Religious Predators

[Terese]

Dogmatism is a hell of a drug

 

[Windwalker]

It strikes me that 'uncommon' religious beliefs are even more difficult for the system to respect and cater for than non-belief.

It really would seem better and more appropriate to have affiliated groups that can provide spiritual assistance on request by the patient/family. It is such a very personal thing, andcsuch an important time to have such beliefs respected without the need for vigilance or defensive actions.

And it compounds the problem when hospitals treat chaplains as a substitute for qualified secular counsellors.

I think these two points here go nicely together and are quite accurate and correct. In reality, the folks who were part of the hospice group fulfill that role as just being there for the emotional support of family. I found myself just naturally talking about my feelings with them when I was alone with them away from family. Hence why that hour-long discussion with the one about my views of life and death and the spiritual at my father's side. I hadn't realized I couldn't talk openly and freely about my feelings around my family until I found myself being so open around the hospice care folks. It's not that I was hiding anything from family, but it's hard to really open up like that without all the other normal considerations with family. That is what a good counselor does for someone. They are good listeners.

On a spiritual level it is the extremely rare person who understands the depth of questions I may be struggling with as they arise. I've now come to recognize that in my now-distant past when I had sought out various ministers, that they were catering to those whose questions were of a different quality that what mine were, such as "where did my grandma go when she died", or "how do I really know I'm saved", and things like that. When I asked questions from the contexts of my own experiences I was usually met with blank stares, or some 'dumbed down' response because they had to try to speak from what they could. It became apparent to me as it says in the Psalms, "I have more insight more than all my teachers".

For me, when it comes to dealing with spiritual questions I have a few select friends who have the necessary contexts themselves in order to begin to know where these questions come from in order to offer insight. We all need someone, but most clergy is dealing with things which are non-questions to me. It's incidentally one of the reasons I believe people are leaving the churches in droves and identifying as atheists. They have and are outgrowing the system that they are being offered. It doesn't deal with where people are actually at, or where they are growing into. The church is failing because it's teaching 3rd grade material to college students.

So in my case, in the context like what happened during my father's passing recently, what met my need was not to have some minister come and offer his version of faith, but simply to have a kind person just sit and listen without judgement. That's what a good counselor does. It's all already there inside of me, and just being allowed to share it is part of the process. I already knew I was considerably beyond where that minister was at and what he would bring in would be a major step down, like pulling out a puppet show or something. In reality I was already ministering to my father's spiritual needs just being there with him and talking about my views and my feelings as I was. It was a deeply beautiful and peaceful spiritual time with just the two of us there with my dad. There was no need for that minister's particular offerings there. We were not his clientele.

One thing to add here, I did write a nicely written but somewhat lengthy response to the administrator of the home yesterday after this post. It was part of my healing process I knew I needed to do. In it I mentioned that this sort of thing probably happens more than he may be aware because most people simply let these things happen without saying anything out of this sort of unspoken "social consent", where they feel they are not allowed to say no to the practices of these predators under the guise of the mainstream religious. Both of you as atheists should get a great deal from this article I just read yesterday that directly pertains to this. It applies to those like myself as well who likewise feel what these folks are offering does not meet the needs of where we are at. A good counselor can do far more for us than having the Sunday-School picture book version of deity being brought to us as an image of comfort in our times of need.

 

[Windwalker]

I had another thought just now to share about my father's spirituality. A bit over a year ago when he had a brush with death before we needed to put him into a long-term care facility, he was in the hospital for several weeks after his kidneys had shut down due to dehydration. During that time there was a minister from the hospital who came by take ask if my father would like him to pray with him. My mother was there and she has a certain connection with traditional Christianity, albeight a very loving and much more poetic approach to it. She thought it would be nice to pray with my dad at that time, for herself largely I believe. My father was still largely lucid at that the time.

So the minister ask my father if he would like to say the prayer and that he (the minister) and my mother would pray along with him. So what did my father pray? He closed his eyes and began, "I am thankful for the beauty of this world. I am thankful for having a loving wife and children. I am thankful for this day. I am thankful for wonderful life I have lived...", and so on. Never once asking anything for himself. Never once pleading. It was all a prayer of nothing but pure gratitude for life. The minister began crying as my father prayed. He told my mother afterwards he had never heard anyone pray like that, without a thought to themselves in a time like this. That was my father. That was his spirituality.

