Death, Dying, and Mourning
Navigating mortality is rarely easy. Religious dogma makes it even harder.
The past two years have forced many of us to confront far more death and sorrow than anyone should have to. More than a million Americans have died from COVID-19. Many more, sick from other, more banal causes, had to suffer through their illnesses alone and without the comfort of family at their side. And those family members were unable to be with their loved ones in their final days because of restrictions put in place to minimize the spread of COVID.
Our inability to be close to our loved ones when they needed us most—and the knowledge that they may not be able to be there for us if we were to get sick—contributed to a profound feeling of powerlessness. No matter how careful we were, what precautions we took, it was still possible that we’d get sick.
Some Christians find comfort in these times with their belief that their god is always in control, that he would never “let you be tested beyond your strength.” Or they find it in the belief that they will be reunited with their loved ones in an afterlife. While neither of these things are true, I can understand how they can help Christians in these moments of grief.
But in some ways, these beliefs are a form of toxic positivity. While not an official psychological or diagnostic term, toxic positivity is a dysfunctional approach to managing emotions that fails to grapple with, confront, or even acknowledge normal negative emotions such as anger, sadness, or grief—feelings that are entirely warranted at a time of loss.
Telling a person who has lost a loved one that the grief they feel is unreasonable because they’ll be reunited in the afterlife, or that their feeling of being overwhelmed is questioning their god’s “plan” for them, not only does nothing to help them process their grief, it alienates them from the people and institutions that should be available to them to lean on in times of crisis. After all, we’re frequently told that religion—regardless of its truth—provides much-needed support structures for people when they need it most! And yet, on what is often the worst day of someone’s life, that “support” takes the form of unhelpful platitudes that attempt to rob this person of the feelings and emotions that make us human.
I struggle to think of a more callous response than telling a parent who had to bury their child that their son’s suffering through cancer was all part of a god’s divine plan or that they should be happy because he is now with their god.
Perhaps we can (at least partially) excuse lay people and individual members of churches for their unhelpful and sometimes harmful comments in response to death. Very few of us know what to say in those moments. But for clergy, the people who are supposed to be uniquely qualified to offer guidance and support during life’s most difficult days, to fail so completely at providing answers and, indeed, to harm the people they’re supposed to be ministering to, is inexcusable. And, unfortunately, many of us have had the experience of hearing a minister repeat these tone deaf and harmful tropes to people in mourning.
This fall, my mom’s older sister died at age 85. She had recently suffered a stroke and, while recovering, was diagnosed with cancer. Her death, while not unexpected following her illnesses, was still a shock. She was timeless. She was a rock for her husband of 66 years, her five children, 17 grandchildren, and 25 great grandchildren.
I don’t know how religious my aunt was. I don’t know how often she attended church. But her funeral was overseen by a local pastor of a small, independent church. Before the funeral, he spent at least two hours with her kids and grandkids, filling a notepad with notes and stories. During the funeral, he said a lot of the right things. The stories he told made the people there chuckle and remember the impact of her life.
He said that death is not the end of our relationship with our loved ones. That our memories allow them to live on. And while, yes, there was religious content, it was ecumenical—the sort of vague Christianity that doesn’t fall into the tropes I mentioned above. He told us that our feelings of grief were warranted and understandable, and that they will take time to fade.
I left the funeral feeling pleasantly surprised. And that’s why I was so frustrated that he undercut everything he said at the funeral at her graveside.
It was a rehashing of every example of Christian toxic positivity around grief I can imagine. Rather than focusing on the impact of her life and our memories of her, he said that her life only had meaning because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and her place in heaven alongside him. That her impact on the world paled in comparison to the power of his god. And that the grief her family was feeling was only temporary because they would all be united in Heaven.
I found the members of my family who are not particularly religious meeting my gaze and rolling their eyes. After the service, people approached me and voiced their displeasure about the discordant messages. After doing such a good job capturing her life by listening to her family and sharing their stories, his decision to inject his own interpretation of Christianity provided no comfort to many in our family and undermined everything he’d said previously.
Navigating death is hard. I won’t pretend to be any sort of expert on the “right” thing to say in these moments. But I know—as I think we all intuitively know—what the wrong thing to say is. And telling people that their grief isn’t legitimate, that their loved one only mattered because of some external religious figure rather than the impact she had on their lives, is just wrong.
