A letter to my high school English teacher

[Note: This is a letter for my high school English teacher, but I can't find an easy way to get in contact with her. If I could, I would have sent this to her, first. Some parts are cut for the sake of politeness; at other points, I provide extra context for readers who are not my high school English teacher.]

I am at the beach for the weekend; I have gone "downy ocean" as you would have said in your lesson on dialect. In addition to the library books I'm reading, I wanted to bring an old, small paperback work of fiction that would be safe to read on the beach; I brought One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's pretty good. There are a lot of elements of the story that I wouldn't have noticed or appreciated if I hadn't taken your ninth grade honors English class. I hated that class.

[…]

In the first week of school, you made us take qualifying exams so that we could decide if we wanted to stay in your class. You graded harshly. When I complained of having gotten a D, a 66, on the first exam, a lot of my classmates told me that I shouldn't; I had gotten a very high grade, relatively. About half of the class quit and went to the next-easiest English class. Those of us who stayed were apprehensive.

[…]

After reading Of Mice and Men, we had to write essays about the book. [If you have not read it, at the end of Of Mice and Men, the main character, George, kills his best friend, Lennie, rather than have Lennie die at the hands of a mob. When I read it, I thought it was the saddest, most pointless ending to any book I had read.] I wrote that I didn't like it because I'm a Christian, and so I believe that God works everything out in the end. We have a hope for heaven, where things will be as they ought to be. Stories ought to end with a positive resolution. I didn't like Of Mice and Men because it didn't mean anything to me, I didn't learn anything from it; I didn't see any virtue rewarded in it, and it didn't entertain me. I forget what you said about that essay, but I remember getting a bad grade on it. I think it was around then that I tried to get out of your class, to join the regular English class, but it was already filled with students who had previously left your class.

I remember when you gave us assignments on "situational ethics"—my words, not yours. We had to consider various bizarre situations: ten people in a cave, with a fat man blocking the exit, or people on a lifeboat deciding who to eat first, or a person standing at a track switch as a trolly approached, with the trolley about to run someone over or to go off a cliff, depending on how the track switch was thrown. We had to write essays in which we considered possible choices in these scenarios and whether they're right or wrong: is it acceptable for the spelunkers to blow up the fat man with a stick of dynamite, so that they could escape? I thought, at the time, that you were trying to undermine my belief in a God with a set of absolute laws, and that you were trying to make me into a moral relativist. Maybe you were.

When considering whether throwing the track switch is right or wrong, everyone ought to be able to provide a better justification for their decision than "because God says so" or "because it's right". Everyone needs to be able to apply moral reasoning to difficult problems. As I recall, my answer to my ethical dilemma is that if one had faith, God would intervene to resolve the scene.

It's not right for a public school teacher to impose beliefs on students, or to undermine their spirituality, and you certainly did this at times. Regardless, I'm glad you made me write essays about ethics. When I stopped thinking that God exists, I needed a way to figure out how to live a good and meaningful life. Those assignments helped me think about meaning and morality on real, human terms. You did more than any other teacher I have had, in public grade school, or all through college, to prepare me for life as a non-believer.

One time, you criticized a student for starting an essay with "I feel". You made it clear to all of us that starting an essay with "I think", "I feel", or "I believe" is immediate justification for an F; our personal beliefs don't matter as much as whether we can explain them and defend them. I am prone to starting essays with "I think" to relativize what I'm writing, out of some fear of being wrong. Whenever I'm tempted to write "I think" I remember your rule and I find another way to phrase my text.

In reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I've been paying attention to how Miss Ratched, "Big Nurse", a woman, is at the top of the social structure of the ward, then the other nurses, then the black orderlies; the white male patients are at the bottom; in the ward, mental illness is more significant than race or gender in determining class. Chief Bromden is an unreliable narrator; Kesey uses Bromden's narration to emphasize that all stories are perspectival. Bromden's fear of the Combine, the personification of machines and social systems, is a dominant theme. (I've only read fifty pages of the book so far.)

When I was taking your class, I asked why we had to study literature. I understood that reading and writing are important, but I wasn't expecting understanding literature to be part of my job, in the same way that math and science would be.

