agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

A year ago, I was told I had a form of ovarian cancer and was given two to three years to live — five years, if I’m in the top quartile of patients. I nursed my husband through metastatic lung cancer for 15 months. It was horrific; I am hoping that God takes me early.

My sister, whom I love very much, is part of a fundamentalist Christian church and is one of their top “prayer warriors.” As such, she calls me nearly every day and launches into long prayers asking God to send my cancer to the “foot of the cross.” She implores me to pray with her and says that if I just believe that God will cure me, he will.

I grew up Catholic and have fallen away from the church. I believe God is bigger than what we can understand as human beings. I am a data-driven health care practitioner: I believe that everybody has to die of something, and this happens to be my fate.

I’ve told her as tactfully as I can that her praying for me and expecting me to pray with her for my cure is upsetting to me. It makes me feel that if there is a God, he must really hate me; otherwise, he would have cured me. (She says that he wants to use me as a “messenger” to others and that it’s the Devil, not God, who gave this disease to me.) Also, I had a pretty abusive marriage, and I am a little freaked out that, if there is life after death, my husband will have the opportunity to abuse me more in the afterlife.

What do I say to my sister without belittling her beliefs? I’ve told her that if she wants to pray for me, I would rather she do it on her own time and not ask me to participate. But she is persistent, thinking that she’s going to “save my soul” and my body at the same time. She disputes every reason that I give her and insists that what she is doing is helpful. But it’s not helpful; it sends me into a terrible depression. — Name Withheld

Yours isn’t the stereotypical clash between believer and skeptic. You’re a believer of sorts, as your anxieties about meeting your late husband establish. (Let me assure you that on the standard Christian view, as the Catholic and Protestant clerics I conferred with agree, you would not be subject to your late husband’s abuse in the afterlife.) What you don’t believe in is a personal God or the power of intercessory prayer. Given that your sister very much does believe in these things, what she’s doing makes sense.

And that’s why this clash is so difficult: Hers is the good-hearted action of a devoted sibling. You’ve made your arguments; at this point, you should simply let her know that you find her calls to prayer dispiriting and that you want to spend your remaining time making peace with your condition, not spending your energy in what you consider a futile effort to deny reality. You can tell her all this firmly but tenderly and without bitterness, acknowledging that she has been acting out of her love for you. (You could ask others in the family to support your request as well, if you think that would make a difference.)

Even the staunchest of believers struggle with doubt, and your prayer-warrior sister may also be having a hard time accepting your mortality. The idea that she can’t do anything about it may pain her. Whatever the explanation, though, you may have to tell her that if she calls to pray with you, you are just going to put the phone down. Your situation is already difficult. Your sister’s convictions — and her love for you — don’t entitle her to make it worse. What you need from her now is a particularly exacting kind of love: the kind of love that sets aside its own convictions out of respect for the convictions of another.

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Much though it pains me to admit it, this is probably not a situation best resolved by sharply limiting contact with Sis. I mean, if LW is happy to do that, more power to her - but given that she's dying she might not actually want to do that.

Which unfortunately leaves me with no useful commentary or advice.

Edited 2023-08-26 21:06 (UTC)

I don't see a way to handle this situation without being blunt and ending the calls once the sister starts praying. Tact doesn't work against fundamentalism. My sympathies to the letter writer.

It might. She's not trying to get the sister to stop praying or to change her beliefs. (I mean, she shouldn't be trying that. She might have been trying that previously, which would be why it didn't work.) I can totally understand the temptation for LW to argue that her sister should stop praying for her, that she believes God hates her, that she does not want to go to heaven. Those are all invitations for dispute, for a religious person.

"Stop praying IN MY PRESENCE," is a much simpler and more direct request. It does not invite religious dispute. But why not? The sister might dispute it, but it becomes social, or family dispute, not theological dispute.
"But why not?"/"Because it upsets me."
"But I want Him to help you!"/ "That's between you and Him. Your conversations with Him upset me. Don't have them here."
"But it's really important for you to invite Him into your life now that you're so sick!"/ "I want you in my life when I'm so sick, but if you can't refrain from praying for the length of a visit [or phone call] I won't talk to you."

The sister doesn't have to change any of her beliefs about God to abide by her sister's wishes. Just as adult siblings can have an argument around "dad abused me and I never want to talk about him again" and "he was always nice to us and we never saw anything abusive," and still support the "never want to talk about him again."

I consider those to be blunt statements. I'm not sure why you're disagreeing about using blunt statements?

I'm sorry for the lack of clarity. I agree about the need for bluntness and enforcement, I just think that "don't discuss" is a better place to draw the blunt line than "you're wrong." The sister may not listen to either.

LW should have that conversation with her sister, maybe a couple of times. and maybe in writing - send a letter outlining exactly what she hopes for from her sister. and then, if the phone call/prayers continue, just hang up when she launches into one. there is no need for LW to put herself though that.

I really really REALLY hate the "if I just believe that God will cure me, he will" thing. Vending machine theology is pretty provably wrong, and insulting to people who don't magically get cured. The question of "why cancer if God" is a thorny tangled mess but some answers are better than others.

