The One Where Amber Talks (almost coherently) About Religion

With the Christmas season recently completed, God and Jesus and those fellas have been on some people's minds an awful lot lately. When word spread of the massacre in Newtown, many people turned to religion for comfort and to ask how something like that could happen. Prayers were said and vigils were held.

Then something else happened. Some of the people who turned to God for comfort then shifted their gaze. In sadness and anger, they wielded religion as a weapon. "If God were more present in our schools," they said, "things like this wouldn't happen." Shaking their heads, they mused, "this is what happens when you turn your back on God."

I got really, really angry when I read things like that. I am still angry thinking about it. I'm still not sure if I am truly able to put words to my feelings, but I'm going to try.

Passing judgment on others is not okay. Wrapped up in the sentiments I summarized above is the assumption that those who are not Christian must therefore be morally void or bad people. Is that really what these people believe? That there are those who are saved, the good people, and then those who are not, the bad people? I'm not a Biblical scholar nor am I a Christian, so I'll abstain from quoting religious texts with which I'm not really familiar, but my understanding has always been that Christianity is a religion of charity, love, and forgiveness. Maybe that's not so?

My other primary problem with the sentiments about God in schools is that, well, they're wrong. Factually. God wouldn't prevent people from shooting each other any more than he has prevented priests from molesting kids. A glib point, yes, but it holds water. Being Christian doesn't remove the existence of free will. People will do what they want to do, and while the pressures of religious doctrine might encourage certain behaviors, it's not a mathematical certainty. Think about the people who bomb abortion clinics - they actually believe they are doing God's will by murdering people. They don't see any problem with killing people to prevent the killing of (tiny) people...who, in fact, are also killed in the prevention killings. But those crazies are not the ones (as far as I know) who have been proclaiming with sorrow that God could have saved the children of Newtown. It's the normal people who aren't crazy. They really, truly believe that a Bible in every classroom and a prayer at the start of each day would somehow prevent things like this. I can't imagine a sadder, more confused line of logic.

Recently, a crazy person shot a bunch of firefighters in NYC.  Are we really going to blame the godlessness of firehouses, now?  Or perhaps we're going to accuse the neighborhood in which the man lived of not being holy enough?  When we start blaming the victims or the community rather than the perpetrator, we absolve him of any wrongdoing.  It is the same line of logic that argues a woman's skimpy outfit invited sexual assault.  Even in less-charged circumstances, the same logic follows.  If you hadn't left your purse open, your phone wouldn't have been stolen.  If you had gotten that fancy security system, your break-in would have stopped at the front door.  If you hadn't been walking in that bad neighborhood, you wouldn't have been mugged.

We've probably all thought those things.  I am constantly reminding my students to keep their phones and bags on them and not to leave things on a table if they're leaving the room.  It's sad, particularly because I teach in a tiny school where we call each other by first name and at least attempt to have a respectful, safe environment, but it's the reality.  And yet, there is an important distinction that needs to be made here.  If a student's phone is stolen after they left it on the table, it's not that student's fault.  They might have been able to prevent the theft, yes, but it is the fault of the thief.  Period.

If we blame the student, we remove personal responsibility from the thief, as if it is in the student's power to keep the phone safe but not in the thief's power to not steal a phone.  Maybe this sort of victim-blaming mentality is a mechanism we use to make ourselves feel safer.  If it's the victim's fault when something happens to them, then it was within the victim's power to prevent it.  If it's in the victim's power to prevent bad things, then it's within my power to prevent bad things from happening to me.  Hence, I am safe.

Is this really how we want our elementary school students to think?  If they had just prayed harder, maybe a random person wouldn't have shot their friends, their teachers?  If the teachers had just broken the law and forced religious teachings into the classroom, then the shooter would have skipped that room?  If we blame the school for not being holy enough, we are automatically blaming the individuals within that school.

Think about who that really means.  Teachers who lied to the shooter to protect their students only to be shot themselves.  Staff who shielded students with their own bodies and were killed.  The acts of courage and love performed that day should be beyond reproach.  If I can break my own rule and quote some scripture: "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13)  If a teacher performs an act of the greatest possible love, doesn't that mean that God is already in our schools?  Doesn't that mean that He is already within those who love and care for others, those who would protect innocent children without hesitation?

I worry that the self-satisfied superiority expressed by those who blame secular education for the shooting means that those people do not see any other problems that need to be addressed.  If the issue is the lack of God in schools, then there is no need to examine our gun laws, or the lack of availability of mental health services in this country, or the way news organizations celebritize mass shooters.  That mindset makes me sad, and a little scared.  There have been plenty of all-Christian-all-the-time communities throughout history, and none of those (as far as I know) were without problems.  Putting a cross on every door and the Commandments in every main office of every school isn't the solution.  But maybe if we all took some of that scripture, the bits about love and forgiveness and charity, and actually did what it said, we'd be in much better shape.

"If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother." (John 4:20-21)