Dear abby: easter and apostasy

[lemonsharks]

DEAR ABBY: Easter is a day to be thankful for Christ that our sins are forgiven. Opinionated atheists at the dinner table distract from the meaning of the celebration. Is it wrong on Easter Sunday to exclude relatives who no longer practice the Christian faith? — SAVED IN MINNESOTA

DEAR SAVED: Before making up your mind, ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?”

Comments

[lemonsharks]

This easter, give your apostate relatives the gift of not having to pretend so, so many things about your religion are anything resembling ok.

Like human imperfection being so infinitely horribly unforgivable as to require divine blood sacrifice. That piece of dogma is NOT normal and NOT OKAY.

note: I'm coming at this as an evangelical apostate still wrestling with the self-hate Christianity instilled in me. I am not interested in hearing anyone's "no true christian" fallacies today, tonight, tomorrow, or ever.

[conuly]

God, for their own sake, exclude the hell out of them, and anybody who thinks that's a bad idea. Exclude everyone, and die alone.

[feldman]

Some church pantries force people to pray or attend services to get food; perhaps LW would be happier volunteering their holiday time with one of these venues, since their family is too opinionated to be proselytized over a ham dinner?

[edenfalling]

I am about 90% sure that the "atheists" in question (who may even be Christian! this letter reeks of the kind of Christianity that disowns most fellow Christians for somehow Doing Religion Wrong) would LOVE to be disinvited.

The 10% is because I have no idea why they're attending in the first place. Misplaced family loyalty? They actively enjoy starting arguments? Only chance to eat Annoying Relative's frustratingly delicious specialty food item?

Possibly they are teens forced to come by their parents, in which case this sounds like a much bigger family problem than just a religious argument at a dinner gathering.

[likeaduck]

One of few chances to see other relatives who live pretty far and come in for the family gathering?

[edenfalling]

Could well be! Although I'd think one might take the opportunity to say, "Hey, while you're in town for Horrible Relative's Easter dinner, which I will not be attending this year, what say we meet up separately and do lunch?" instead of suffering through internal family warfare. *wry*

[likeaduck]

A very reasonable suggestion, but not one that would have occurred to me as a teen/young adult, and not one that would work if either the LW or the other relatives in question were dependent on others for transportation.

[azurelunatic]

Even if I were Christian I wouldn't want to break bread with that sanctimonious harpy.

[lilysea]

Meanwhile this week

Dear Care and Feeding: Our Nightmarish Family Dinners Make Me Want to Hurl

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/03/hateful-family-dinners-save-me-care-and-feeding.html

makes me wonder if that LW is writing about Easter-LW...

[gingicat]

Dear Family: This year I plan to talk about the Biblical origins of Easter, including the gory bits, over lunch. There may be a sermon. Please don’t feel obligated to attend, as this is not a debate.

[sporky_rat]

......yes please? (I got a list of stuff I wasn't allowed to talk about at the dinner table when I was right, the gory origins of Christian Easter and what happens to the body when it's crucified was on the list underlined twice)

[gingicat]

That was my suggestion for the LW :)

We Jews, on the other hand, diminish the wine in our cups when remembering that the Egyptians suffered from the plagues because of Pharoah's hard heart.

[sporky_rat]

Aah. (I always found the hardening of Pharaoh's heart to a very sad thing.)

[liv]

I mostly think the ex-Christian relatives are better off not being invited. But I do wonder about that 'opinionated'. If they're actually the kind of atheists who can't resist constantly harping on about the invisible sky-fairy and paedophile priests, even at a religious celebration where they are guests, then I feel like they are possibly guilty of quite bad manners. My suspicion is that "opinionated" just means they persist in having non-Christian friends and won't agree that they or their friends are unforgiven sinners. In any case, whether the atheists are actually rude or just their existence is an affront to LW's celebration, the right answer is not to invite them.

[lemonsharks]

I think if that's the case*, the LWs ought to give their guests one last chance (as aligns with their faith):

Let everyone know, using words, that all "magic sky fairy" and "god is your imaginary friend" needs to go back to r/atheism where it belongs, that church sex scandals are off the conversational table, and that if folks can't follow those rules they'll be expelled from the house and banned from future religious holidays.

(And that yes, this includes teenagers and children at the table, who will have to have their adult escort them home.)

If the issue at hand is garden variety rudeness, letting the rude people experience one single consequence for their actions will probably ensure they don't come to future dinners. And it might be! I went through an asshole atheist phase! I know a lot of people who went through an asshole atheist phase!

*Also assuming that the LWs are tolerable Christians in their own right, who don't evangelize to their atheist guests, which I doubt.

[gingicat]

Yup.

Also, I know ministers and lay leaders who have taken "priests are not immune from sin, you know better" as their sermon texts.

