On April 29, 2014, my father Sargent John David Rucker passed away in the hospital when I was still living in Tuscaloosa, AL after college. I remember my mom calling me and just telling me to come home I asked if he was dead, she told me to just come home. I called my aunt and she told me the same, I didn’t know how fast I was going but the drive to Sheffield felt like a few minutes.
When I get out the car, my mom and all my aunts hugged me and as they were hugging me, I felt a wave of numbness then a flash of anger. That might not seem like an appropriate response to your parent dying, but I was furious. I didn’t want their sympathy or pity, I didn’t come out of my room until the funeral. Seeing all those people come to say goodbye to my dad was bittersweet, then came the shift.
I already knew losing my dad was going to be hard on me, but not as much as my mom. My mom who just lost her best friend, lover, and lifelong companion looked for comfort in the one place where she was most happy. Church. One would think the church was a place of empathy and compassion, in fact, the Bible says that the Church should rally around the widow and comfort her. Surely her congregation would be supportive in her time of need. What actually happened confirmed my many doubts about religion.
They spread rumors about her, said awful things about my dad when they thought no one was listening and when my mother reached out for some reassurance… they gave her the cold shoulder. See this is the thing, I don’t think all religion is bad, I just think the intentions of the people who join religions are disingenuous. They were so ego driven, they actually saw my mother being newly single as some kind of threat. The absolute nerve of the old cows to think she was some type of busy body!! My mother always felt good after leaving church but now the truth was out, the so called “ladies of the church” were carrying negative feelings in their hearts toward someone who just lost her husband. She was heartbroken, for the first time, I saw my mom come home from church and cry. At that moment, I decided I didn’t want anything to do with the church ever again.
I know that there are really good people who are religious, but religion as a whole is ego driven. You get told that if you do certain things and live a certain way then you get rewarded when you die. Honestly, the idea of having to die first before you see any results seem like a cop-out and then the concept of needing to be rewarded for being a decent human being bothers me too. That’s what makes it ego driven, doing good because you get something out of it and not out of compassion or love for your fellow human being. Religion, in my opinion, makes people morally lazy and I believe people cling on to it so much because real spiritual growth takes time and pain. Spirituality forces you to confront your demons instead and take personal responsibility, religion is more like, “The devil made me do it.” I love God…can’t stand religion.
