“Religion is Stupid.”

And so am I. And so is vintage technology. 

PRINT PRINT PRIIIIINT!
I’M NEVER GONNA MAAAAKE IIIIIT!!

Every one of my tensed muscles (which is all of my muscles) is dead-set on prying my stupid, overly-revised worksheet from the sinister claws of my clunky school printer. Those papers need to be in my students’ unappreciative hands by the start of sixth period, and I have t-minus 16 minutes until the next group of 37 amped-up 17 year olds are forced to burst into my sardine-can classroom. I’m braced for my daily drain of energy, intellect, and emotion, but I’m not ready with hard-copies of my most recently over-thought assignment.

This explains my anxiety about getting my copies made 16 minutes before class starts. #unreliable #ThisTeacherKeepsRevisingUntilTheLastMinute

But hark! The printer gurgles its song of hope! An angelic choir joins in as I snatch up that hard-earned assignment like some Olympic baton. I race across campus and feed my prize to the photocopier every teacher wants to kill and punch some buttons. I can’t pee for the next 110 minutes, so frantically I fly through the staff lounge to the bathroom and *hope* the machine is busy spitting out 74 double-sided copies (unlike TV teachers, I have more than one class). Flinging open the bathroom door, I mumble “what’s up” to the hideous potato bug under the paper towel machine and bee-line it to the handicap stall–the penthouse suite of the only place a teacher is guaranteed a few seconds of privacy. I wipe with toilet seat covers for the third day in a row, because education funding rocks. I emerge from my dingy yellow-lit oasis, pausing in the doorway and squint into the sun-lit staff lounge and the 10 or so worldly colleagues who regularly occupy it.

Everyday from 12:22-12:57, they discuss politics, current events, and Sportsball. I generally steer clear of that space because everyone knows teachers are supposed to be highly informed and strongly opinionated on anything NPR talks about. And then as a Bay Arean (?), I’m expected to worship the Warriors, Giants, Raiders, or maybe the 49ers (apologies to the A’s❤️). But to my shame, I don’t even know what station NPR lives on, and my hubby and I don’t follow SportsBall. So for lack of knowledge or the courage to admit it, I generally steer clear of staff lounge discourse.

But among that handful of worldly colleagues is Sarah–my energetic, Spanish-teaching, margarita-drinking girrrl–and she’s waving me over to her table. So my stress-induced power-walk derails and I go swerving in her direction, landing in the blue plastic chair next to her. Across from us sits Joe and a few other social teachers.

Joe is the one who thinks religion is stupid. He’s also a legend on our campus. He’s got a Ph.D. from Cal and something like 30 years of teaching experience. That’s just credentials, though. The real impressive thing about Joe is his sharp wit, sagacious spirit, impenetrable confidence and the cool demeanor with which he pulls it all together.

He also pulls together the year’s hottest gossip and scandals in his much anticipated stand-up routine at the end-of-year staff party. He headlines it, every year. So it goes without saying (but I’m saying) that he always receives uproarious laughter from staff and occasional funny-not-funny nods of disapproval from whoever happens to be principal. If teachers had a homecoming court, he would be the senior class king, and I a timid freshman busy getting regular beat-downs from class-clowns who do things like fast-pitch massive spit wads whenever I turn my back. (My first year sucked.)

Sarah and I were laughing about our students’ daily exploits when all of a sudden an ominous silence fell like a blanket over all conversations. Joe seized the opportunity to make an intellectual announcement. Leaning back with his legs extended, feet crossed, and fingers laced loosely across his lap, he authoritatively announced to the room that

“Religion is stupid.”

Uhhhhh–nobody had been talking about religion or philosophy. His claim sounded like a piece of trivia he taught in history class–unquestionably factual. With those six syllables, he dismissed the meaning of life and love and why for people of all cultures of all times in all places.

I wasn’t offended–just shocked. We are educated educators. Surely there is a place for religious studies at the University of California campuses we’d attended. Surely religion is full of nuance, and symbolism, and value, and culture, and the meaning of life–it is arguably the lens through which we view the world, whether we consider ourselves “religious” or not. (For more on that, check out this book.)

In short, the words burst into the lunchroom with all the drama of Kool Aid Man.

Religion is stupid! OOOOH YAAAAAAAH!

And as debris settled into our hair and sad tupperwared leftovers, we all exchanged uneasy glances while Joe basked in the center of attention. Silence pulled up to our table, grabbed my hand, and like some cousin of Scrooge’s Christmas Ghosts, teleported me into some forced metaphor I can’t bring myself to delete:

A vast, arid desert landscape from some classic Western movie stretched before me. In the unending sky, molten oranges and ethereal pinks dripped into the cactus-dotted horizon, forever sealing the events of the day. Beneath the closing heavens rests a rugged workshop, and reclining on its porch with his boots kicked up on a rustic barrel is Joe, savoring the sweet sunset and the deep satisfaction that can only be earned by a hard day’s work. He rises slowly and pensively, claps together his dirty leather gloves, and watches as the day’s work transform into glowing puffs of dust in the romantic twilight.

