Last night on the news I was listening to two former professional surfers talking about what a great guy Andy Irons was. (Just as an aside, Wikipedia are amazing...they have already updated their entry with information about his death early yesterday).
Chris has work colleagues who are involved with the world of professional surfing and while there is now much grief at Andy's unexpected death and in many ways he may have been a great guy, he is also guilty (as we all are) of making some dubious lifestyle choices.
A few years ago, the Chaser guys wrote a song called The Eulogy Song, famous for the chorus line "everyone's a top bloke after death." I won't link to the song because it contains large amounts of bad language but at the time it generated much controversy because it was said to be offensive to the families of the people mentioned in it. Definitely it was, and it's not really a good song for Christians to listen to, but like a lot of the Chaser's work, there was a ring of truth in it also.
Why can't we just be honest and say that these people were like all of us, not at all perfect and saintly, just sinful?
2 comments:
Or alternatively, is this one of the last places in society when we choose only to see the positives and speak about them? I think society seems to feel they can openly criticise everything..often through slightly safe distances such as the internet. In death we choose to only relate the good things about someone...is this so bad?? I only find this incongruous when the person speaking has been an open critic or hater of the deceased...
But in saying this, people do go too far.... :-)
Yes, a good point about society feeling they can criticize everything...and places like blogs and internet forums may feel like they create a safe distance (but not always as I discovered earlier this week...). I did actually hesitate for a while before putting this out there.
I suppose that talking up the positives of people's lives after they've died makes up for the fact that in cases where the person wasn't a Christian, there isn't an eternal future for those left behind to talk about after this life ends. One thing I love about Christian funerals is that while the person's earthly life is certainly reflected on, the main focus is (as it should be) on eternity and the joy of being in heaven with Christ.
I just think some realism is needed. Perhaps not to the extreme the Chaser went to, but an acknowledgement of the fact that no one is perfect no matter what they've achieved in this world...
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