Accentuate the positive…

Pastor Brad just told me to highlight the positive experiences in my life, I responded with "positive is boring". I was being my normal cynical self, perhaps I should have taken it as a warning…

A returned to my office to find an email from another Christian Friend pointing me to yet another “No Atheist in foxholes” BS joke. The Atheist and The Bear is a joke of sorts told at the expense of Atheists. It is not very funny. The basic premise of this and other such jokes is that all atheists convert when faced with their eminent mortality. This assumption is of course, completely wrong. Let me tell you why…

I was misdiagnosed with a terminal illness a few years ago. The doctor actually set down and said, put your affairs in order, you may not have long to live. This was followed up by a second doctor, who, if anything, overemphasized my pending death. Needless to say, I was scared. Despite their dire predictions, I did not become spiritual – I focused on fighting for what life I had left. God never entered the equation.

After a few weeks and many tests the doctors figured out my lab samples got switched with somebody else and that I had had some odd readings because of an infection. Some other poor sap was going to die. I got a clean bill of health & three years of follow-up blood tests.

Jokes like The Atheist and The Bear are not funny. The dehumanize those of us who choose to live without a god and help perpetuate negative stereotypes. I find it hard to accentuate the positive while a bear is trying to eat my liver.