[minoanmiss]

ETA: I cannot thread properly -- ahahah my previous comment was written when I thought someone Not My Favorite Citrusy Cartilaginous Fish had written this comment. Sorry for the As You Know, Bob, complete with namechecking you to yourself.

[lemonsharks]

Anyway enjoy my new icon ft. Sappho on a vase, looking fed up about everything, quoth, "i SAID it was GAY"

[liv]

Aha, thank you for additional Christian background perspective. If the problem is that the atheist guests are actually rude (which I rather doubt), the correct response is to tell them in words that their behaviour is unacceptable and give them another chance.

(I once had a non-Jewish guest at my seder who interrupted the ceremony by singing 'fart fart fart' to the tune of Christmas carols. But that was an autistic five-year-old, and he knew he was being rude but he also didn't have a good way to express that he felt uncomfortable being part of a religious ceremony that wasn't applicable to him. Obviously, I didn't write to an agony aunt complaining about his bad manners; it was on me as a host to make my guests feel welcome but not pressured to join in.)

[lemonsharks]

I'm facepalming a at kiddo's parents who had to know he was right on the edge of not ready for a visit like that

[cereta]

Yah. I do not mind the odd atheist-oriented comment from friends, any more than I assume they mind the odd religious comment from me (although mine tend to be more descriptive, like, "Yeah, Catholics don't even believe in the whole Rapture thing, and you could sell me on Trump as the Anti-Christ"), but if someone started talking about invisible sky daddies at my frickin' Easter dinner, I'd be pretty annoyed.

It reminds me of when there was a movement to call people who rejected all supernatural beliefs "brights," and a friend said she couldn't understand why anyone would object to that. Like...you genuinely can't understand why a theist would object to a word commonly used to describe someone as smarter than average being used to describe people who believed differently than you do? Seriously?

[conuly]

. If they're actually the kind of atheists who can't resist constantly harping on about the invisible sky-fairy and paedophile priests, even at a religious celebration where they are guests, then I feel like they are possibly guilty of quite bad manners.

I don't like to admit it, but it does happen. And not just among the newly deconverted, where we can say they're still processing and that this sort of talk is an important part of that (at least for some).

Those people will be happier uninvited for their sins anyway.

[lemonsharks]

Now this stance is obviously informed by my background. I wouldn't say that

"this huge and important piece of your identity is meaningless because you're too intellectually stunted and deliberately ignorant to admit gods are fake"

is as harmful as

"you're destined to an unknowably long eternity of torture worse than the worst torement you can imagine unless you beg and grovel in the correct manner as prescribed by me"

but it's definitely getting close.


(Some assholes never grow out of being assholes. Would that we could send them all off to their own private island to lord of the flies each other while the rest of us proceed onward to a functioning society built on a foundation of mutual kindness.)

[sporky_rat]

As a Christian (probably not an acceptable one to the LW), I wouldn't want an invite to her table and if I had to include her on an invite to my table, she wouldn't get the good butter. (And I suspect I would be unkind enough to bring out the single ply uncomfortable toilet paper for the guest bathroom.)

[pensnest]

I applaud your reply and am amused by the toilet paper deal, but mostly, I had to reply to your icon.

[sporky_rat]

You just can't beat the Orator for good icons.

[cereta]

Yeah, I'm Catholic, and most of our Easter celebrations are completely secular. I mean, we go to Mass, but we don't make any ham-handed (npi) to link the candy-and-fun part to Jesus, and if there are people at the table (we sometimes invite friends who don't have anywhere else to go and might just enjoy a nice meal) who aren't Christian, we don't even say the cursory pre-meal prayer. Because we are not assholes who force other people to participate in our faith.

[ambyr]

The tone here is terrible, but I . . . don't think there's anything wrong with not inviting people who don't follow your faith to your religious events? I am Jewish, my partner is not; by mutual consent I don't bring him to my family's Seder, because he would be incredibly uncomfortable being expected to join in prayers he didn't believe in, and our Seder is not a secular event. If LW wants to have a religious Eastern meal, LW should knock themselves out, and get together with atheist relatives on different occasions.

[minoanmiss]

Oh, I don't think anyone disagrees with the idea that the LW should invite whom they want to their own shindig. I think we're all snerking at their awful reasons why. Right for the wrong reasons and all that.

(FWIW -- this is not a criticism of you and your partner's decisions at all -- I'm not Jewish and I have been honored and delighted to be invited to Seders by the Jewish people in my life.)

[grammarwoman]

I have to laugh at this, because my husband was raised Catholic, I was raised Lutheran, and we've both long since given up on attending any kind of organized religion, but we host Easter dinner for both sides of the family (in years when we can actually get together). I figure it makes it easier, because we can do all the meal prep and housekeeping without having to figure in church attendance that day as well.