I do not have religious faith. This wasn’t such a big deal until I was diagnosed with MS in the summer of 2006, when I went online to find other people dealing with this condition. There is a lot of helpful info out there, no doubt about it. And there are thriving support communities, but they have a common thread: they invoke religious faith as a tool for dealing with one’s illness, and they say that the illness is part of God’s plan.
The first part of that equation doesn’t trouble me; if your faith helps you, have at it. It’s great that you’ve got a system that makes you feel better. It’s the second part that I find troubling. I saw this sentiment expressed a lot: “God only gives me what I can handle.” Or this one: “This illness is part of God’s plan for me.” That sentiment just doesn’t work for me. I find it creepy and troubling to think that there’s an omnipotent being out there who gave me this illness. Why would he do that? It’s rather assholish of him, isn’t it? I’m not willing to accept that this is the plan, sent down from on high with holy fingerprints all over it. It seems much more likely to me that genetics and bad luck are to blame for my chronic condition.
So that’s why I’m here. I’d like to talk about chronic illness with other people who won’t invoke the Celestial Overlord when discussing MS or other conditions. Pain has made me less patient than I used to be, and I just can’t handle any more talk about how Jesus will save me. Let’s talk about science, and treatments, and disability, and medications. These things are real, they are important, and they affect our well-being. Let’s talk reality.
I do not have a chronic illness, fortunately, but I have friends who do. I’m also a budding atheist (I think) and have never believed for one minute that God caused anything bad that happened to someone, or that “God never gives us more than we can handle.” I’ll be checking in here once in a while because I’m interested in hearing your perspective!
Thanks Julie! I hope to have lots more content up within the next week or so. Typing is tricky for me, but my hunt-and-peck system is getting faster with practice!
Thank you for this blog! I can relate to the lack of faith, but so far, that lack hasn’t felt like a loss at all to me, since I suspect I’ve always been all “show me the money.” Except in my case, “money” is “proof of some all-encompassing all-knowing Q-like being who gives a shit about us and our petty and not so petty humanity problems.”
My mother has a neurological disorder that involves chronic pain, though she’s not immunosuppressed (sp? Firefox gives me no help). In the last few years she’s reached out to church, saying she’s always been a person of faith, but I don’t remember her being that way while I was growing up, and it seems more to me like grasping at straws in the face of a terribly difficult, but essentially human, situation. I simply can’t relate to the deep desire for that rope to hold onto, because, hello? Invisible and in fact non-existent rope!
Perhaps reading your blog can possibly help me understand what she’s going through physically, if not mentally.