I don't think anymore that God exists. I used to think that he could define meaning, he would tell stories that we fit into. As I passed through doubt, I read apologetics, then Christian philosophy, Kierkegaard, trying to make sense of God. I read secular philosophers, trying to find a solid, objective purpose in life. The philosophers that I look to now don't write dense logical prose like Hegel, they tell stories. I read fiction because it lets me practice understanding the world and deciding how I want to live in it. And, I don't just read fiction that's supposed to mean something big, I'm reading fiction for fun; fun matters.

After I finished the school year in which I took your class, I spoke ill of you to other people, calling you mean and crazy. I am sorry for that; please forgive me. I could bring up other grievances about that class, but I won't. You challenged me, you made me think. I don't think this was part of your job, but you made me question my beliefs, and I'm glad, now, that I had that practice.

-Alex

Or else, what?

I remember one time I was walking across campus with a friend, we were having a chat about what it would be like to be an atheist. As we turned a corner around the fountain, I said that I'd commit suicide; my friend agreed that he probably would, too, either that, or he'd be an unrestrained hedonist.

A few years later, I was starting to doubt earnestly. Doubt didn't sound, in my head, like I would have expected it to. In the Commons, by Pete's Arena, the crappy pizza place, I ran into a friend, and he asked me how I was doing. Always loath to give a one-word answer to any question, I said, "I think that I'm becoming an atheist." We chatted a little, then I said, "Well, I'm going to go burn down a church or something," and we laughed a little. And I guess that was funny because it wasn't true, I didn't want to burn down a church, but I didn't know how I was supposed to feel. After that I got supper.

---

We could go about knowing whether God exists by looking at common knowledge, or reason, or history, or spiritual experiences, or science, or some combination of these; these are all information. Regardless of the personal consequences of believing that God exists, say, salvation or damnation, these ideas about what my belief or non-belief would bring me aren't evidence about whether God is real.

Non-belief carries the threat of another sort of damnation, a death of the mind, in which my capacity to know God could by shut off by my doubting, my perceptions would be confused, maybe my heart would be hardened, as was Pharaoh's in Exodus. Or, maybe my doubts were dishonest in the first place, because I didn't want to submit to God's rules, or tradition, or to the idea of a spiritual entity bigger than people. Any of these might be the case, but there is no way to account for them in my thought process.

Apologists like Ravi Zacharias insist that we can't have a real morality without God, so it is imperative that we believe in God. Even if the nonexistence of God meant moral nihilism, that's no evidence that God is real. Presuppositional thinkers like Cornelius Van Til, Gordon Haddon Clark, and Francis Schaeffer insist that any worldview that doesn't presume the truth of the Bible and the existence of a triune God, any such worldview would be either inconsistent or futile. Schaeffer said, "If the unsaved man was consistent he would be an atheist in religion, an irrationalist in philosophy (including a complete uncertainty concerning 'natural laws'), and completely a-moral in the widest sense." Even if Schaeffer were correct about the implications of a non-Christian worldview, that wouldn't mean that it's logical to presume that God exists; it's not logical to assume that God exists just for the sake of making one's system of thought work smoothly. These arguments don't persuade non-Christians, they only make religious people more stubbornly religious.

I'm not unique in having confusions about God; knowing God is difficult for all human beings. There isn't a majority opinion, among humans, about what God is like. No matter who you are, most humans disagree with you about most important things about God: clearly, human beings aren't consistently good at knowing God. Maybe our minds are too small to comprehend God. Maybe God can only be known on his own terms, when he sends a sign or when he opens one's heart to receive him. There are many ways to impugn human perceptions of God. When figuring out whether God exists, threat of damnation, hope for salvation, suspicion of one's own cognition, none of these are evidence about God, regardless of how they weigh on one's mind.

Maybe doubt is a sin. However, the rule, "Believe in God, or else!" is meaningless without something following the "or else!" If God doesn't exist, there is no punishment for doubt. If God does exist, but would punish people for doubting that he does exist, this punishment would be unjust.

