Hellfire Sermons at Funerals are Simply Unethical.
If Christianity doesn't prey on the weak and take advantage of people at their most confused, and most vulnerable, while they're feeling down on life and themselves, then why use a funeral to convert the nonbelievers?
This isn't just about the services I attended over the weekend but most funerals I have witnessed. If the deceased was a born again Christian then I must respect their wishes in how they prefer such services to be conducted, in a church, with a minister, prayer, scripture, hymns, and so forth. But for said minister to use his 15 minutes to speak of the need to accept his religion or burn in Hell because the congregation, too, may die soon, even if it is the religion of the deceased and the family, rather than celebrate the individual's life, to me, is wrong.
I will not go deeper with respect to the families involved in the funerals I have attended in my lifetime, some of which were beautiful events, yet most still contained some of the element I have spoken of here. If you have made it this far then you are getting used to my honesty, I do not mean to hold it at bay. The matter I speak of may simply be an effect of Southern Baptists in America and the way they lay their dead to rest. I do not accept your definition of God. I do not attended your regular services. None of this, however, affects the universal love I have for those who choose to practice the way of the cross.
With that said, the visitation and funeral service that followed in respect to my late Grandmother, was a great homecoming for my family and I wouldn't trade it for the world. I'm sure it is exactly how she wanted it. I mean no disrespect in the above statements, this is my opinion, not hers.
We loved her then, and love her now. We raise her memory to the highest respect and are grateful she is now "cancer free" as was thoughtfully spoken by the minister who began the service. It is not he whose ethics I find myself in disagreement, but the one who gave the following unneccassary sermon of hellfire and brimstone. It was nearly unbearable watching her suffer as she had for last year and a half. Also, at 80, she witnessed far more of her own pass on before her than anyone should. I was there in her last days and can knowingly say she was ready to depart. Her suffering was a filter for us to accept her passing. We are not, after all, broken. Family, the glue, holds us together. We are bonded in our embraces of one another, in our conversations, in our meals, and in our drinking. It is because of this, I know, I will never be alone in this world.
Written by Mr. Fluid, 2015
