"It’s about respecting the deceased. It’s not a hard concept to grasp."
It's not, but it's also myopic and performative to just post nothing but the good about someone with a pretty problematic set of ideals and values. I get it, the dude seemed to put forth a concerted effort to be seen as the "good type" of Christian. He usually says this at his concerts (I know, I went to one a few years ago):
“This world surrounds us with a message that we’ll never be good enough, we’ll never be strong enough, we’ll never be beautiful enough, we’ll never be rich enough. My friends, I just want to take a second to tell you, that’s an absolute lie. You are loved. You are enough, and you will win. Not only can you win, but you will win. You’ll always be enough for one reason: and that’s because Jesus Christ loves you.”
Beautiful and well-meaning. But tell me how you reconcile that with people he shared the stage with and how do you reconcile that message when the band gladly played at Trump's inauguration, fully knowing that Trump is the antithesis of all Brad Arnold claims to care about. That dissonance doesn't sit well with many people. But to suggest that when a person dies it constitutes a resetting of their character or demands that we suddenly view their contradictory nature through a more empathic lens is fucking bullshit, full stop. Dude was well-meaning, but people have every right to be sad over the circumstances (cancer fucking sucks) and not the person.
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"Beautiful and well-meaning. But tell me how you reconcile that with people he shared the stage with and how do you reconcile that message when the band gladly played at Trump's inauguration, fully knowing that Trump is the antithesis of all Brad Arnold claims to care about. That dissonance doesn't sit well with many people. But to suggest that when a person dies it constitutes a resetting of their character or demands that we suddenly view their contradictory nature through a more empathic lens is fucking bullshit, full stop. Dude was well-meaning, but people have every right to be sad over the circumstances (cancer fucking sucks) and not the person."
Honestly I wasn't gonna touch this thread again but your paragraph here resonated with me. That dissonance that you mentioned is something that I have seen in lots of people close to me and it's hard to reconcile. A lot of days I struggle to figure out how to treat people that embody that dichotomy, because if I truly believe what I claim to believe then my kindness should overpower and outperform my distaste. I think the problem is that people have so closely intertwined their politics with their religion that they can't see the immense hypocrisy.
Edit to add: You're right, glossing over what someone has done and how they treated others just because they died tragically is not necessarily the right thing to do. I just think that we the living don't have to be super shitty about it either--hence my original call-out of that other user earlier in this thread. It's a delicate balance and hard to nuance.
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