God Is NOT Pro-Life
Posted: Wednesday, September 28, 2011
by Octavia Hansen
Octavia Hansen
In my many travels, I read a lot of bumper stickers. Some people can condense their entire world into a few colorful words adhering to the back of their car.
Most recently, and I had to do a double take on this, it said: God Is Pro-Life.
No. Not true. I know this is not true. And I am disputing the car, the driver, the printed word and god. Yes, I know a lot of people capitalize the word god but not me, not here, not now. That's a long story but I'm ragging on this bumper sticker that really raised my hackles.
In this modern society, death is shuttered away in hospitals, old folks homes and hospices. Animals are dumped in isolated areas or left at shelters that later kill them. Death follows in great numbers after a natural disaster, and there are predictable casualties in wars and conflicts.
Weapons are available everywhere, and just about anything can become a weapon. Flesh and blood is no match for steel, glass, bullets, even blunt objects wielded with force can kill. Anything that prepares a meal can be used as a weapon.
Food can kill you. Mad cow disease worked slowly across species, there is infected food, rotten food, food allergies that can cause enough reaction to kill. Children are especially vulnerable.
There's a fashionable disease every few years to garner the public's sympathy and wallet. This is usually recognized when something kills the rich. When drugs were only in poor sections, politicians didn't bother. When politician's children began dying over heroine and AIDS, then it became a national cause.
And there are places deadly to life forms. Buildings are fire traps, chemicals are used everywhere that you shouldn't breath, they can catch fire or explode. When you drive you are riding in a bathtub full of gasoline.
There's a lot of death hanging around.
The movie series Final Destination has a very funny premise -- death missed a few people so it has to return and catch them later. Doesn't this mean death is late somewhere else? In the grand scheme of the universe, is it really a problem that a few people get a little extra time in their life? And the ones who do meet their end are Tex-Avery-cartoon-extreme violence. At least it's teenagers dying for two hours.
Real death is pretty vicious. It's death. The ending is the same. And no matter what anyone believes, or how hard they believe, no one knows what comes after that. ALL images of any kind of afterlife or punishment comes from the mind of writers and artists. Dante Alighieri (Divine Comedy - approximately 1320s) and illustrations of the same by Gustave Doré (engravings from 1857) have burned nightmare images of Hell into mankind's collective imagination.
I have witnessed two deaths, that of my parents, after agonizing decaying illness. That cured me of any romantic notions of death for the rest of my life. I can never watch medical shows again and goth makes me heave. It certainly made me a fan of 'right to die' and 'no resuscitation.'
As Master Shakespeare/Hamlet said: To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream . . . for in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil . . . but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn no traveller returns . . .
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Death isn't always painful. It does always occur, but necessarily painfully. My great grandmother passed in her sleep, no hospitals, no disease. A friend of mines mother also passed in her sleep. Other than that, great article. One thing that could def be added is the idea that mother nature in general is very wasteful. Just look at the reproduction of species. Millions of sperm are destroyed during a mating process to create 1 life. Granted sperm aren't very high on the totem pole of living creatures, but they are still organisms.Ahhh! Brain food. Thoughts I never thought. Like your ideas. I feel another article coming on! Thanks.
I do agree with Daniel, death isn't always painful. I agree with your premise however, well your multiple premises. After death there is ... whatever there is; to me most likely nothing. I don't capitalise god either. And bumper stickers are just bumper stickers. Sometimes funny, sometimes so so and too often gob smacking but always just someone's opinion about something. Death is a natural order and without death, there is no life. We (society) fear it so much because it is hidden away and we only 'see' it in films or on t.v. As to the overall premise of your piece, god is not pro-life but god is used to reinforce people's opinions and their belief that they know right and should make sure you know you are wrong unless you agree with them. I prefer it when people look at things from as many directions as they are able and who then draw a conclusion. Blind faith is anything from irritating to intolerable, depending on the degree.
I look forward to your next article after you've digested the 'brain food'.
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