The following are non-sequential stories about my experience as an atheist dealing with the diminishing health and subsequent death of my evangelically religious father, surrounded by - to a lesser degree - my religious family.
"Where two or more.."
I kept my mother company in the waiting room. We could have waited with my father in his ICU room, but he was unconscious, intubated, and receiving dialisys - we needed a small break from the machines breathing for him, so we retreated to the glassed-in enclosure where we waited.
One of my dad's friends or associates - these were all new faces to me - a gentleman with kind features and earnest, happened to be walking by and noticed us sitting there. He came in and introduced himself. I don't remember his name. He asked if he could pray with us and, of course, I welcomed him to do so as did my mother. We would take anything we could get. So we clasped hands, the three of us, and he began to pray.
.
Now, I'm an atheist. I wouldn't be if I had some convincing proof that a god exists, but I have yet to find or see any such evidence so, here I am. After my father's heart attack years before, the thought had dawned on me that I would likely, someday, be in a position where I had to deal with my parent's deaths. Would I stand by my principles and resist even their bed-side dying wish for me to convert? Would I argue with all comers that what they were presenting to me were fallacies and not evidence, at all?
I'm not evil. I don't want to cause harm or distress. When weighing the costs and the priorities set before me, even as late as my flight back to Florida to see my father one last time, I finally came to a decision. "It's not about me!". Nothing about what I wanted, or my own feeling of righteousness, or what I considered justified, or honest and true.. nothing.. was really so important that it couldn't take a back-seat and that I couldn't keep my mouth shut. There was no hill for me to die on, here. No zingers, or gotchas, no arguments or challenges even. Conversely, it was ALL about my father, who lay dying; though we weren't quite sure of this inevitable fact at that the time.
So, fully aware, especially in hind-sight, that I will be seen as dishonest or as someone who will not stand on principle when perhaps it counts most, I took the opposite tack. I know the language, I know the buzzwords, and I even know the specific scripture most common to a given sentiment or situation. I stepped into my role as a son who makes a father proud - and not just any father, but a zealot. I prayed, knowing I prayed to a void, I read the passage of Lazarus rising up from the dead with genuine emotion, knowing that no-one was ever raised from the dead. I held my father's hand and stood by his bed throughout the night. The next day, when my dad woke up and spoke, engaging, smiling even, I sang the christian songs that I still knew by heart, committing a fraud in order to comfort him in his final days.
.
So my father's friend prayed and seemed to do that thing I had forgotten Christians like to do; he was holding God accountable. 'Now Lord! You said that when two or more are gathered in my name..', and he went on that Jesus would be with them but also that when 'two agree on anything they ask, it will be done for them.. IF they have faith.. believing that you have received and it will be yours'. (Matt 18:19, Matt 21:22..). This line of prayer was not lost on me, the atheist. Here was a promise made that had it's own little 'No True Scott' fallacy baked right in. If two of you have faith (enough faith*) then it will come to pass whatever you ask for. It's like a magic spell. But if it doesn't work, it must be because you didn't have enough faith or maybe..
just maybe..
the Atheist son ruined the whole thing. Maybe it was all my fault because, despite my father's friend and my mother surely having enough faith and making the request in earnestness, I tainted the whole thing. I mean, that's extra-Biblical, but that must be it.
Religion, like this, is disgusting.
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