I learned so much from my time of knowing Brenda. I knew her as a friend, her being a customer of mine from a previous job. I got to know her over several years. She is lady old enough to be my mother, with children about my age. I will never forget the day I saw her and she told me that it had been discovered that her daughter had an advanced form of cancer and only had a few months to live. Each time I saw her after that day, the stories worstened, and you could see the toll it took on Brenda. Brenda was a woman of faith, she told me so long before this ever happened. She wasn’t pushy about it. If she said she would prey for you, it was out of love. One day as her daughter was in the hospital, nearing death, Brenda took a walk over to the children’s hospital. She saw and met several children of various ages, but all very young. They all had forms of cancer, and some were not able to leave their beds. Brenda told me that as of that day she would never say another prayer. Her daughter was 32, these children were 12 and younger. She said she (Brenda) felt so much guilt having preyed for her child to live, while many of the children she visited would never see another year. She felt that god would know that the family of these children would want them to live without having to beg for it. In the end she told me it was easier to look at life as a game of chance, where sometimes, it’s just a matter of good and bad luck that determines these type of things rather than a god who hand picks the people who suffer numerous days of terrible disease. I believe she got it right. No god needed.
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@PJ
Damn, dude.... Thank you for sharing that... No words, but thank you....
Too bad Brenda never traveled as a child. One day in a third world country would have had the same effect on her and she would not have wasted all those years in prayer.
On my last trip to the Philippines I watched an old lady die on the street. A young lady was sitting with her and trying to get her to drink a bit of water and eat something but the lady was all skin and bones and on her last few breaths. Dying on the sidewalk of a filthy street in Manila in the arms of a stranger. Life can be pretty fucked up. (I won't mention that I worked geriatrics for years and have witnessed the American death chambers for the elderly in person.) The fucking priests showing up to give last rights and get themselves included in the dying persons will. Doctors poking their head into the room and charging the families 300 USD for a room visit. Death in America is fucking SHIT at any age.
Dr Kevorkian was way before his time. There is such a thing as quality of life and the unethical and amoral medical system that keeps people alive, in pain, and suffering just to fill a bed and make money is an absolute horror. For fuck sake., we are more humane with our pets than our parents and relatives. Our system sucks and no amount of prayer will fix it.
@Cog Re: "For fuck sake., we are more humane with our pets than our parents and relatives. Our system sucks and no amount of prayer will fix it."
So very fucking true....
Cognostic,
"Our system sucks and no amount of prayer will fix it."
The secret is to not live too long.
My grandmother, who lived to be over 100 confided in me (I suspect she felt I'd understand) that she was sorry to have lived so long. Her sisters and brothers were gone, her friends were gone, she felt helpless in a long term care facility existing from day to day.
The legend goes that bounty hunter Doc Holliday, realizing that TB would have him die helpless in a hospital took up his crime fighting to die on the street instead. Alas, he was never killed and wound up in the situation he tried to avoid.
LOL - ain't that the truth.
@ Pirate Jack
Sad story. No words. Our daughters had a mild form of leukemia, but it was curable. I can kind of understand, but not truly. But at least Brenda found the truth.
rmfr
The most important thing I learned from her experience was that she felt betrayed by god for having to beg for her daughter to get well. After seeing everyone else going through the same thing, she realized there was nothing to pray to.
For me, the argument from evil is too compelling to be argued against rationally, and ends all arguments for the existence of a perfectly benevolent deity that is both omniscient and omnipotent. No desperate rationalisation can counter this for me, and when coupled with the facts that no objective evidence can be demonstrated for any deity, and that humans demonstrably create fictional deities, there is no decision to make.
When human morality is demonstrably better than that of a deity, either the deity does not exist is monstrously cruel, either way I'd want no part of any religion that worships either a fictional or a barbarically cruel deity.
At least in your story the lady was praying for her daughter's life. I will never understand why theists who pray for frivolous personal gain are not ashamed to claim a deity has answered such prayers, while as you point out that same deity supposedly lets children and babies die in agony all the time while their parents look on helplessly.