If doubt is a sin, I couldn't know if God exists. I might refrain from considering whether God might not be real; I might not pick up books by atheists, I might avoid non-believing friends, or at least, avoid listening to them with the idea that I might want to agree with them. I would avoid asking questions like, "What would the universe be like if God wasn't real?" or "If God disappeared all of a sudden, how would we notice?", or I might ask those questions, and be satisfied with weak answers. I might make my mind an aluminum-foil-lined house, impervious to secular influence, yet there would be a voice between my ears that would ask me if I knew that God is real, or if I was just too afraid to ask. I would sit in a rocking chair in this house, wondering if I knew that God is real, but afraid that I lied to myself saying that he is.

To this idea of, "Believe in God, or else!" it is sensible to respond, "Or else, what?" If God isn't real, there is no loss. If God is real and loving and good and worth having over for tea, God wouldn't punish me for doubting.

So, there's this distinction between evidence that God exists, and feelings and hopes and fears that one has about the idea of God, and this distinction is relevant, logically. Disentangling these two categories is slow, painful, and difficult, though.

The idea that God is infinite makes thinking about God a quagmire, because one can't be unbiased. I want an iPad, and I saw that I can enter a drawing to get one. It would be so useful, I could read articles on it, I wouldn't have to print things out on paper, I probably print about a hundred pages a week. There's a neat game where you tilt the iPad and a marble rolls around on it past obstacles. I was thinking about which carrying case I should get for the iPad when I realized that the odds of me winning the iPad are very low. Anyway, I was afraid that, if God didn't exist, there would be no way to have meaning or morality in life, everything would feel hollow. If God were real, experiencing his perfect love would be worth forgoing everything else. I wanted to believe in God so much that I was afraid that God isn't real and that I'm just biased to think that he is.

---

I recently had to buy a car. I didn't have any special knowledge on how to buy a car. There are a lot of uncertainties when buying a car, like how safe it is, how much it will cost to repair it when it breaks down, and how likely it is to break down, and how long it will last before it breaks down completely and must be scrapped. These are probably the most important things about a car, but I don't know how to know them, so I picked out my car based on price and how good its cup holders are and whether I can plug my iPod into it.

---

I can't think of any story in the Bible that rides on a person's belief or non-belief that God exists; what matters is how people deal with God, whether they want to be on his team. When the Israelites approached Jericho, the people of Jericho were not atheists. The people of Jericho were afraid precisely because they thought that the God of the Israelites does exist‚ and would destroy them like Og and Sihon of the Amorites. Rahab was different from everyone else in Jericho, not because she believed that God exists, but because she believed in him, she put her trust in him, she wanted to join his side, and she was rewarded for this faith.

In the Bible, the word "believe" is used in two ways, meaning either to suppose as true, or to rely and trust upon. In "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household" (Acts 16:31) "believe" means rely on. James makes it clear that these two meanings are distinct, "You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder." (James 2:19). Thinking that God is real isn't what saves one, so mere doubt can't damn one, either. The people of Nazareth doubt Jesus (e.g., Mark 6:1-6), they have no faith, but this isn't a show of equanimous non-belief, "they took offense at him" because "prophets are not without honor, except in their home town". Similarly, the Pharisees seem to doubt Jesus, but they're not intellectually considering him, they're casting aspersions on him because he's a threat to their power structure.

Yet, religious people treat honest doubt like it's a sickness or a problem or a sin; this does more to ensure conformity among believers than to reassure doubters.

---

I was compulsively ruminating on contradictory ideas, that non-belief in God is empty and void, and that belief in God is a desperate fantasy. This psychological tension didn't enlighten me about God. I decided to live in a way that would be as meaningful as possible if God isn't real, and in a way that would let me find and relate to God if God is real. When I didn't think that God exists, I still tried to have faith in him, to rely on him, and not myself. By trying to minimize the consequences of my vacillating belief that God exists, I was able to think a little more clearly. Was God hiding from me because I was sinful? Was I mistaken about God not existing? How could I have meaning? How could I know what is right to do? I still had questions like these; even though I knew they didn't show me God, I anguished over them.

---

Appendix

A previous post, The God I want to believe in, has some ideas related to this essay.

