Have you ever just shaken your head in disbelief or had to restrain yourself from commenting on Really Bad Theology on Facebook? I know I have, and unfortunately on more than one occasion. It’s really hard to hold it in when you see people expressing stupid platitudes that don’t help the situation or only make things worse.
Here are my top three seen recently:
- God never gives you more than you can handle (personally, I think this one has contributed to more than one personal faith crisis)
- Heaven needed another angel/heaven gained another angel (lousy theology, IMO, and often not that helpful for the bereaved)
- So-and-so is in a better place (this can open up more than one can of worms if the bereaved is struggling or if their relationship with the deceased was troubled)
The first will be dealt with in Part 2, and the last two will be dealt with in Part 3. Here, I’m going to tackle some suggested coping strategies when some of the ideas people express really get you down:
- Pick your battles wisely – some people just express these ideas because someone in their family came out with them and they lack the Scriptural foundation to question them, so debates are likely to get you nowhere. Using the option to hide the status update or tweet in question on your feed will probably save you a lot of frustration.
- Don’t be afraid to invoke the “my news feed, my rules” principle – if you don’t want people posting stuff to your FB timeline or retweeting stuff you find objectionable to you, stand your ground. Let everyone know that if someone posts something to your feed that is offensive, you’re within your rights to delete it.
- Enforce your own boundaries – setting boundaries is always good, but at its most effective when you make it a point to enforce those boundaries. If someone in your life keeps expressing ideas that trouble you on social media and filtering their stuff out isn’t quite working, taking a break from their drama might be in order.
What it comes down to is that we can’t control others’ beliefs (and indeed, we shouldn’t try), but we can control whether toxic beliefs of theirs become a source of annoyance.
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