 

[Draka]

It would be nice if there were an educational requirement for staff chaplains. That is, in the military, at least in my experience in the Navy, chaplains were required to learn about various faiths in order to counsel just about anyone. More than preach and pray and give advice based upon their own beliefs, they listened better, understood better, and even if they didn't believe what you believed they generally respected other beliefs and sought to comfort by using what they knew of those beliefs. If there was a requirement for a spiritual counselor to have a basic education and familiarity with a certain set of various faiths with the understanding that they counsel their approach to the beliefs of the patient then things would be much better.
I had no real issue talking to a chaplain in the Navy, but I don't tend to bother with ones in civilian hospitals and places.

 

[Scott C.]

Recently I experienced the loss of my father. He died peacefully in a nursing home a week ago Monday, and I was able to spend many hours at his side as he went through the final stages of the death process over the course of three days. I held his hand, spoke with him, shed tears of love and gratitude towards him. It was a sad as well as deeply beautiful experience to watch the end come to his full and rich life filled with his love to others.

The day before he died I sat in his room talking with the hospice person for just over an hour who had come to care for his and the family's need. I talked about my father's spiritual life, as well as my thoughts on death and dying. It was a peaceful and beautiful time talking about these things with my father lying on his bed between us. It was deeply spiritual, speaking of how I drove into the rising sun as I was coming to be with him, seeing the beauty of the day over the farm fields beginning anew. Peace came over me with the thought that it was a good day to die. How the passing of life comes in the rising of the new, that the world continues as we pass from it in return to it as the Source of our own being. It was a beautiful shared experience speaking of life, death and dying with her while I sat at my father's side.

Then at the door a minister came whom one of the residents had sent thinking he should come pray for my father. My father did not relate to the divine, or the Infinite in the typical traditional Christian ways. He was a deeply spiritual man, but did not get much out of the religious approach of the "man upstairs" way of envisioning it. He was much deeper than that, even though he lacked a vocabulary to really speak of how he related to it, "The sea of Goodness", is one way he would speak of it, being a man in his 80's. When I would speak with him previously of my views, we were very much on the same pages.

And so I politely spoke with the minister about my father's view, about my own, and how that though we appreciated the gesture it wasn't how he or myself exactly relate to God, though I respect that approach for others who find it meaningful. He shook my hand and left the room, and I continue my discussion about "God", life, and death with the hospice person with my father between us. I was very respectful to the minister, very truthful, and very clear.

So what did I learn happened the next day, a mere two hours before my father's final breaths? The minister apparently was "offended" by me, and that resident and him went back into my father's room after the hospice person and myself were gone, and they prayed for him and sang their little songs for him, as he lay there unconscious, in his finals hours/days of death. How did I find out? I was sitting with my mother at a table in the cafeteria and the woman whom she knew came wheeled herself up to the table with us and started acting hostilely towards me, then finally turned to me and said, "I have to ask you, what are your beliefs?". I was taken aback, not really grasping what was going on, unaware of her little violation of sacred trust and respect with her minister friend. I answered respectfully and as simply as I could, even though it would take a full book's explanation to begin to convey how I believe. She wrinkled her nose up at me, took my mother's hand and explained how I had offended the minster and how she and him went into his room and prayed for my father, as she tried to console my mother.

I got up and told her I did not want to talk with her, and how offended I was by people like her who were incapable of seeing past their own beliefs to others enough to respect their wishes. I left as I felt a rage coming on, passed by the nursing station where my father was, and with my hands shaking I told them point blank that that woman and that minster were absolutely not allowed in my father's room or anywhere near him. I went outside, and sadly, as my mother came out to join me, I lost it. I began screaming and sobbing uncontrollably at the top of my lungs, and for some reason I just started running full speed as a screamed and cried. I have never had anything like that happen to me in my life! I couldn't stop it.

I finally was able to settle after about 20 minutes, and told myself I needed to spend time with my father at his side, as I cannot afford to let this dominate this final hours with him. I settled and went back to his room, crying with the hospice nurse telling he what had just happened, then sat quietly with my dad at his side on his final day. Two hours later he was gone. His face had the look of deep meditation. Peace filled his room as he left his body of 89 years.

