Totally screwed up things to tell sick kids

[skygazer]

Listening to the radio this morning and they were talking about some young girl who had cancer. And so they start talking about god and how its so hard to understand why god allows such things and how there must be some reason, etc.

So then some dingbat woman calls in and says, "My daughter was 17 when she got cancer and I told her that god chose her because she was so strong and special." :wtf:

What the hell kind of sick thing is THAT to tell a kid with a terminal illness? That you were CHOSEN to get sick, and feel shitty and be frightened and die young? Great. Thanks, god. Right back atcha.

Couldn't believe it. What's wrong with saying, "I don't know why these things happen. Sometimes life isn't fair." :banghead:

[Deep13]

1. God only gives us what (suffering) we can handle.

That's another favorite. God=divine asshole.

[XemaSab]

6. My pastor basically said that was bullshit

after one of the parishoners' son died and grandson got in a horrible motorcycle wreck in the same week. :(

(The grandson was mostly okay except for slight nerve damage in one hand, but they were worried he wouldn't make it for a while :( )

[Ilsa]

16. Right. Say that to the family members of someone who committed suicide. nt

[redqueen]

2. That's messed up...

on the other hand, it beats "you must have done something to deserve this punishment from God", so...

[mzteris]

3. and, if your faith was strong enough -

you'd be healed. It's all YOUR fault. . .

[Gormy Cuss]

4. Well, you or I may feel comfortable with that last line, but others need to think there is a purpose

(or as some call it, God's plan.) Most of the time, whatever works is my feeling.
Telling a teen that she got cancer because she's strong is sick.

[Deep13]

5. I think a freak occurance and lack of any plan is more comforting...

...than the idea that god is intentionally making the kid suffer for no reason but caprice. Just speaking for myself, of course.

When my Dad died at age 52 in 1999 from a stroke, I found a lot more solace in the idea that it was a random event than from the idea that there was some logic behind it. I never thought it was divine retribution, but his surviving relatives all wondered what we could have done differently that might have prevented him being stressed-out or saved his life after the stroke. I found it irritating when people tried to put a positive spin on it. "He's in a better place now." Really? A better place than with his wife and dogs on the Christmas tree farm he built? Did god or whatever ask him if he wanted to go to that better place? The whole situation sucked and nothing could change that so I wished that people would stop trying.

[Gormy Cuss]

10. Rabbi Kushner's writings have comforted some of my friends

(author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People) The sense of his message, as I recall, is a framework where one can be live in God, creator of the universe and accept that God doesn't control every minute detail of it. I remember one friend who repeated the notion of "random entropy" as one of Kusnher's explanations. Of course, many theologians disagree with Kushner but I praise the man for creating a different viewpoint because it can help both believers and nonbelievers deal with suffering.

That "in a better place" line used to bother me until I realized that in some religious dogma it's a conditioned response simlar to "God Bless." Of course, when I heard people saying that after the death of the most despicable person that I've ever known, it was awfully tempting to ask if Hell really was a better place.

[skygazer]

14. I hate that "better place" bullshit

I have a friend whose 18 year old son was murdered and someone had the gall to say that to her. What better place could that boy be than with the family that loved him?

What a strange way of looking at things.

[Ilsa]

17. "If I had been a weaker person maybe I would be well." nt

[Critters2]

7. Why can't people just say "I don't know"?

What is so damned hard about that?

[Dr. Strange]

9. I don't know.

You should try asking this in the 9/11 Forum.

Heads would explode, let me tell you!

[Deja Q]

8. Wow. Another example of a gen-y youth being "too coddled" by "overprotective parents".

:crazy:

What next, the girl develop an entitlement complex and demand heart disease?! :silly:

But in seriousness: Life isn't fair, but life is what we make of it. (that includes us as a society just as much as it includes us as individuals.)

[Arugula Latte]

11. When one of my husband's sisters died when he was a child,

the minister told his parents it was because their "faith wasn't strong enough."

Can you imagine hearing such B.S. at a time like that?!?! :grr:

Well, they'd been strong churchgoing people, Sunday school teachers, and the like.

After years of painful searching for answers, they eventually they realized that religion was basically a big steaming load ... Now they're sorry they wasted so much of their lives in church and believing in a lot of irrational make-believe crap.

[ulysses]

15. a certain minister would have been in a body cast.

[Lance_Boyle]

12. 'If you'd just eaten the broccoli, you wouldn't have gotten the cancer.'

"Yeah, God loved you for awhile, but you just wouldn't put out, and God hates a tease."

"We were going to pay for the surgery. Honest. But OOOH! SHINY!"

[alphafemale]

13. Or to say to someone who's child has died, "God needed another little angel."

Seriously. :wtf:

[Taverner]

18. Shit happens. You have no control over 99% of it.

The 1% you do have control over, is fleeting. Just accept it.