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Mar. 14th, 2016 10:25 amI'm in a community on Facebook called I Run 4 Michael. It matches runners up with special needs individuals (mostly kids) and we dedicate all our runs to our buddies. It's a really special group, and I love my buddy, Emma. There are tens of thousands of members in the group, and a lot of them are incredibly religious. There are constant calls for prayer and discussions about god and angels on the group, and whenever a child dies (pretty frequent, given some of their special needs), the whole thread gets crazy religious. It's...not my thing.
I understand how faith can be especially important to people who have terminally ill children. They want to believe there's a reason, and that they'll be reunited with their children again one day. Shit, I wish I could believe that, too. So I get it. I'm used to these folks being really religious and that in itself is not a problem.
The groups is non-political, of course. It's 100% about supporting our buddies. But when someone posts about a death (they ALWAYS say "X gained his/her angel wings today"), I always click through to the poster's profile to read what they've said publicly about their relationship with the deceased. Many of them had facebook pages dedicated to their child's struggles with daily updates, and I like to read stuff like that when it's available. It's really sad, but I also feel like I'm kind of getting to know the child who died, maybe? Or maybe it's just pure curiosity. But it's a thing that I do.
Today, one of the buddies that I see a lot of in the group passed away. His mother always posted updates to the whole group and he was one of the ones that everyone knew. He was an older man with Down's, but I didn't realize he was dying. So anyway I clicked through to the mom's profile to see more, and boom...racist, hyper-religious, right-wing bullshit everywhere. White supremacy, guns, Donald Trump, and her very misguided idea of what Jesus is all about.
And I just...ugh.
I can't feel for this woman now. I know her pain is terrible, but I also know now that she's not empathetic to the struggles of others. She's even doing what she can to KEEP them down. I feel for her son. I am sorry for her pain. But I can't believe that raising a child with special needs wasn't enough to teach her some god damn empathy for the rest of the human race.
I understand how faith can be especially important to people who have terminally ill children. They want to believe there's a reason, and that they'll be reunited with their children again one day. Shit, I wish I could believe that, too. So I get it. I'm used to these folks being really religious and that in itself is not a problem.
The groups is non-political, of course. It's 100% about supporting our buddies. But when someone posts about a death (they ALWAYS say "X gained his/her angel wings today"), I always click through to the poster's profile to read what they've said publicly about their relationship with the deceased. Many of them had facebook pages dedicated to their child's struggles with daily updates, and I like to read stuff like that when it's available. It's really sad, but I also feel like I'm kind of getting to know the child who died, maybe? Or maybe it's just pure curiosity. But it's a thing that I do.
Today, one of the buddies that I see a lot of in the group passed away. His mother always posted updates to the whole group and he was one of the ones that everyone knew. He was an older man with Down's, but I didn't realize he was dying. So anyway I clicked through to the mom's profile to see more, and boom...racist, hyper-religious, right-wing bullshit everywhere. White supremacy, guns, Donald Trump, and her very misguided idea of what Jesus is all about.
And I just...ugh.
I can't feel for this woman now. I know her pain is terrible, but I also know now that she's not empathetic to the struggles of others. She's even doing what she can to KEEP them down. I feel for her son. I am sorry for her pain. But I can't believe that raising a child with special needs wasn't enough to teach her some god damn empathy for the rest of the human race.