"I want God to be real, and I want to relate to him. I look for God carefully, but I don't see him. Not at all that I think that I'm saved by any of my own virtues, but if God would damn me for not believing that he exists when that's not what I have honestly seen or experienced, I don't find that God to be worth bothering with."

---

There is another important meaning that the phrase "Or else, what?" has for me. Normative statements, statements about what ought to be, rules of morality, for example, are meaningless on their own. "You shouldn't paint graffiti on the overpass." isn't meaningful;

• "You shouldn't paint graffiti on the overpass, or else people will become sad from the ugliness of the overpass."
• "You shouldn't paint graffiti on the overpass, or else God will be angry at you."
• "You shouldn't paint graffiti on the overpass, or else you'll regret it later."
• "You shouldn't paint graffiti on the overpass, or else you might get arrested."

are meaningful statements. Thinking about norms, things like values and morality and purpose and meaning, by posing them this way, has been helpful for me as I've tried to make decisions as a non-theist.

All-nighter

I figured I should probably get a haircut and buy a cell phone to treat my problems with anxiety. At that point in my life, I had long hair, down past my shoulders. It was named Rodolfo. I hadn't cut it since the start of the summer I spent in Philadelphia, teaching kids to eat vegetables, this was a novel idea to them. I suppose that I had grown the long hair to make a statement, but I still don't know what that statement was supposed to be. I think it looked like the sort of hair that someone who cared about social justice might have, and I wanted to care about social justice.

I didn't own a cell phone because of a story my dad tells. He talks about how, back when people wrote with quill pens, a writer would have to take a break at the end of writing a line to dip the pen in an inkwell. During this little break, just a fraction of a second of not-writing, the writer would have rest. Ever since we started using ball-point pens we would just keep writing, and we lost that little bit of rest. It used to be that you had a break in dealing with someone as you waited for your letter to get to them and theirs to get to you, and telegraphs took that break away. You could have a break from answering the phone if you were away from home, until cell phones were invented. Now, people are expected to be available, on the phone, at all times. I would tell this story whenever I would explain why I didn't have a cell phone.

It's a nice story to tell while at a party or while driving around with a friend, it's a meaningful story about how technology changes our lives.

I was feeling anxious, I had had problems with anxiety for almost a year, so I looked up anxiety about Wikipedia and I found a related article about existential angst and decided that that's what was bothering me: I was overwhelmed with how to be defined, how to have an identity. I realized that I was telling the story about the cell phones and quill pens not because I didn't want a cell phone, but because I liked telling the story. Actually, I didn't even like the story that much, but I was afraid that if I got a cell phone, everyone that I had told the story to would think I'm inauthentic, which is a big word for fake.

My hair, Rodolfo, got a lot of attention, and I was afraid that if I cut it, people might not recognize me. I mean, my friends would be able to tell that it's still me, by my prominent nose and well-defined cheekbones, I wasn't afraid that I'd walk in the door and people wouldn't know that I'm Alex; I was afraid that people would stop giving me the extra attention for having my friend, Rodolfo, living on top of my head.

Not only that, but a couple of people had given me negative comments about Rodolfo, saying that he was unkempt, which he was. I didn't want to keep the hair, it was a big tangled mat but I didn't want to admit that I didn't actually like my long hair anymore.

Previously, I had been in a Bible study with Rodolfo's most ardent critic, Alan; we were studying faith. I complained that I didn't feel like I knew how to make friends with non-Christians. Do they have parties or something? Alan told me, "Dude, it's no big deal, just wander around the apartments, walk in one with an open door, and grab a cup." "Do I need to bring anything?" "Nah, dude, just show up." Alan calls everyone dude.

(You must understand that at UMBC, the apartments have an ill reputation. The students who live in apartments move in on the day before the semester starts, they move in on a Tuesday morning. By Tuesday night at nine, an ambulance has arrived to give a student a ride to St Agnes Hospital for treatment for alcohol poisoning. The apartments are three-storey brick structures that were constructed as "temporary buildings" four decades ago. I was bewildered as to why anyone would want to live in them until I realized that rules against underage drinking and public debauchery are more thoroughly enforced in the dorms than in the apartments.)

