensitive area to which religion adds…. nothing.
LikeLike
Gargantuan conceit and astonishing degree of cognitive disonace here as exemplified by the lady vicar of my Middle England CoE church who said to a jam packed funeral congregation that the 15 year old boy who had died of a brain tumour had gone to a much better place with god. She was lucky to escape without a hefty slap in the face from more than a few mourners for that astonishingly horrible piece of invective. Many in the congregation actually gasped. What better place for a young man than with his family.
LikeLike
It’s a bloody good job that god is able to comfort bereaved mothers, as he hasn’t done anything else about it in the last few thousand years.
Humans, on the other hand, have successfully and massively reduced the number of mothers who become bereaved, not just by ignoring the platitudes, but by actively dismissing them as wrong. God takes… etc? Actually no, it’s preventable, a part of nature, absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the supernatural. We can just be thankful for those people who rejected the platitudes and tried to find the truth instead.
LikeLike
Chine McDonald barely rose above the banal and obvious this morning. The only “item of current news” that she referred to was the report about coroners being encouraged to carry out inquests on stillbirths; but why bring this up in the first place if all you are going to do is dismiss it on the grounds that people need sympathy not science?
In addition to the good points made above, it was mildly interesting to hear her admitting that religious cliches are not much help when people are freshly bereaved. TftD speakers tend to get all self-critical like this when they know they are skating on thin ice. Chine is no exception.
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Very good comments above, as ever.
It’s as if Chine has never heard of Epicurus.
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She probably thinks it’s a drug to ease the pain of childbirth.
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