Recently I read these words: “Our posture is as important, if not more, than our position. We aim to be kind to everyone, even if their views or choices are different from ours.”
I have spent some time thinking about what this means. This quote came from a member of a fundamentalist church that believes LGBTQ people, and those who have a sex life outside of marriage, are sinners, destined for hell when they die.
My mother, a devout Catholic, forced us to go to mass every Sunday and holy day, attend catechism, confess our sins, do penance, and receive all church sacraments. Yet, in her personal conversations with us, she admitted she did not believe that everything the church said was law. She realized why people got divorced, used birth control to limit family size, and did not think homosexuality was a sin. I do not think she thought she was a sinner, or going to hell, or even purgatory, for her views. I often wondered why she was so devout and committed to this religion.
My father, on the other hand, never went to mass, though he was also technically a Catholic, born to two Catholics and later discarded to the Minnesota State School for Neglected and Dependent Children, along with all his siblings. My sisters and I matured, to a wider worldview through high school, college and working. We are all agnostics, and are trying to live our lives as honestly as we can.
How did my parents view heaven and hell and who went where when they died? My mother died at 91. She became more and more fragile and surprisingly more afraid of death at the end of her life. My sister told me that she became accepting and peaceful after her parish priest talked with her. My dad, the “sinner,” totally accepted that he was going to die, and said things like, “If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.” At 98 he died peacefully at the veteran’s home.
We spoke on the phone the day he died, he seemed as he always was, as if it was just another day. At 52 he had a heart attack and was technically dead for a short time. He had an out-of-body experience where he was lifted to the light, could hear the voices of people who had died before him calling him. He did not hear the voice of my grandfather, a man who abandoned my pregnant grandmother and gave his children to the state.
My mother, along with the nuns and my catechism teachers, often said that if you wish harm on others, it is as much a sin as actually harming others. It was a sin that you should confess. But, is this logical, coming from any religion that condemns people to hell simply because of who they are, who they love, who they have sex with?
When I am angry at those who treat me like I am less than them, when people make racist, sexist and homophobic statements, I check my thoughts. While I believe in no religion or god, I don’t wish those people dead, or that they burn in a hell. To me, our positions on equality and understanding others are much more important than a façade of false postures of niceness, hiding an uninformed position.
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