Very Smart Brothas' Damon Young explains how his mother's illness has led him to re-evaluate the religious practice.
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… Much of this love and support has come in the form of prayer. People praying for her, praying with her, and even suggesting special prayers for situations like this. In fact, tonight I searched for "mom" in Gmail and looked at emails and Gchats I received around the time people first found out she was ill. Every single person who contacted me mentioned something about prayer.
While this has definitely — definitely — been appreciated by my mother and the rest of my family, this situation has reinforced the disconnect I've always had with prayer in general and prayer specifically for ill people in particular.
Now, I'm (obviously) not a theological scholar. But, I do know that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all offer their true believers some form of an afterlife. And, in each case, the afterlife is a much, much, much better version of Earth.
If Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe this to be true, why pray for a sick person's health to get better? I understand praying for their souls and salvation if they do happen to pass away, but if whatever comes after Earth is an unfathomably awesome version of all the best things we experience here, why would you want someone to get better so that they have to stay on [sh—ty] ole Earth a second longer than they have to? …
Read Damon Young's entire piece at Very Smart Brothas.
The Root aims to foster and advance conversations about issues relevant to the black Diaspora by presenting a variety of opinions from all perspectives, whether or not those opinions are shared by our editorial staff.
Damon Young is the editor-in-chief of VerySmartBrothas.com. He is also a contributing editor at Ebony.com. He lives in Pittsburgh and he really likes pancakes. You can reach him at [email protected].
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