Truly, these particular brand of "Christians" are the very predators whom Jesus spoke about, calling them wolves in sheep's clothing. A wolf is a predator. But what a better word even still is vampires. The live by sucking the life energy from others. They are not capable of love. They are incapable of compassion. They are self-feeding off of others, even the family of a dying man. I have no words to truly convey the vileness, the non-Christian, non-loving self-righteous, self-justifying, self-vindicating religiousness of these predators, these vampires. I came to the conclusion a few months ago that fundamentalism was a disease, a pathology, not just another version of religious beliefs. It is a sickness. And the sickness I saw was horrible. Even at deaths bed, they are incapable of empathy or compassion.

Why did I post this in the debate section? Because anyone who thinks this brand of religion serves God or humanity in any positive way shape or form, think again! This is the fruit! I cannot say enough of my utter lack of respect for it, and I am dedicating the rest of my life to help educate and free those who have sold their souls to it for the illusion they are saved. They are not. This is the fruit it bears, in full broad daylight for the world to see. Use the name Jesus all you want. By their fruit you shall know them.

Sorry for your loss. As one who believes in God and as one who enjoys sharing what I believe with others, what they did was inappropriate and offensive. Sharing something as personal as religion, especially with the intent to convert, needs to be at the right time and place and with the right person, who wants to hear from you.

 

[Windwalker]

It would be nice if there were an educational requirement for staff chaplains. That is, in the military, at least in my experience in the Navy, chaplains were required to learn about various faiths in order to counsel just about anyone. More than preach and pray and give advice based upon their own beliefs, they listened better, understood better, and even if they didn't believe what you believed they generally respected other beliefs and sought to comfort by using what they knew of those beliefs. If there was a requirement for a spiritual counselor to have a basic education and familiarity with a certain set of various faiths with the understanding that they counsel their approach to the beliefs of the patient then things would be much better.
I had no real issue talking to a chaplain in the Navy, but I don't tend to bother with ones in civilian hospitals and places.

I completely agree with this. In fact I'd extend that to say any minister should be taught to both truly understand and respect other faiths as a good representative of their own. Unfortunately what you see with certain sects of religion is that there isn't really a requirement for a broad liberal education, but rather just learning their beliefs in rote and being a good promoter of them for their sect. In my experience what you end up with is those who are narcissistic in positions of leadership, since it's only all about getting others to agree with them. The training is not about nurturing wisdom and compassion. It's more about being a salesman and loving only those who follow your lead, while disrespecting anyone outside their ranks.

 

[Sunstone]

Dogmatism is a hell of a drug

That's one of the most insightful things I've ever heard said about dogmatism.

 

[Baladas]

I'm so very sorry to hear of your loss,friend. As well as this blatant disrespect and discrimination that you endured.
Frankly, I find it disgusting that someone would do this to you and your family.

 

[Father Heathen]

It seems that people often confuse god with their own ego.

 

[SomeRandom]

Recently I experienced the loss of my father. He died peacefully in a nursing home a week ago Monday, and I was able to spend many hours at his side as he went through the final stages of the death process over the course of three days. I held his hand, spoke with him, shed tears of love and gratitude towards him. It was a sad as well as deeply beautiful experience to watch the end come to his full and rich life filled with his love to others.

The day before he died I sat in his room talking with the hospice person for just over an hour who had come to care for his and the family's need. I talked about my father's spiritual life, as well as my thoughts on death and dying. It was a peaceful and beautiful time talking about these things with my father lying on his bed between us. It was deeply spiritual, speaking of how I drove into the rising sun as I was coming to be with him, seeing the beauty of the day over the farm fields beginning anew. Peace came over me with the thought that it was a good day to die. How the passing of life comes in the rising of the new, that the world continues as we pass from it in return to it as the Source of our own being. It was a beautiful shared experience speaking of life, death and dying with her while I sat at my father's side.

Then at the door a minister came whom one of the residents had sent thinking he should come pray for my father. My father did not relate to the divine, or the Infinite in the typical traditional Christian ways. He was a deeply spiritual man, but did not get much out of the religious approach of the "man upstairs" way of envisioning it. He was much deeper than that, even though he lacked a vocabulary to really speak of how he related to it, "The sea of Goodness", is one way he would speak of it, being a man in his 80's. When I would speak with him previously of my views, we were very much on the same pages.

And so I politely spoke with the minister about my father's view, about my own, and how that though we appreciated the gesture it wasn't how he or myself exactly relate to God, though I respect that approach for others who find it meaningful. He shook my hand and left the room, and I continue my discussion about "God", life, and death with the hospice person with my father between us. I was very respectful to the minister, very truthful, and very clear.

