Would this have sounded even worse in a religious context,or not?

Great Debates
1

Okay, so I’m really wondering what people think about this, and I would like the debate about it to be nice and civil, not icky, but who knows. So here goes.

I was calling all my coworkers to find someone who would take my shift a week from that day, because my doctor’s office called and said that I was scheduled for X-rays on Friday. I’d had to call 911 and go to the emergency room for what turned out to be kidney stones. (Not fun!) I was talking to one coworker, we’ll call her “Heather”, and she wanted to hear more because she’d been told by her doctor that she might be at risk for kidney stones. I told her that the only reason I wouldn’t say it was the worst pain I’d ever experienced was because I’d been in a car accident where I broke almost every bone, was in the hospital for months, 10 operations, years of rehab, etc. (I wasn’t driving.)

Well, Heather came out with “I wonder how you’ve managed to attract all these negative things to yourself.”

Now, you have to understand that I’m a licensed massage therapist and I work in a facility which provides therapeutic massage. Massage therapists tend to believe in a number of new-agey things such as “the law of attraction.” I’m one of the less new-agey massage therapists on the planet by far, but most do believe in that. I didn’t say anything to Heather at the time, but after I hung up, I mainly thought three things:

1.) What an awful thing to say!!
2.) I KNOW why those two things happened-- a stupid person was driving the car, and I take an epilepsy medication that’s pretty well known for causing kidney stones.

3.) Would that comment have been less or more likely to have been made if it had put in a religious context?
I have wondered about that. For instance,

“What a terrible sinner you must be! I wonder why God is striking you down with such horrible punishments? You’d better figure out what kind of sins you’re committing right now.”

It just seems like nobody would actually dare to say this to anyone else!! But if put in terms of “the law of attraction”, well, then it doesn’t sound so bad. But it’s really the same thing, IMHO. Now, understand that I’m not grinding any religious axes here, but it just seems to me that the same comment is getting a free pass because it’s NOT put in a religious context. Honestly, I’m not sure. What does everyone else think?

2

Yeah, that does sound kind of obnoxious. Even if she didn’t mean anything by it, it’s an odd way to phrase something that you had no control over. Something like, “You’ve had a hard year/time of it!” would probably be less stinging. It kind of makes me think of the whole “Secret” mentality where if you think positive good things happen which implies that if bad things happen it’s also your fault. Just overall, weird way of thinking because how is a car accident where someone else was driving remotely something you attracted?

3

I have gotten it both the bible thumping sinner way, and the new agey foofy bad vibe attractor way, and to me both are actually offensive …

The bible thumpy way pisses me off because firstly while i am not actively ‘christian’ i was raised baptist, and I actually do tend to be fairly ‘christian’ [golden rule typifies it] to people. Anybody who knows me will attest to how ‘good’ I am. I literally have done nothing other than not pounding a bible at people and locking my mind into their specific cultish beliefs. WHy the fuck should their diety [or infact any diety] have it in for me … :confused:

And new agey bullshit … again, i have good karma in my actions towards people. I must have freaking been hitler previously to get my health issues … and I refuse to believe that shit. I am me, I was born ME, and I will die me. If something came from some other spirit, and goes to another spirit, it is not ME. I am not responsible for ever having been anybody else, and I will not be responsible for becoming someone else after I croak. The me-ness will be gone.

Now my body has issues, they exist because of other health issues, and I am sorry, I can not ascribe diabetes, or hyperparthyroidism, or hypercalcemia or anything else that helped create the CPPD issues, or the other health issues I have to anything spiritual, shaking a rattle and burning sage will not do jack shit to my health. Not to say that placebo effects wouldnt work, but that is entirely different and scientifically demonstrated.