I wish "Please don't involve me in this" worked for militant pray-ers.

Yeah, if anything, pushing someone away like this just makes them double down on their efforts to "save" you.

I don't really see how this would be less of a difficult situation if LW were a committed atheist? Why is it different because LW is "a believer of sorts"? Overall, I think the advice is correct - be direct in asking sister to stop & refuse to participate if she doesn't. But I found the framing kind of weird.

In fact, since LW is a flavor of theist, LW can say with conviction "Stop trying to interfere with God's will; if God wants to call me out of this world, then your prayers won't stop it."

I think the columnist's thought process is that a committed atheist would at least not have to worry about whether God really hates her or if her abusive husband is waiting for her in the afterlife.

"Hers is the good-hearted action of a devoted sibling"

No, it fucking well is not.

Honestly, the more I think about this the madder I get. If kid gloves are called for, it's not because the sister in any way deserves respect or tender treatment. It's because the dying woman doesn't want to die in the middle of a fight with her sister, who is using that fact as leverage to continue torturing her.

Thank you. I said a very unladylike thing when I read that line.

Hear hear! Not so much the action of a devoted sibling, but the action of a Performative Christian. She could just as easily pray for her sister privately, without upsetting the person she is praying for.

Agreed. The sister is making it all about herself. Comfort in, vent out also applies to praying at people.

Hmmm, getting ready to start a hospital interfaith chaplain internship, and I'm Jewish, my advice to LW if I spoke to them:

Tell your sister that you are following the words of Jesus, Matthew 6:5-6, and you prefer to pray in private, when no one else can hear you. For you, I'm not saying you have to do that, but your sister isn't going to hear much less than actual Gospel quotes, even as a possibility. It still might not work, but I'd tell her I'm taking the phone into another room and closing the door so she isn't violating your own faith, and do it.

Now as Jewish, I don't believe in a transactional Deity as well: "if enough prayers are said, G-d will surely heal me?" No. Good things happen to bad people, bad things happen to good people. "The Devil" to me is only a prosecutor in G-d's court and can't act outside Divine will. "As G-d is my judge", your abusive spouse will have already had his own judgement and cannot hurt you more.

My mom died of gastric cancer in 2006. Did knowing that people of many faiths were praying for her, support her in dealing with the medical treatment side effects? Yes, because she felt cared about knowing that Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus loved her enough to beseech what they found holy for her support.

I don't have any answers for you, and my advice is worth exactly what you paid for it, nothing, but if you want to rail against a Deity that would let bad things happen to good people, I will listen.

Actually a chaplain is probably really good advice for LW more generally. LW, see if the people doing your cancer care can connect you with an interfaith chaplain who has experience working with terminal patients and their families. They will almost certainly have experience with situations and feelings like yours and with negotiating different family members' versions of God. Hopefully they can give you better specific advice for dealing with your responses to the phone calls than us; and if you're really lucky you can cut off the next phone call with "actually I've started praying with the hospital chaplain, and I told them about your tireless work for me, and they'd really love to talk to you about it, can I give them your number?" and they can do the Judo work for you.

(Also, thank you for your work! It's a really hard job but so important.)

Agreed! This problem would benefit from the input of a third party.

I would imagine that the sister would agree that prayer is hard work. Listening to someone pray in your ear when you'd rather they didn't is also hard work. It's completely understandable that the LW has other things she'd like to be doing with her energy. And that's just if we assume everyone is acting in good faith, rather than assume what I assume, which is that the sister is using the LW to feel important and gain position in her community.

There is nothing LW can say to induce her sister to change her behavior. Fundamentalists do not listen. LW has a decision to make: Does she want contact with her sister, including her prayers, or does she want to cease contact? Those are, sadly, LW's only options.

LW, you can a) stop taking your sister's calls or b) tell your sister that you know that God is calling you home and this was in God's plan for you, and it hurts you to hear her oppose God's plan, and that you would rather she pray for God to help you bear own your cup of suffering with grace. And if she won't accept that answer then (depending on just how fucked-up her church is), you can attempt to refer her to her own spiritual counselor to discuss it.

It's quite likely that this is a woman who has been too brainwashed by an abusive church to be able to hear you when you tell her what you're feeling in plain words; but it is also almost certainly true that this is a woman who has learned her sister is dying and is terrified to lose her, and if her church has any point to it at all other than making the pastors rich, they're the ones who should be helping her through that, not you. Giving her something along the lines of "I have faith that God is calling me home" and then sending her back to them is probably the best you can do to jumpstart that. If her church has any point to it at all other than making the pastors rich.

Depending on exactly what flavor of Prayer Warrior she is, B may work or may temporarily make it worse. If it makes it worse, go to plan A. If B is too far from your own beliefs, stick with plan A, but it sounds like it might be within a few ballparks of true for you, enough to pull it off. You won't be able to convince her to stop praying; you can either stop listening, or you can try to judo it into something you can bear.

Edited 2023-08-27 03:53 (UTC)

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