So what did I learn happened the next day, a mere two hours before my father's final breaths? The minister apparently was "offended" by me, and that resident and him went back into my father's room after the hospice person and myself were gone, and they prayed for him and sang their little songs for him, as he lay there unconscious, in his finals hours/days of death. How did I find out? I was sitting with my mother at a table in the cafeteria and the woman whom she knew came wheeled herself up to the table with us and started acting hostilely towards me, then finally turned to me and said, "I have to ask you, what are your beliefs?". I was taken aback, not really grasping what was going on, unaware of her little violation of sacred trust and respect with her minister friend. I answered respectfully and as simply as I could, even though it would take a full book's explanation to begin to convey how I believe. She wrinkled her nose up at me, took my mother's hand and explained how I had offended the minster and how she and him went into his room and prayed for my father, as she tried to console my mother.

I got up and told her I did not want to talk with her, and how offended I was by people like her who were incapable of seeing past their own beliefs to others enough to respect their wishes. I left as I felt a rage coming on, passed by the nursing station where my father was, and with my hands shaking I told them point blank that that woman and that minster were absolutely not allowed in my father's room or anywhere near him. I went outside, and sadly, as my mother came out to join me, I lost it. I began screaming and sobbing uncontrollably at the top of my lungs, and for some reason I just started running full speed as a screamed and cried. I have never had anything like that happen to me in my life! I couldn't stop it.

I finally was able to settle after about 20 minutes, and told myself I needed to spend time with my father at his side, as I cannot afford to let this dominate this final hours with him. I settled and went back to his room, crying with the hospice nurse telling he what had just happened, then sat quietly with my dad at his side on his final day. Two hours later he was gone. His face had the look of deep meditation. Peace filled his room as he left his body of 89 years.

Truly, these particular brand of "Christians" are the very predators whom Jesus spoke about, calling them wolves in sheep's clothing. A wolf is a predator. But what a better word even still is vampires. The live by sucking the life energy from others. They are not capable of love. They are incapable of compassion. They are self-feeding off of others, even the family of a dying man. I have no words to truly convey the vileness, the non-Christian, non-loving self-righteous, self-justifying, self-vindicating religiousness of these predators, these vampires. I came to the conclusion a few months ago that fundamentalism was a disease, a pathology, not just another version of religious beliefs. It is a sickness. And the sickness I saw was horrible. Even at deaths bed, they are incapable of empathy or compassion.

Why did I post this in the debate section? Because anyone who thinks this brand of religion serves God or humanity in any positive way shape or form, think again! This is the fruit! I cannot say enough of my utter lack of respect for it, and I am dedicating the rest of my life to help educate and free those who have sold their souls to it for the illusion they are saved. They are not. This is the fruit it bears, in full broad daylight for the world to see. Use the name Jesus all you want. By their fruit you shall know them.

I'm sorry for your loss.
I know well how this feels. When I lost my father, I went back to High School only for the RE teacher to try to use this time as a conversion attempt. Thankfully the Chaplain also happened to be present and was so thoroughly disgusted she entered a scriptural debate with the guy allowing me to escape.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

.

It would be nice if there were an educational requirement for staff chaplains. That is, in the military, at least in my experience in the Navy, chaplains were required to learn about various faiths in order to counsel just about anyone. More than preach and pray and give advice based upon their own beliefs, they listened better, understood better, and even if they didn't believe what you believed they generally respected other beliefs and sought to comfort by using what they knew of those beliefs. If there was a requirement for a spiritual counselor to have a basic education and familiarity with a certain set of various faiths with the understanding that they counsel their approach to the beliefs of the patient then things would be much better.
I had no real issue talking to a chaplain in the Navy, but I don't tend to bother with ones in civilian hospitals and places.

The way you describe Navy chaplains, I don't see any legitimate reason why a chaplain would need to be a religious minister.

 

[Draka]

.

The way you describe Navy chaplains, I don't see any legitimate reason why a chaplain would need to be a religious minister.

I'm just going off of what I garnered from our command chaplain in Jacksonville mainly. He would don his cranial (with a large red cross upon the back of it) and often make rounds of the flightline itself. Talking to us plane captains and 2nd mechs and the pilots and aircrew too. I chit-chatted with him many times. It was because of him that I understood what kind of education they had to have. How they were to approach and deal with people. He was all about others spiritual well-being, no matter what that spirituality may have been. Navy chaplains tend to be of some religious clergy, but can be from any faith, and they are to be able to minister to any faith. They are chaplains, they are ordained by some religion or another. Of course, though, when dealing with such a position to handle spiritual counseling and well-being, the ones drawn to doing such are likely to be clergy...don't you think?

