Recently a family tragedy befell me, my beautiful sister Kemi lost her life to that horrible disease cancer. She, like the majority of my family was religious. In fact you could probably call her devout; that special kind of religosity that can be summed up as blind faith.
I was born in London, England in the 1970s, however my sister was born in Lagos, Nigeria in the 1950s. This goes some way to explaining her's and my family's religious fervour. Christianity in Africa was forced upon the various indigenous tribes via war and those disgusting individuals, the missionaries.
Slavery of course played its part in spreading religious superstition, and indeed Christianity often used God as justification for slavery. I remember sitting through one of my forced church sessions as a child, listening to the pastor read the passage in the bible, whereby God sets out just how much you can beat your slaves and still be in his favour.
Even as a child, the stinking hypocrisy of this struck me, and led me to shun all religious superstition and see it for the horrible instrument of torture and control it was.
However, if like my mother, sister and brothers you grew up surrounded by people reinforcing ridiculous claims, then it is completely natural and normal to you; and it is folk like I, who refuse to believe in anything without strong, statistical evidence that are the freaks.
I believe most of my family realise that I don't believe in God, however there is an unwritten pact between us. If they don't bang on about religion, I won't fire logic bombs at their faith. I accept that they find comfort in their religion; and thus I won't be a dick about it.
But is that comfort real? Or is it just a sticky band aid; ready to be ripped off painfully at any given moment?
The Anatomy Of Denial
My sister was suffering from cancer for 12 years, after first contracting it 25 years ago. I only found this out after her death, the reason being she and the majority of my family had absolute faith that God would heal her.
In her last weeks and days; I could quite clearly see that she was dying, I had never seen a person deteriorate like that before, and I never want to see it again. It is very obvious when you see someone who is going to die. Obvious to everyone except those who have cloaked themselves in the denial of religious superstition.
Every time I tried to broach the subject with the rest of my brothers and sisters; on how we were going to gently break it to our mother, so that she could prepare herself. I was met with a look that told me that the mere mentioning of it, may expose a lack of faith, for which God would punish us.
Without getting into how logically stupid this is; I was just left alone to face the devastating fact, that my favourite sister, my darling Kemi, was going to die.
When it finally came, the shock from my family was palpable, my mother would sit there repeating over and over again, in her native tongue of Yoruba; I don't get it, I don't get it, I've done everything right. I've prayed, I've pledged what I was to do when God healed her. I just don't understand, He told me I would never lose another child again. I don't get it, I don't get it.
The anger in me surged as I heard her utter these words, she was referring to a (false) prophet, who had told her years ago, after my brother died when I was just 7 years old; that God had told him she would never see another one of her children die again.
Which of course was complete bullshit, my sister is the third of my siblings to die prematurely, and whether that person truly believed they were getting messages from God or not, does not really matter. The result is the same; false hope.
I pointed out to my mother that she had seen how bad my sis was; she must have realised that the long term prognosis was not good. Her answer;
Yes; but nothing is to difficult for God...
Eugh.
The Hijacking Of Emotion
Her funeral was, as you can imagine, a very sad affair, For some reason I thought of the words of the late Biggie Smalls; ...there's gonna be a lot of slow singing, and flower bringing...
Tears flowed like water over a fall, as they flow now as I write this...
That sadness soon turned to anger, as I sat there and had to endure her pastor talk for 5 minutes about her life, and then bang on for 25 minutes about God.
I felt like the piece of shit was hijacking my sister's last moments, and using it to scare people about giving their lives to his imaginary friend. Lines such as some of you here today have strayed from Jesus, and this is a reminder that we can go at anytime, so make sure you are right with him.
I sat bolt upright as others bowed their heads; I stared a laser beam into his eyes; how could this lowlife do this? What's worse is that 99% of the congregation were fine with his words.
What a lovely service.
My stiff-backed silence spoke volumes.
I could imagine the missionaries of days gone by; preaching to various Africans how the suffering they were going through on earth. Brought on them by the pernicious acts of slavery, would be alleviated after their deaths.
The grieving I should have been feeling for my sister was replaced at first by anger, and then by pity; how a religious lie, beaten into their ancestors was still being uttered today.
It is no surprise that the most Christian places in Africa today, tend to be in the West; whereby the slaves were readied for the torturous sea journies and even worse lives in the Americas. Yet this is largely lost, on a community that holds blind, unquestioning faith as a virtue.
Absence Of Hope Leading To Faith Of Absence
Many reading this will believe in one God or another, mainly the two main ones, the iron-age gods, Allah and Yahweh. Some will believe in the multitudinous deities of Hinduism, and others still in the alien "god" Xenu who sprang forth from the mind of science fiction writer and convicted fraudster, L. Ron Hubbard.
Many will claim not to wholeheartedly believe in all of their religion's myths and legends, however will "draw strength" from the stories, and ultimately their faith that there is "something or someone looking out for them."
There is no evidence for the existence of God, outside of the human mind
-- Cryptogee
To those people I say, rip that band aid off now; there are no Gods, and ultimately, the despair of no hope is far far better than the creeping, insipid poison of false hope.
Instead transfer that faith in a mythical being, to yourself, your family, love, light and laughter.
As ever take care and Happy Easter.
Cryptogee