I figured the only way to deal with my anxiety about what everyone, including Alan, thought of Rodolfo was to get a haircut. I donated Rodolfo to Locks of Love; I'm sure there is a child somewhere with a wig with many split ends. Sure enough, no one, not even Alan, hassled me about changing my mind about Rodolfo's merits.

I bought a cell phone, a cheap Virgin Mobile with a pay-as-you-go plan, I wasn't sure what would happen if I bought a cell phone. I didn't want to sign a contract on a new lifestyle.

I was realizing that a lot of the things I was doing, I wasn't doing because I liked them, but precisely because they made me anxious: I had some anxiety with Rodolfo on my head, but just thinking about Rodolfo, to the point where I could decide what to do with him, made me more anxious. I was enduring two dozen sources of anxiety in my life, rather than asking what to do with them one by one.

My existential crisis started with cheap things, like buying a cell phone and donating Rodolfo to an alopecia patient, but as I realized that I liked having a cell phone and that I liked not having a spare identity as a hat, I might want to try some new things and abandon some old things. I felt release and relief as I took these small, concrete steps, and I wanted more freedom.

***

At this point in my life, I would often walk around on the hills of our campus to talk to God. Our campus has a lot of hills. I would walk up the hill with a lot of fear or frustration and confusion, and walk down the hill with some sort of peace and direction, with prayer happening in the middle.

Late one Friday night, a little before midnight, during this existential crisis, I decided to wander around the apartments. I had planned on walking up one of my regular hills, but I thought that, perhaps, as I was rethinking my place in the universe, I might try something different, I might try Alan's idea of getting to know non-Christians by finding them in their natural habitat. I might get some enlightenment that way.

Out front of one apartment, I ran into a guy who I'd seen perform at a big theater event at UMBC. I'd heard from a friend in his major that he'd recently gotten rejected for an honor in the theater department. He's very talented as an actor, but, the word is, he didn't do much bookwork and that cost him. I said hi to him, but he had had a couple of drinks and just grinned and laughed a lot.

Another guy offered me some Pabst Blue Ribbon. I was underage at this point. Other beers, I knew from television commercials. All that I knew of Pabst Blue Ribbon is what a friend from California had told me, that PBR is not so much a drinking beer as a get-drunk beer. This guy, offering me the beer, was yelling about how he was going to get totally wasted, as if this was a good thing. He was very excited, but I don't know that he was happy.

I never entered any of the apartments that night, I just wandered around, watching people, and feeling painfully confused. Who was I, really? What does that mean? Why is that picnic table upside down? What should my job be? Where should I live? Who should my friends be?

The apartments are on a woody hill, and there is a clearing in the center of several of them, a little service road forms a circle in this area. There are some grills, not good grills, the sort of grills you see at state parks, grills designed for unstealability. People would occasionally grill hot dogs out there. The RA's would give you charcoal if you asked. People would sit at picnic tables and eat food that was rarely any better than the dining hall would make it, and for more trouble, they would do this to have the experience of a cook-out.

I sat at one of the picnic tables, the other was upside down. A student walked up near me, stumbling. I know a trick to help with talking to strangers: when they ask you how you're doing, you tell them the truth. That's how the conversation with Rob began. I asked him how he was doing, as he hobbled, swaying, past my picnic table, and he said "Fine, how are you?" and I said, "I don't know. I'm doing a lot of things because I thought my friends want me to rather than because I really want to, and I feel anxious and I don't know what to do."

"So get new friends," he said, sitting down. He was rambling, he'd start sentences and trail off before he started the predicate. "That picnic table, why is it upside down?" I had seen the upside down picnic table before, but not really noticed it, I just assumed it was inverted in some frat boy prank.

In InterVarsity, I learned that it's best not to evangelize by telling people up front that they're sinners and need to accept Jesus to be saved. It's better to make friends with them, and learn to care about them. Then, eventually, somehow, they realize that your love is truly Christian charity, or they see that you're a good example, or they ask you questions or you ask them questions, and they realize they're in need of a relationship with Jesus. They might not realize that they need Jesus to atone for their sins, they might just need Jesus to help them on this next exam, that's okay. I had tried every form of evangelism that didn't require friendship with the subject; I figured I would try making friends, and not worry about immediate results and see what happened.

