A good friend of mine’s wife recently passed away to a lingering and painful disease. He has been lost for the last few weeks since she passed. Most around him have been very supportive, including his kids, family and friends. Yet negativity has come his way from the very person that should be helping him: one of his religious leaders. Any kind of blow to someone in that fragile position should never happen.
My friend is a highly educated, gentle kind of a man. He would do anything for anyone, and in fact I have seen him demonstrate his good nature numerous times even when things were the worst they could be in his life. And right now they are pretty tough.
I also didn’t mention that he has Parkinson’s Disease himself and it is advancing.
His religion, which he is very dedicated to, has a very strict set of circumstances and rituals that are held to during a funeral. When his wife died his three children came from far and wide to attend the funeral and to console their dad. Having all fallen away from the church he adheres to, they did not participate in some of the rituals during the funeral.
A couple of weeks after the funeral, he was at the church and one of the religious officials who participated in the funeral was there. The first thing this guy said to him is, “Your kids should be shot for not following our practices during the funeral.”
Children will go to hell?
That was just the first statement, but basically the “religious” leader went on to tell my friend that all his children would go to hell for what they had done and the fact they are not part of the religion anymore.
Upon hearing this, other friends told him he should report this person to someone above the offender’s grade, but he refused. Then they told him he should go to another church that practices the same religion. He said he could not do that because that had been “his church” for so long.
Eventually someone he told about the incident repeated it to another official and their response was that the man had had done things like that to people everywhere he had been, and that he would soon be moving on “somewhere else.”
My friend said it was okay. He would put up with it. His faith in his religion, he said, is strong enough to get by the pompous ass and his pettiness.
To be clear, those last five words were not his, but mine.
A sad tale to be sure, but we find these kind of people in everyday life all the time. Generally they aren’t religious leaders, but do think they are religious themselves. They pick and assail others for reasons unknown, despite the fact that their religion should help them to try and understand those that are “less” than they are. They cannot turn the other cheek for some minor perceived misstep. They go to church on Sunday, pay their money for whatever it required of them to their sect and then are nasty to others the rest of the week.
We’ve all experienced it
I see it all the time and we all have had people in our lives like this. Whether you are religious or not, it is always best for you to “turn the other cheek” to them, because that’s the right thing to do. And in the long run karma will catch up with their deeds. One day they will need you, and despite what they have done, most of you that are reading this will respond positively towards helping them. We should do all we can to help our fellow man, no matter how nasty, petty or cruel they are. We should try to cut through their sarcasm and negativity and try to find out why they are the way they are.
I admire my friend who has faced this and backed it down because he believes in the real goodness of man, despite the few that make life miserable.
My friend’s behavior in this situation has been a lesson well learned for me at least. I am not sure I would have stood for it. But then I am not a religious person, and my understanding of what it takes to be like him is lacking for sure.
How one handles adversity is a true test of a human being. There is seldom more adversity that facing the death of someone you love dearly. Considering what he has been up against, my friend is handling it quite well. He has said he forgives the man who said those things to him.
We should all be more like him, don’t you think?