Now, this is not to say that there are no uptight singular minded chaplains in the Navy, I'm sure there are some, that just go through the motions to appease certain expectations, but my experience hasn't encountered them. That's all. Maybe the ones I've met, especially the command chaplain, were just the exceptional ones. Don't know. Can only speak to what I've experienced.

 

[Windwalker]

I was just sharing a very "light" version of my story yesterday with some good friends of mine who are from the Tibetan Buddhist community (I kept the story high-level as I didn't wish to experience anger at that moment in the retelling of it). My friend relayed to me how that there was a Christian church that offered to bus the Tibetan children whose families had immigrated here to free sports they could play. The children were all excited about it and went with them with their parent's consent. Everyone was excited about it. There was a catch however that had not been disclosed ahead of time. While they did take them to play, they made them first sit through classes teaching them about Jesus. The parents found out about it when their kids came home and began asking them as Buddhists why they didn't believe in Jesus.

Again, on so many levels this is wrong and predatory. In their minds the ends justifies the means. It's the same thing in their involvement in politics trying to lie their ways into school curriculum, and whatnot. It all shows a purely self-serving narcissism which cannot see their own activities as morally wrong, because they are in their narcissism incapable of understanding and respecting others. Preying upon children, or preying on the dying in a nursing home bed. It is all preying upon the weak and vulnerable, the way a wolf singles out the most vulnerable in a herd to stalk and kill. Predators. Not servants of Love and Truth.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I'm just going off of what I garnered from our command chaplain in Jacksonville mainly. He would don his cranial (with a large red cross upon the back of it) and often make rounds of the flightline itself. Talking to us plane captains and 2nd mechs and the pilots and aircrew too. I chit-chatted with him many times. It was because of him that I understood what kind of education they had to have. How they were to approach and deal with people. He was all about others spiritual well-being, no matter what that spirituality may have been. Navy chaplains tend to be of some religious clergy, but can be from any faith, and they are to be able to minister to any faith. They are chaplains, they are ordained by some religion or another. Of course, though, when dealing with such a position to handle spiritual counseling and well-being, the ones drawn to doing such are likely to be clergy...don't you think?

I think that being, say, a Catholic priest would help a chaplain see to the religious needs of Catholic servicemen and servicewomen. I don't see how being a Catholic priest would give him any advantage over a similarly qualified lay person when ministering to or counseling, say, a Jewish, Muslim, or Sikh serviceman or servicewoman.

"Spiritual" is one of those nebulous words that means different things to different people. What do you mean by "spiritual counseling"? Why would, say, a Baptist minister or Catholic priest be especially qualified to deal with the spiritual concerns of a Muslim person in a way that a lay person wouldn't be?

And if skill in "spiritual counseling" is the goal, why not just make that the explicit job requirement instead of requiring applicants to be religious ministers and hoping that this translates into skill in this regard? Even if you think that ministers are good at this more often than not, why not exclude the few ministers who are bad at it (and include the lay people who are good at it)?

Now, this is not to say that there are no uptight singular minded chaplains in the Navy, I'm sure there are some, that just go through the motions to appease certain expectations, but my experience hasn't encountered them. That's all. Maybe the ones I've met, especially the command chaplain, were just the exceptional ones. Don't know. Can only speak to what I've experienced.

It's great that you had good experiences with your chaplains... but would that experience have been any worse if they had been well-qualified, capable lay people instead of well-qualified, capable ministers?

(Edit:... or well-qualified, capable ministers in a job that was open to lay people, too)

 

[Windwalker]

I think that being, say, a Catholic priest would help a chaplain see to the religious needs of Catholic servicemen and servicewomen. I don't see how being a Catholic priest would give him any advantage over a similarly qualified lay person when ministering to or counseling, say, a Jewish, Muslim, or Sikh serviceman or servicewoman.

While I am in agreement with you that what is truly needed is just basic good counselling skills, such as simply listening compassionately and offering emotional support to those in need, I can understand the need of someone of a particular religious faith to have someone they could relate to on that level in some way. Can a secular counselor provide comfort and support to those having a spiritual crisis for example? Possibly, yes. But they would have to themselves have knowledge of what that is for others in order to be sympathetic towards them and understand the need. Let me explain in answering your next question....

