I received a birthday card from my grandmother. Inside the card was a letter. It was a piece of stationary with small writing on both sides – fairly lengthy. Here is the final paragraph.
I pray, before your next birthday – before your next breath – you will turn from your self-willed life to surrender to the Power of the Holy Spirit and run to Him. God will run to you, with arms wide open & say ‘Go, prepare a party, let’s all celebrate. My daughter who was dead is now alive. She once was lost & now she’s found, & I have received her back home safe & sound. She’s forever my child!
Love, Forever,
God
Several things disturb me about this letter.
1) Notice, the letter was signed as from GOD. Grandma had a postscript that said God used her hands and pen to write this letter. Isn’t this a little presumptuous? What is to stop anyone from writing whatever they want and saying “God wrote that.” Oh wait, people do it all the time and that’s a large reason why there is war in the world, because of people’s conflicting ideas about god.
2) In the paragraph above, it implies god thinks i am dead if i do not do what she suggests. For some reason that bothers me. Like, she thinks i am not a real person.
3) At one point in the letter she reminds me that when i was a child i believed in jesus. She (or i guess, god) implied i betrayed my child self by no longer believing. Children believe what they are told by the people that they trust. Of course i believed then.
I’m not sure how, or if, to respond. Part of me really wants to open a dialog about this, but the other part of me knows it’s not possible to have a real conversation. How can we? What i want is to be loved and respected by my family for who i am. What they want is for me to be something i’m not.
July 27th, 2008 2:08 pm
Welcome to this club, I guess. I am a recovering fundamentalist. For lack of any better words, in my opinion, your grandmother is co-dependent on her religion and/or her idea of God. One cannot talk normally to someone who has spent their entire life developing a world view and making decisions like this. Telling your grandmother you disagree is very close to telling her you disagree with many of the lifestyle and personal choices she may have made to continue to go to church or whatever. In a way, if your family were to respect you and your thoughts and feelings and opinions, their own choices and opinions will come into question. If I think Christianity is the only way yet condone someone who doesn’t believe what I do, haven’t I then betrayed my own belief system?
About the best you can do, in my opinion, is to show her directly or indirectly that you are a spiritual, thoughtful, loving person. Her idea of being a “good” person is probably going to church and believing the same thing. Mine is treating people everywhere decently and equally. In my opinion you don’t have to believe Jesus was God to try and show kindness to people and treat people equally.
I hope it’s OK if I chimes in. I mean, I feel I can share some perspective from both sides of the fence.
July 27th, 2008 11:28 pm
Thanks for chiming in! I appreciate your insight. I’ve been on the other side of the fence too, and i get the fundamental (ha ha) problem that they can’t really accept me if i can’t accept their worldview. I would just like to not be harassed anymore. (-:
August 26th, 2008 3:56 pm
hi audrey…catching up on your earlier blog posts…it’s unfortunate that your grandma is not accepting your, what do you call it? “un-faith”? “no religion”…or just, atheism! It is a big “word”…my aunt (on dad’s side), got a little shook up (angrily) when Tim revealed he was one too (she doesn’t believe him). I don’t know the right answer, but I agree with Jeff, that someone like your grandma is hell-bent-in-her ways and will not hear/listen to the words you say to discuss your beliefs. My MIL sends me god notes all the time. And for the most part, I can ‘blow off’ god stuff from family. I think it took some time to get to the ‘i don’t give a shit’ attitude, but that’s where I am now. Not with all things…but at least with religion.