Crap is not like a kitten, able to be attracted or repelled … it happens due to outside action [the crappy driver] or genetic issues epilepsy requireing a med that is known for causing kidney stones] or self generated accidents [I am a klutz, breaking a toe slamming my foot into a chair leg has jack shit to do with spirits, other than the one time the spirits in question were about 90 proof …]

4

Well, if by “religious context” you mean Christian, I think it sounds pretty nasty and frankly against most mainstream Christian doctrine, according to my understanding of things. But if you extend “religion” to Buddhism, where the sentiments you described are perfectly in line with mainstream thinking, it’ll get a free pass because the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere are such spiritual guys, ya know?

5

As a Christian I do believe bad things happen to good people. So I would discount anyone who would insist that if you are having problems it must be because you are sinnig.

I will say that sin can cause bad things to happen. Example if you drink or do drugs and drive. But not all bad things are the results of sin.

6

At the risk of providing an explanation that would kill the discussion, (as if!), I’d have thought that “Heather” simply meant that your number of traumas was high and it was curious. I would not have expected her to actually believe that you were doing something to invoke Karmic retribution.

(Had her question been phrased, “Why have you been sinning to get God so mad at you?”, it would have been obnoxious, of course, unless it had been spoken in jest.)

7

The word “attract” is indicative of “The Secret” and all the attendant nonsense that goes along with it. It may still not have been intended with that connotation, but it’s an unusual word to use to refer to bad luck, and it’s quite common among new-agey types right now. I think it would be fair to ask for clarification before getting offended, but the word “attract” is kind of a buzzword.

8

But using New Agey buzzwords only indicates that the speaker is familiar with the idiom, not that the question is inherently indicative of a deep belief. I know lots of folks who say “Thank God,” or even “God got ya for that” who don’t think God had anything to do with a situation–it is just part of their bag of rhetorical cliches.

9

I didn’t ask what "Heather"meant exactly, and I don’t think I ever will, because I don’t like conflict. If she ever asks me more about it in that context, i.e, “so, how exactly did you attract all those awful things?” (which could very well happen, I suppose), I could tell her that it might be because of all those sacrifices to Satan. :slight_smile: No, probably not… I really don’t like conflict at all…

A lot of LMT’s believe some… interesting stuff. Once “Bob” (another coworker) gets started on the pyramid on the back of the dollar bill, the Illuminati, the seven spikes on the crown of the Statue of Liberty, the French, the measurements of the Pyramid of Cheops, what happens to you if you stand IN the Pyramid of Cheops and the kind of headaches you get, the demons he saw by the bed last night… well, you know it’s going to be an interesting shift!

10

It sounds like Heather has been watching Oprah. Oprah changes the word “God” to the word “Universe” and her viewers think she’s not preaching religion. I did crisis intervention counseling for a few years, and we were taught never to tell a person that they “should” do something. We learned a couple of dozen ways to say exactly the same thing, but without using the word “should.”

New-agey people are indistinguishable from a lot of religious people. They just use different words.

11

Heather *did *say it in a religious context. The idea that you can “attract” negative things to yourself is a religious belief, just not neccesarily mainstream. Next time you should ask her what attracts her to be an insensitive asshole.

12

Agreed. This “Heather” person revealed far more about herself in that statement than she could ever reveal about you.

It’s been quite interesting to me to hear the various comments made to me as my disability has progressed (MS). There have been several people that have suggested the “attraction” idea. The implication from all of my fundie mother’s “prayer warrior” friends, in the unsolicited emails they’ve sent me, has been not so much that I sinned, but that I need to “devote myself to prayer and developing my personal relationship with Jesus Christ” (they’ve also added me to their prayer chains or whatever they’re called). One person brought me something printed off the internet to inform me that I have MS because I drink Diet Coke (aspertame causes pretty much everything, apparently). I’m a member of a “program”, and a couple of other members have implied that, if I worked my program better, I would get better. One of them even reacted to seeing me in my chair for the first time by saying, “Get up out of that chair and work your program!” And lots of people tell me about their mother’s best friend’s cousin’s son, who had MS and “didn’t let it get him down,” “kept fighting it,” and “is all or mostly better now.”