"Spiritual" is one of those nebulous words that means different things to different people. What do you mean by "spiritual counseling"? Why would, say, a Baptist minister or Catholic priest be especially qualified to deal with the spiritual concerns of a Muslim person in a way that a lay person wouldn't be?

Yes, it is a very broad term used to express many things. It's kind of like the world "love" that way. But the best way of understanding what "spiritual" means that I've heard is "that which deals with matters of ultimate concern". I would very much agree with that. Many things flow down from that question of ultimate concern, and hence why the term can be used in many different ways. Some simply don't connect to or relate their lives to questions of ultimate concern and are content simply with being happy, secure, and loved, which is all perfectly fine. But those who weigh things in larger contexts such as the meaning of life and death, who they are, why they exist, and so forth have a different level of needs.

To me, a good counselor would be one who could at least at some level relate empathetically to those concerns in order to understand them. Ostensibly, a religious minister should at the very least understand that. However, in my experience and in my many observations I sincerely doubt many actually do! In the case of the man with my father, or the story of the exploitation of the Tibetan children I just shared this morning in the thread, I believe these ministers do not have or understand actual spiritual questions or needs. They are religious promoters and recruiters. Religion, the structures of the systems of belief, are the "ultimate concern" for them, and it cuts them off from Love, which transcends beliefs. To them belief is the all important ticket to their own personal salvations, substituting the harder work of developing actual empathy towards others.

The very next day after this happened with my father in my story in the OP, I came across this perfect quote by J. Krishnamurti. "A mind which is crippled by belief is unhealthy". That is absolutely spot on! That is the problem with those who think "Truth" equals facts to be believed in, which then trumps all other possibility of perspective and understanding. The mind becomes crippled by their own insistence on their own perspectives, cutting them off from others into a world created solely in their own image, or the image of their particular group of "believers". This is exactly what happened with that woman and that minister in my story. Their beliefs crippled them to which they could not see, relate to, or understand the needs of others. They projected their ideas of needs and disrespected the views, feelings, and wishes of others, totally justifying themselves in the process.

And if skill in "spiritual counseling" is the goal, why not just make that the explicit job requirement instead of requiring applicants to be religious ministers and hoping that this translates into skill in this regard? Even if you think that ministers are good at this more often than not, why not exclude the few ministers who are bad at it (and include the lay people who are good at it)?

I agree with this. A non-religious person can be quite attuned with others spiritual needs, without themselves needing to be part of a religion. Being a spiritual person does not come from being a religious person. And like in my examples religious ministers and groups who themselves are NOT spiritual, these predators I've pointed out, these vampires, they should be disqualified from their practices. This is why I wrote that letter to the administrator of the nursing home a couple days ago. That person should not be allowed access to the vulnerable. His actions betrayed him as not qualified as a minister to others needs. He should be denied access to the elderly and infirm, the way we put doors and windows up to keep out animals.

But to your point, it is my firm belief there are many atheists who are far more compassionate and have a true spiritual heart than a very great many of these so-called religious ministers. In fact, I think it's easier for them to be that because they aren't trying to get the attention of a deity all the time and rack up brownie points for themselves in their imaginary version of heaven. The atheist who cares actually only sees the individual in front of them, and there is no ulterior, self-serving motives which blind them to the person in front of them. Sometimes it's preferably for religious people to talk with others who can show compassion from another perspective than their own groups'. That said however, I understand how talking the same "language" may be important for them and why a minister from their particular religion may be needed.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

While I am in agreement with you that what is truly needed is just basic good counselling skills, such as simply listening compassionately and offering emotional support to those in need, I can understand the need of someone of a particular religious faith to have someone they could relate to on that level in some way. Can a secular counselor provide comfort and support to those having a spiritual crisis for example? Possibly, yes. But they would have to themselves have knowledge of what that is for others in order to be sympathetic towards them and understand the need.

In a hospital setting, there's an easy way to accommodate this. It has two parts:

1. allow guests.
2. accommodate requests for privacy

That's it.

If a person feels that their spiritual needs would be helped by their religious minister, they're free to invite them to visit. If they're incapacitated and their family knows they'd like it, the family can invite the minister. If the patient's minister can't visit in person (because the patient is far from home, for instance), the minister can arrange for a replacement to go in his or her stead.

I really don't see why a hospital would have to keep religious ministers on staff.

 

[Draka]

Sometimes you don't know you need to talk until the question is asked.