Done and done. Joe had settled the value (er, lack thereof) of religion, and now that we’re all aware of it its stupidity, he could rest in his satisfaction of important work done well.

“Hey Tiffany, you’re religious, aren’t you?”

Sarah jolted me from my Western daydream and I landed back in the staff lounge. She is blunt and honest, and I’m sort of relieved to be outed: the burden of concocting a respectable yet honest response was no longer mine.

So I start staggering through semantics:

“Wellllllll….
…..I don’t know if I’d say I’m reliiiigous…
…..buuuuuuut I try to follow Jesus…….
…..soooo yaaaaah….you could say I’m Christian.”

There it was. Joe had just handed me my name-tag and I slapped it to my chest:

“Hello, my name is ‘Stupid’!”

Satisfied, his blue eyes narrowed as he coolly sized me up. Behind them, he was brewing a potion of words to build his case that religious people (coughcoughme) are ignorant, irrational, and simple-minded. Without blinking, he looked me square in the eye as he poured his next words out as smooth as jazz:

“God is a black lesbian who rides a unicycle while listening to reggae.”

As he waited for me to take his bait, he couldn’t quite maintain a poker face. I spotted a slight smirk that sneered at the history of ugly reactions he must have reeled in from people “like me.”

And speaking of people like me, aren’t we all guilty? Guilty of generalizing, of building straw men. In the sketchy shadows of our human nature, something lurks that subtly whispers, “I am more human than they are.” It’s like we see our own complex, nuanced humanity through incredibly sharp, 20/20, HD-enhanced vision, but when it comes to accepting the full, complex humanity of others (especially *certain* others), we’re suddenly wearing someone else’s prescription glasses, and all we can see of our brothers and sisters is basic and blurry enough for us to deem them “stupid.”

Joe was waiting for my stupid to come out and play. What was he expecting? An angry glare? Would I tear-up with condescending pity for this poor misled man? Or would my mouth gape in shocked personal offense? Would words fall from my mouth that reveal a distaste for lesbians or female divinity or black people or unicycle riders or reggae?

I met his aged blue eyes and scooted my chair closer to his.

A genuinely intrigued and impressed “Huh!” escaped my lips.

I wasn’t offended–why would I be? His views are just that–his.

And last I checked, God has no ethnicity or sexuality. God is outside of and Beyond all of that.

Plus if Jesus was born in the age of the unicycle to carnival-workers rather than in that manger to Mary and Joseph, he probably would have trained as a unicycler rather than a carpenter. He and his carnie-disciples would have had a heck of an easier time getting around. A herd of 12 unicycling disciples, plus One.

And everybody likes reggae! Why wouldn’t God? I’ll tell you why. Because it’s the devil’s music because weed and stuff. Puh-leeeease.

What else was left for me to say to Joe? Nothing. There was only wonder. In the “fat chance” corner of my brain, I hoped his claim was some bizarre metaphor. Really though, I knew the sad truth that he was just trying to get my goat. Just in case though, I asked him to

“Elaborate.”

But alas, moments passed, and no elaboration came. There wasn’t even a word. He was as speechless as I was to his “religion is stupid.” I did, however, catch a nearly imperceptible nod of approval from him. Then a corner of his mouth grew into the faintest hint of a smile. I like to think that in his mind’s eye, I metamorphosed from a caricature to a beautiful mess of a human being like him.

The bell rang just seconds later. Joe and I, along with our small audience of colleagues, marched out toward sixth period. But first I had to pick up those photocopies. On them, Frederick Douglass chimes in on the words that were briskly exchanged at lunch that day:

the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,–a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,–a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,–and a dark shelter under which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection… For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others. (10.19)

Then in a few days, we’d discover this in Douglass’s Appendix:

“between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference-… I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.” [emphasis mine]

Frederick Douglass knew it. You can’t reduce religion to simple stupidity. It’s not black-and-white. We’re supposed to use the brains God gave us. We’re meant to think critically, not generalize; we’re better humble students than we are proud judges. We’re best when we treat our *others* not as Strawmen, but as the complex masterpieces they are. We are meant to call out hypocrisy just like Jesus and Douglass did. But above all, you and I must remain open to being found by Truth every new day.

Wish I could claim this as my own, but credit goes to Kade Stephan, whose fine work surfaces when googling “jesus unicycle.” oh, the things we google.

Much love to you!

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