In the beginning, I felt hurt, as though most of these people were trying to find ways to make my disease and disability my fault. But as I begin to recognize a common pattern in all these folks (besides a bit of ignorance and insensitivity), I had a sudden insight that many of these various belief systems are simply attempts to believe that we have the power to protect ourselves from unexpected harm, or at least the power to “heal” ourselves. I realized that all of these people, in their own ways, were expressing compassion to me. None of them want to see me sick, they all want to see me get better, and they are all trying to offer some tip or trick or magic spell to help me do so. And those same beliefs mebbe make them feel that, since they don’t have MS, mebbe they’re doing something right. I understand that we all have fear, and we all cope with it in various ways.

For the most part, I now respond to these types of comments with “that’s interesting” or “thank you for your prayers” or whatever. And, unless someone is being really obnoxious or won’t let it go, I just focus on appreciating their good wishes and feel a little amused at their…you know, human foolishness.

Ah, humans. We’s all of us crazy.

13

Well, what I usually do is… to never say anything like that, because I hate conflict so much. OTOH, after reading Maia’s story, I think I know what would eventuallyhappen if I were in that position. I would be nice, think “bless your heart”, listen to more of the insanity, be even nicer, nice-y, nicer-y,nicest,and then… THEN… the EXPLOSION!!! It would not be pretty…

Anyway, the funny part, which I only thought of later, is that it actually could be said that the car accident and kidney stones (which occasioned the original comment) are casually linked anyway. The KS’s are linked to taking Topamax for epilepsy, which, for me, was caused by the car accident (it was the windshield through the head, you see.) So the “how did you attract this to yourself” question doesn’t even make any sense to begin with!! I know EXACTLY why it happened! But you know, I’m not sure it would really make any difference even if I did just tell her that.

14

Well, to be fair to my gal Oprah, she didn’t really make up the idea of calling the Universe ‘god’ or vice versa, right? I mean, didn’t Einstein* believe something similar?

Not that I am on board with Oprah’s nonsense. But, who are we kidding, I do loves me some Oprah.
*Well, Einstein and countless other cultures and peoples, I guess.

15

I’m in agreement that the statement is already religious in context, although the phrasing may be more typical of someone who says “spiritual, but not religious”.

It boils down to Blaming the Victim. As pointed out above, it’s a way for a person to maintain the illusion of control, of being able to prevent “bad stuff”, by distancing themselves from someone who has experienced that “bad stuff”. It’s insidious, and someone who says it is not necessarily expressing (an immature, poorly-realized) compassion. Some people get off on that kind of power trip, made all the more rich by getting a room full of people to repeat the sentiment in a haze of self-congratulatory self-righteousness.

I will note that, just as there are Christians who recognize that bad things happen to good people (maybe even more often, as a test of faith), and Buddhists who understand karma in a way that is closer to what we would call “cause and effect” than some sort of divine comeuppance, there are New Agers who are aware enough to argue against the Blaming the Victim when it comes to discussing the Law of Attraction.

This subject is a pet peeve of mine. I’ll be reading this thread for more tips on ways to deal with people who say such things.

16

Not in the sense that the universe has an active interest in humanity.

17

Agreed!

18

I know a lady who lost her hair to chemotherapy, and another “lady” said to her: “I wonder if God allowed all your hair to fall out because you were too vain?”

19

I’d guess that your co-worker does watch Oprah. What she said sounds exactly like The Secret, which as pointed out above, is simply magical thinking indistinguishable from any other religion. I prefer a quote from the TV show Babylon 5:

You might want to try quoting that back to your co-worker, who has surely had at least a few bad things happen to her in her lifetime.

20

Heh. Whenever someone I know gets one of those one-after-another crapstorms and is moaning about how many bad things have rained down upon them, I always think, “What, did you rape babies in a past life or something?” (It’s the worst thing I can think of.)

:eek:

That’s horrible.