 

[Draka]

I was just sharing a very "light" version of my story yesterday with some good friends of mine who are from the Tibetan Buddhist community (I kept the story high-level as I didn't wish to experience anger at that moment in the retelling of it). My friend relayed to me how that there was a Christian church that offered to bus the Tibetan children whose families had immigrated here to free sports they could play. The children were all excited about it and went with them with their parent's consent. Everyone was excited about it. There was a catch however that had not been disclosed ahead of time. While they did take them to play, they made them first sit through classes teaching them about Jesus. The parents found out about it when their kids came home and began asking them as Buddhists why they didn't believe in Jesus.

Again, on so many levels this is wrong and predatory. In their minds the ends justifies the means. It's the same thing in their involvement in politics trying to lie their ways into school curriculum, and whatnot. It all shows a purely self-serving narcissism which cannot see their own activities as morally wrong, because they are in their narcissism incapable of understanding and respecting others. Preying upon children, or preying on the dying in a nursing home bed. It is all preying upon the weak and vulnerable, the way a wolf singles out the most vulnerable in a herd to stalk and kill. Predators. Not servants of Love and Truth.

Last year these little flyers went around at the schools promoting this egg hunt right before Easter (not in the school mind you, but passed out outside the schools when they got out). Now, this flyer had a fire engine depicted on it and said it was put on by a group called "Firehouse Kidz". Now maybe I was just naive, but I connected this with something perhaps connected with the fire dept. I had no idea what this group actually was. My kids wanted to go so I took them. Upon arrival you can see an actual fire engine and decorations and a stage where they have "entertainment". The kids are to gather in front of the stage before the actual hunt and then it begins...innocently enough. This "pastor" starts with a couple games and tricks and then it goes into songs they are supposed to dance and sing along with that get quite religious. I still didn't really think that badly of it though as this was billed as an Easter egg hunt. But then...the pastor and now his wife start rolling with preaching to kids, toddlers and grade schoolers, about the thorns upon Jesus's head and the blood running down his face. They display a crown of thorns and then a whip and start in on how he was whipped until his back was split and his blood poured from him. How he was nailed to the cross and so on and so forth. To toddlers! To 2,3,4,5 year olds and up! Little kids lured in by the prospect of a fun day at an egg hunt were assaulted by a gruesome telling of death. I mean really? This church, this pastor and wife who lead a "kids'" church group, this "firehouse kidz" ...just evil. Made my skin crawl.

 

[Revoltingest]

Last year these little flyers went around at the schools promoting this egg hunt right before Easter (not in the school mind you, but passed out outside the schools when they got out). Now, this flyer had a fire engine depicted on it and said it was put on by a group called "Firehouse Kidz". Now maybe I was just naive, but I connected this with something perhaps connected with the fire dept. I had no idea what this group actually was. My kids wanted to go so I took them. Upon arrival you can see an actual fire engine and decorations and a stage where they have "entertainment". The kids are to gather in front of the stage before the actual hunt and then it begins...innocently enough. This "pastor" starts with a couple games and tricks and then it goes into songs they are supposed to dance and sing along with that get quite religious. I still didn't really think that badly of it though as this was billed as an Easter egg hunt. But then...the pastor and now his wife start rolling with preaching to kids, toddlers and grade schoolers, about the thorns upon Jesus's head and the blood running down his face. They display a crown of thorns and then a whip and start in on how he was whipped until his back was split and his blood poured from him. How he was nailed to the cross and so on and so forth. To toddlers! To 2,3,4,5 year olds and up! Little kids lured in by the prospect of a fun day at an egg hunt were assaulted by a gruesome telling of death. I mean really? This church, this pastor and wife who lead a "kids'" church group, this "firehouse kidz" ...just evil. Made my skin crawl.

Such proselytizing was just normal Bible story time in public schools here in the 50s & early 60s.
Even as an ignant little whippersnapper, I could only think to myself...."People really believe this stuff is true?".

 

[Draka]

Such proselytizing was just normal Bible story time in public schools here in the 50s & early 60s.
Even as an ignant little whippersnapper, I could only think to myself...."People really believe this stuff is true?".

I didn't get any of that kind of extreme stuff when I grew up. I found it disturbing and appalling as an adult, I couldn't imagine listening to such graphic death stuff when I was a kid. My kids remember it still. My daughter refers to it as the egg hunt where they talked about killing that man with all the blood and the whip. I mean ****, is that what they really want kids to remember?