Following good evangelism technique, I sat and listened to drunk Rob rambling. After a while, another walked up, Lisa. She had tattoos and wore a bandana and had a nose ring. I could tell that she cared about social justice. She was an environmentalist.

I was trying to get Rob to talk about God and Lisa told me about how she doesn't think that God is this man in the sky, she thinks that God is in everything, there's God in you and me and animals and plants and rocks. She told me that when she feels lonely, she goes outside and finds a tree to talk to.

She told us about how she's a vegetarian, she doesn't want to eat other living beings. I asked her about free range chicken and she said, "Sometimes, free range isn't so free range." She explained that chickens are raised in barns with no room to move around, the barns would just have one window, and that that these chickens are sold as "free range". They have their beaks cut off so they don't peck each other to death.

"Why would anyone do that to chickens?" I asked. "Why don't more people care?" asked Lisa. "And why is that picnic table upside down?" asked Rob.

Our conversations meandered. I was uncomfortable. I was talking with two non-Christians at the apartments, in the middle of the night, and I didn't know what to say to them, let alone what to do about my own problems. Rob got up several times that night to go pee, not in a bathroom, he'd pee on the closest tree.

Sometimes, while sitting with us, he'd slip his hand down his trousers, as if he forgot that Lisa and I were there, or as if he knew and didn't care. I didn't know what to say about that.

Lisa was telling us about how beautiful it is that everything is connected, everything has God in it. She told us about dolphins. "Dolphins are $&*@ing smart." Rob said, displaying his Discovery Channel knowledge of marine mammals. Lisa told us about how dolphins have rescued swimmers, how they like swimming with people. She told us that sometimes dolphins have sex with people. "So, like, a girl dolphin can get a guy off?" Rob asked, enthused. Lisa told Rob about the ways in which sex with dolphins is better than sex with people.

I asked Lisa what she thought of Jesus. "I don't think he was the son of God or anything," then, her eyes lit up, "I think he was a revolutionary!"

We kept talking, until it started to get light, it wasn't so much a sunrise as the whole dome of the sky getting brighter. We asked big questions together. How do we know what right and wrong are? Who is God? Why is that picnic table upside down? Who is Jesus? Who am I? What should I be up to?

A couple of weeks later, I drank my first bottle of beer on my twenty-first birthday. A month after that, I became a vegetarian. I found that Rob had some good advice for me, too, "Get new friends." I was a lot less anxious.

Dunkers

Trader Joe's has for sale oblong cookies labelled as "dunkers". I immediately procured for myself a package, thinking, "I will dunk these cookies!"

I love to dunk cookies, it's a relaxing bedtime ritual. I have long had problems with circular cookies, though, when it comes to dunking. Cookies that are too large can't fit into the mouth of the glass, and have to be broken in half, which I find rather unpleasant. Cookies that are too small are trouble, too, because I either can only get half of the cookie dunked or I get my fingers sticky with milk, which is gross. I had basically given up on dunking cookies.

I find Trader Joe's dunkers to be vexing. I have no idea if I'm dunking the cookies because I saw that their shape is suitable, or because the packaging label instructs me to dunk them? Did Trader Joe's design them to be dunkable, or did someone in marketing see oblong cookies, and simply label them, "dunkers"? Am I eating them because they're legitimately good cookies, or because I feel like Trader Joe's cares about me and my cookie consumption style, and so has made "dunkers" for me?

The cookies themselves are oblong chocolate chip cookies, with a good, solid layer of chocolate on one side; something like a larger, open-faced, chocolate-chip Milano. The cookie itself isn't very sweet, it's more of a cracker than a cookie, but, when combined with that chocolate layer, it's satisfying, but still less sweet than, say, a Chips Ahoy. I have no idea if I like the cookies, because Trader Joe's recognizes my refined taste and so does not simply dump extra sugar into their cookies, or if I'd prefer a sweeter cookie. Do I prefer these cookies because they are dunkable and have a refined flavor, or because they're from Trader Joe's, and I'm a sucker for anything from Trader Joe's?

Their Indian food is really good.