hum-de-dum

a few weeks ago, my mom asked us all to gather in their room and pray for my dad. i told a friend back then that it didn't have the effect my mom wanted. i thought we were all just too restricted by shame and awkwardness to pray with sincerity.

tonight, before praying, my dad decided to give us all a speech on how he accepted God into his life. with bad english at that (just to poke a little humor where it shouldn't be, and just to lighten up this post for the people reading, he graduated from lasalle). he told us that he and my mom made a decision that our family will start to live by the code of Christianity. he told us all about doing good and not being selfish and doing everything in His name.

i found that my dad, even having experienced everything that he has, generally has a grade school student's point of view of God. in other words, as long as you do good, He will spare you from all that is not good. even though he gave reasons as to why he got cancer, he never mentioned his smoking. not once. he said he was selfish because all he thought about back then was earning enough money to support his family and that maybe he wasn't a good enough provider so God decided to give him this.

the whole time he was talking, i was only half-listening. my other half just wanted to tell him he got cancer not because he wasn't a good enough provider but because he smoked his way to it. doing good is not the basis for getting sick, taking care of yourself is. there is always a "tangible" explanation for people getting sick. maybe it's all about the genes, the environment they are constantly exposed to, the things they eat/drink, a biological anomaly or whatever. it's always something.

psychologically speaking, i believe my dad just doesn't want to admit that this is all an effect of his smoking.

PS i am thankful that at least, he's turned christian now. i didn't even know what religion he had before.