An Atheist at a Funeral

Category : Personal, Religion

My Granddad died 2 weeks ago and today was his funeral.

This is only the second funeral I have ever been to and though I did not have a blog for the last one you can consider the content of this blog post to cover both, as every complaint and observation that I have today could be applied just as equally to the last one.

Now call me crazy, but when I go to a funeral I expect to hear about the person who has died. I'm going to go as far as even saying that I pretty much ONLY want to hear about the person who has died. I don't care about the weather, I don't care about the economy, I don't care about what's on TV; When I'm at a funeral, the guy in the casket should rightly be the center of attention, I was also under the impression that such a belief would be commonplace. So what the fuck happened Christianity? Since when did it become appropriate to hijack a funeral and since when did the average populous accept said hijacking as par for the course?

In order from "Most talked about" to "Least talked about", here is what was talked about during the 20 minute service

1. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.
2. God's mercy, God's love, God's rippling body.
3. My Granddad

Without any hyperbole, without even the smallest exaggeration, My Granddad was the least talked about thing at the whole goddamn funeral. The only way you can bump my Granddad from the bottom of the list is by including the two short hymns that were sang; Both of which, you guessed it, centered entirely around praising God.

And I've really got to stress how often the vicar/preist/man-in-dress-and-collar went on about Gods mercy, It was like it was the word of the day. At first I thought I was just noticing the words that stood out because of the context, like at my nan's funeral the vicar kept going on about how we should fear and love God and I was seemingly the only person to find such a commandment to be eerily (and accurately) reminiscent of a Tyrannical rule when the peasants have had to convince themselves that fearing their Tyrant is a good thing. Imagine if your next Presidential/Prime ministerial candidate's main platform was "Fear me, Love me, I shall be your lord", how quickly would he get shut down as both an Ego-maniac and a psychopath...

BUT The more I listened, the more often he seemed to say it. I started counting about 10 minutes into the service (after a number of mentions of "Mercy") And by the end I had counted 14 mentions of "Mercy" or "Merciful". Now, Correct me if I'm wrong but you only describe someone as merciful, or as showing mercy, if in ordinary situations the consequences would be far worse and usually those worse consequences are resulting from an impersonal system.

Example - A thief is caught by a policeman, but because it was his first offense, even though the Law (a system which the policeman has no control over and did not create) says that he should be taken into custody, the cop decides to be merciful and let him off with a warning after confiscating the stolen goods. That is mercy.

However, God DOES have control over the systems he is displaying mercy over, and in fact put them in place, so he is only merciful through his own design. Putting a system in place where EVERYONE is bound to hell, regardless of crimes or lack thereof and then saying "Oh but i'm merciful, i'm loving, all you have to do is worship me and i'll spare you" is NOT mercy, it is manipulation, it is blackmail, it is extortion.

BUT God's mercy was only number 2 on the list, What we really heard about the most was Jesus. Jesus this, Sacrifice that, Resurrected this, Savior that.

EXCUSE ME, you deluded Christian assholes, but you have been going on non-stop about your favorite dead guy for the past 2000 years. Do you think that you can spare 20 fucking minutes, of time we've PAID you to spare, to talk about my granddad who died 2 weeks ago? Do you think you can manage that without turning it into a Jesus-ass-tonguing festival? Did the fact that we arrive on a Thursday, not a Sunday, and walking behind a coffin not tip you off to the fact we are NOT HERE TO LISTEN ABOUT JESUS? Do you think you could wipe Gods Cum off your face for just a little while?

Best part though? It turns out, and these paraphrased words came out of the vicars mouth during the service, that no one knew if My Granddad had any religious faith or beliefs of any kind. Nobody had a clue whether he even believed in God, let alone specifically in Yahweh, Let alone in Christianity. God and Religion had been so important in my granddads life that he never mentioned it to anyone, yet the majority of his funeral was taken up with kissing the Ass of a God my granddad almost certainly did not give a fuck about. I swear I could of took a dump in the font.

Christianity is a vile religion, even the completely benign version I encountered today, which has shown time and time again that it will exploit any circumstance, any grieving person, any pulpit to spread its propaganda.

I will be making sure that Any funeral I have will be void of such bullshit, disrespect and superstition.

My Granddad deserved better.

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On a lighter note, I now have twitter! You can follow me here @CleverCarbon. Don't expect me to make sense, because I don't plan on making any.

And, as ever, you can contact me directly at splittingoftheadam@hotmail.co.uk