Lynda Chendelin Fell, a contributor for The Blaze, has written an open letter to American evangelist Joel Osteen, asking him to apologise for being insensitive to millions of people who are dealing with grief and calling him out on his "grief illiteracy."
"I forgive you," Fell began her letter. "More specifically, I forgive you your trespasses against me and millions of others. For you have been led into temptation to judge something you have never experienced, and throw those who have to the lions."
According to Fell, Osteen described grieving people in his book "Your Best Life Now" as thriving on self-pity and relishing the attention it brings. She said nothing could be further from the truth.
Like Osteen, many people actually believe that people should only mourn for a couple of months, Fell said. Thus, "well-meaning family and friends walk away, quit coming, quit calling, and start avoiding the bereaved because of the notion that mourning is only acceptable for a mere few months," she said.
But the grieving process has not even begun when the meals stop coming and the last visitor leaves, said Fell, since the pain of losing a loved one is so intense that normal everyday activities such as eating, bathing, and dressing become too difficult to bear, and the medications they receive only helps a little, if at all.
"Shame on you, Pastor Osteen, for lecturing us to shake off the self-pity, change the channel, and dwell on the good things God has done in our life. To ignore the suffering victim who suddenly had his right arm severed would be cruel. To instruct him to look past the agony and instead focus on his remaining left arm is devastatingly ignorant," she said.
Every person deals with loss in a different way, she said, so she asked Osteen to stop depicting those in mourning as people thriving in self-pity.
"The barrage of protests against you over recent weeks for your illiterate depictions of the bereaved is unfortunately well earned. Some have demanded an apology, but I forgive you your trespasses against me and millions of others. I forgive you for judging something you have never experienced, for you are human, too. But repeatedly throwing the wounded to the lions is truly ignorant," she said.
