deconversion

Today I attended the funeral of a co-worker.   She was a very private, quiet person.   A few months ago she had been diagnosed with an incurable disease, and she fought it with dignity, only retiring when it became impossible for her to work.

I do not know what church she attended, or what her beliefs were; she did not wear her faith on her sleeve like so many.  Therefore I was a bit surprised when her pastor got up to speak.   He never said what denomination he was from, but he made it perfectly clear that heaven and eternal life was a Christian-only club.  It was interesting to see how he tried to tiptoe around the h-word, but finally--there it was out in the open.  All this delivered to a captive audience with no fear of being contradicted, no one to stand up and challenge his premises.  And of course, it all sounds so logical, so reasonable--if you accept the Bible as the sole accurate source of information on history, human nature, etc. and disregard any other sources.   The reason there is death and disease is because Adam defied God and ate the fruit.  You mean there wasn't death before Adam?  What about all the extinctions?  And why do we need to have resurrected bodies in heaven when our spirits are alive there?  What are we going to do with them?  And why does God need to be satisfied with a blood penalty for sin anyway?  I mean, it just doesn't hold up.

But the worst part was when he described how he, along with the rest of her family, was concerned with her soul and repeatedly questioned her as to whether she was saved.  Now, if you knew this person, and I had worked alongside of her for at least a couple of decades, you would understand how insulted I felt at this.  Here she was, in pain, suffering from a terminal illness that is one of the worst there is, a person who never called attention to herself, never asked for pity--and all he can think of to do is to badger her about being saved?   I can just see her fighting back irritation as she replied, "Pastor, I have read the Bible and I have done everything that it tells me to do."  In other words, give it a rest.   I would not have been so polite given the circumstances but being rude was not her way.   If he did not know by that time whether she was "saved", if he could not tell by the way she lived, if he even had to ask that question more than once, then he did not know anything about her at all!   No, I do not know if she was "saved", and I do not care, but I know what she was like as a co-worker, and she certainly deserved better than this jackass speaking for her. 

This whole "come-to-Jesus" bit disturbed me, because it was so unlike the person I had worked alongside for so many years, and of course she is no longer around to say if that was indeed an accurate representation of her faith.  I understand that funerals are meant to comfort those left behind (which is why he danced around the h-word for so long), but must they be a pitch for a particular religion?  I am sure I am not the only one who was uncomfortable.  I just wonder, how do other de-converts deal with these feelings?