This is one of several honorable mention” essays in FFRF’s 2007 contest for college students. David received $100 for his essay.
By David Fletcher
I didn’t get to pick my father. Either one of them. To one I was genetically bound, destined to inherit a low center of gravity and a hairy back. To the other I was tied by circumcision and baptism before I could utter a word of dissent. One was a short-tempered baker; the other was an invisible old man in the sky who had an even shorter temper. Neither one made for much of a father.
My Christian upbringing taught me that I could make problems at home all better if I prayed hard enough. Every night I prayed while silent tears rolled down my round and ruddy cheeks. Whatever was wrong was my fault and if I were dead everything would be okay. Of course, it’d be better than okay for me because I’d get to go to Heaven and see Jesus. But no matter how hard I prayed, Sky Daddy wouldn’t give me what I asked for, and for the first time in my life I began to wonder if he was even listening.
I was raised in the safety of a Christian Reformed bubble–which is a lot like growing up in a plastic bubble, except that you can see through plastic. I was a good little Christian. I had an aptitude for learning Memory Verses and even memorized the Apostle’s Creed well before my twin sister did. I could rattle off that I “believe-in-god-the-father-almighty- maker-of-heaven-and-earth-and-in-jesus-christ-his-only-begotten-son. . . .” I knew how to say it long before I knew what the words meant. That was the great thing about memorizing: you didn’t have to think about it. I knew exactly what I believed, what commandments I was to follow, what my only comfort in life and in death was, and I knew it all without having to go through that tedious step of having to think about it.
Yet, as I grew my mind grew as well. The Church discouraged it, of course, but I couldn’t help it. Perhaps that’s one of the downsides to private schooling: I got an excellent education and with an education comes the ability to think critically. I asked my high school religion teacher, “If God were perfect, why would he allow evil to exist?” He would have had to create evil in order for it to exist, and how can something that creates evil be good? The answer to this and most of my questions was: “God works in mysterious ways.” Which is as much as saying, “Hell if I know; stop asking questions.” And I tried to stop, because I knew that asking questions and doubting was sinful. The fact that I had doubts revealed that I was probably not one of God’s elect few and would therefore be going to Hell. So if I stopped doubting, stopped asking hard questions then maybe, just maybe, I could make it into Heaven and have a happy eternal life after my uncritical and unexamined life here ended. But, of course, the voice of reason eventually drowned out the cries of superstition.
I remember the exact moment when it happened. I was 15, my siblings and I were in the basement and our father was berating us for some supposed “sin.” By this time, Dad had become less threatening to us. I remember him standing there, attempting to be authoritative, pointing up at the ceiling and saying to us “the big man upstairs isn’t going to be very happy with you.” My older brother replied, “There’s a guy upstairs? What, is he taking a bath or something?” My father didn’t find it very funny. But my siblings and I loved it. We embraced the idea of a mysterious and uninviting figure hanging out in our bathroom. We named him Bathtub Jeff.
We would caution each other not to incur the wrath of Bathtub Jeff. I always pictured him as a fat bald man, scrubbing his back with a toilet brush and just barely able to cram himself into our tub. I imagined him yelling at us from the bathroom to “Knock that off!” as he struggled in vain to get himself out of the tub, displaced water sloshing over the side. But, of course, Bathtub Jeff couldn’t get himself out of the tub. He kept slipping back into it, getting more frustrated until finally he’d stop his struggling and, exhausted, settle back into the tub, muttering something about those “damned kids downstairs.”
The moment Bathtub Jeff was born was the moment I became an atheist. Something clicked and suddenly the notion of “the big man upstairs” was ridiculous. It was absurd to think that there was this bloated being looking down on us with disapproval, but unable to do anything about it. In his own way, my dad, through his silly ineffectual rage, showed me that the concept of such a father, only bigger and with less hair on his back, was ludicrous. The church’s Bathtub Jeff was already packing his bags when my dad left for good.
During my senior year, our house was being foreclosed. So while I got ready for high school graduation, my family struggled to find a place to live. I remember my mother praying constantly and reminding us to pray that God would help us. After several months of prayer, nothing had happened so I decided to take action. I called a friend of mine whose family had just moved, but still owned their old house. Though it was in rough shape, it was better than no house at all. Three months later, we moved in.
Some may see God’s master plan at work, finding a way to provide for us. Maybe it’s easier to see the invisible hand of God when you’re on the outside. When you’re on the inside, the hands are all very visible. They belong to the people who re-shingled the roof, painted the walls, and loaded the trucks. Every step was accomplished by people who I could see and hear and touch. God helps those who help themselves, they say–which I knew really meant: God doesn’t do a goddamn thing.
I kept quiet about my disbelief for several years. They were hard, angry years; years of self-loathing and depression. I wanted to believe, thought I needed to believe–if not in the god of the Christian Reformed Church, then in some other god–but it didn’t work.
After years of emotional torment and personal drama, something (pardon the expression) miraculous happened: I fell in love. I fell in love with someone who also loved me. She let me know that it was okay to be me, doubts and all. Finding my better half meant I could become whole, stop hiding my agnosticism and even go a step further and admit to outright atheism. Neither one of my fathers was invited to our wedding.
With love and reason as the guiding forces in my life, I’ve left behind the hate my father taught me and the fear the Church tried to inspire in me. No longer living under the shadow of my fathers, I’m now a child of the Enlightenment, subscribing to a secular worldview and humanistic ethics. Now, I am free from the influence of my fathers, free from superstition and guilt and free from religion.
“I’m a student at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Mich. I’m a senior, working towards my teaching certification (secondary education) and majoring in English and communications with an emphasis on theatre. Though Aquinas is a Catholic college, last year I helped to found, and currently chair, the Aquinas College Secular Student Alliance, which seeks to give voice to the nonreligious, freethinking students at Aquinas through events like last year’s ‘Ask the Atheist’ panel discussion. Along with my studies, I am active in local theatre in varied roles such as actor, house manager and sound designer.”
