I’m not Christian myself, but I am devout, and my faith has a lot to say about death and dying.
One of those things is that not respecting the grief of the bereaved is a hell of a lot worse a sin than, well, a whole lot of things. It’s nice to hear it from an evangelical Christian, but I just want to underline: predatory evangelism oughtn’t be considered authentic for any of our faiths. We can do better, and piety as a concept can do better.

Comforting friends–heck, comforting strangers–comes way before anything like attempts at conversion, for anyone claiming to have anything to do with compassion. And no, John Doe, they shouldn’t have to make that kind of request. While it’s polite to take well-meant sentiments graciously, it’s also part of the act of compassion to pay attention to the person you’re interacting with, and to attempt to discern what they actually need and would consider considerate and kind. Part of being well-meaning in comfort is to not rest on one’s laurels-of-good-intention and actually pay attention to the comfortee and their needs.

Hugo is talking about predatory evangelism. Jorge is talking about magic and miracles. Larry posted a really powerful sermon. Ref+ posted his sermon from yesterday as well. Oh! Jeff+ posted his, too. Ref+, Jeff+ and I went to seminary together…….

When my best friend lost her father without warning, I wasn’t sure whether or not to mention God. Although we are both Christians, it felt really ackward. He died of a heart attack in the middle of the night. Her mother walked in her room at 3:00 a.m., three hours after he passed, and said, “Honey, wake up… you need to sit up…” When she was awake, she simply said, “Your daddy just died.”

We were both angry at God. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the depth of her loss and, God willing, I will never know it myself. But I felt it genuinely insensitive to remind her that her dad was “in a better place” when she was so shocked. She couldn’t even cry three days after. When she was ready, we talked about heaven and where God was in all of this. But I didn’t want to push it until she was ready.

Another close friend of mine lost her father nine months later. Again, I didn’t want to bring God up, especially since she had prayed that he would survive the cancer for months and months. It felt cruel to talk about heaven. But I prayed (and still pray) for them. Now, they are willing to discuss the afterlife.

My insight? I think Chris is right. Nobody should have to make that kind of request. And I also think John has a point: nobody can read another’s mind. I think, though, this stems beyond statistics regarding how many Americans believe in God. While many believe in God, even in the face of a devestating loss, they may not be ready to talk about spirituality for awhile. So, if you’re not sure whether or not they’re ready, or you’re not sure whether or not they be believe in God or an afterlife at all, it’s best to play it safe and say, “I am deeply sorry for your loss. You’re in my thoughts, and I am here for you if you need someone to be with.”

Really? You do realize that you’re living in a culture where upwards of 90% of people believe in some sort of heaven or afterlife, and where you’re going to run into an awful lot of people who (believe it or not) are absolutely sincere in thinking that they’re being comforting when they say, “You’ll see him again someday,” or something like that.

Yes, I’ll agree with you and Hugo that people should have respected your wishes. Absolutely. But it’s a bit much to say that “no one should even have to make that kind of request,” as if the average blog commenter should be able to read your mind and know to walk on eggshells (at least as to certain religious beliefs).

Wrong, unsurprisingly. That was an offer to do something akin to praying for me and my family, in the efficacy of which I also disbelieve. But I am grateful for the intent, and I find it rather a shoddy argument that you would turn my glad tolerance of the benign religious beliefs of my friends against me as some sort of damning inconsistency.

If you dig even a little on my blog you’ll find not only specific requests to refrain from talking about the afterlife - in more than one thread - but you’ll also find a history of my booting people, including friends, for persisting in religious proselytizing.

And many, many of those people whose comments were nuked, or who emailed me, started those comments with phrases akin to “I know you don’t want to hear this, but…”

But the fact of my requests, as hard as they may have been for you to find, is really a side issue: No one should even have to make that kind of request.

Lemme bold that for you, John, since you apparently had some trouble deciphering even Xopher’s rather straightforward statement:

No one should even have to make that kind of request.

The point of my Pandagon post was not to provide chapter and verse or to argue my case as though it was a civil torts suit. The point was to provide a story for the benefit of thoughtful people, believers in an afterlife or not, who wish to avoid hurting the feelings of the temporarily vulnerable.

If you don’t count yourself among those people but would rather argue the merits of the specific case as though it was one more masturbatory political blog thread, that’s your prerogative. If you don’t see a problem with telling people they need to accept any hurtful, ignorant thing people say to them while grieving as long as those hurtful things don’t conflict with the majority religious ideology, then of course you’re going to pick nits. But in that case I wasn’t really addressing you with the post, now, was I?

As for the vitriol: three days ago, after we’d gotten to a sort of even keel and were able to more or less function, my wife opened a card from our vet — our vet — which included a card with a specific, detailed story of how pets endure in the afterlife until they are rejoined by their human companions. This caused my wife intense grief and sorrow, not to mention a feeling of betrayal as she had hoped to find some small comfort in the vet’s note. “You took good care of him, he had a happy life,” or something along those lines.

Instead, I spent time helping my wife recover from the note our vet sent in the wake of our dog’s death.

There is no vitriol I could spew that would be sufficient to express my anger at that, or my disgust at people like you who would write her pain off as overreaction, as being unreasonable, as damningly inconsistent with our gratitude for prayers we don’t believe in made by friends we do believe in.

In this thread, criticisms of my position are fine. Criticisms of Chris are not.