Last night at work I petitioned Glen, the bartender, to make a list of his five favorite comedy films of all time. This is a game we play to pass the time during the slow hours of the early morning; we take turns naming categories and then after a few minutes compare our respective selections. In this case my list looked like this:
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Year One
Idiocracy
Dodge Ball
Napolean Dynamite
But when I approached Glen with my results I saw he was conversing with a customer and in the briefest of moments realized the topic had to do with the Son of God. The customer used the expression, “his only begotten son.” And unable as I was to restrain myself, I blurted out the text in which that phrase appears , John 3:16. The fellow acknowledged this but then emphasized the difference between this reference and the one in Genesis that mentions the pluralized “sons of God.”
“Oh, you mean in chapter 6 where it says that the sons of God knew the daughters of men!” I exclaimed. This chapter fascinates me personally inasmuch as mythology has dubbed the offspring of these copulations as the nephilim. Interpretations vary regarding all of these characters… some have the sons of God being angels… some have the offspring being giants… and in my own epic novel (a work in progress) I have the daughters of men being vampiresses.
The fellow seemed slightly unsure about what I was saying… possibly disconcerted that I had twice cited the texts he was borrowing from… but I was just getting started… I went on to contribute a third scripture in which a son of God was mentioned… this time having to do with the story of Daniel in which his three appellatively famous friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were unharmed in the fiery furnace and the Babylonian King descried a fourth person resembling the Son of God.
Then I asked our customer if he was a Trinitarian. He said no, he was just a Christian. Not a Baptist or a Methodist or anything like that. I explained that Trinitarianism is not a denomination, but rather a theological philosophy. “Do you believe in the Trinity?” I asked and he confirmed that he certainly did. “Most Christians do” I reassured him.
This is a topic with which I am somewhat familiar mostly because my father is of the radical persuasion that the concept of the Trinity is an invention of Satan to corrupt the faithful into believing in a confused version of God. Whereas there is only one true God, Trinitarians, the argument goes, kind of believe that the Holy Spirit is God too and that Jesus is God along with God the Father. It occurred to me that this customer may have been pondering just such a debate with his attention to the Son and/or sons of God.
Having shown off that much I was obliged to attend to some of the responsibilities in the poker room for which I am employed, but when I came back to the bar where the conversationalists were still engaged, Glen said the gentleman had a question for me which turned out to be this, “Why did you read the Bible if you don’t believe in it?” Apparently Glen had apprised the customer in my absence of my skepticism toward religion. And I was happy to answer, “I believed in it when I read it. I began when I was seven years old and finished when I was 14. I didn’t quit believing until I was 17.
And this is where the discussion became blog~worthy in my opinion. Usually a person would have followed up by asking what happened when I was 17 to influence such a drastic change. But instead this fellow inquired if I had read Nietzsche which I hadn’t, but of course I blurted out what little I did know about him… something about the super man and something about “Thus spake Zarathustra.” But my audience was not impressed in the least and exhorted me to read Nietzsche, “He was an atheist, you know.”
“Was he a Nihilist?” I asked innocently.
“No, he was a German philosopher” I was told. “Of course, he went insane.”
This is when it became clear to me why our customer had no interest in why I’d become an atheist myself. He already had a perfect conclusion to our argument… the only point he wished to make was that a famous atheist had gone insane. By extension I imagine it’s fairly safe to assume I shall meet with a similar fate. I wouldn’t be surprised if studies support the notion that nearly every case of insanity on record probably began with someone questioning God’s existence (sarcasm).
This fellow upon learning of my deficiency in faith, had pretty much no inclination to witness to me with Christian love or kindness. The prospect of dialogically ambushing me with this loaded feint of recommending a notorious atheist was far more tempting for him than any sincere demonstration of Christianity could ever have been.
His final parting shot was the remark that “they love Nietzsche in all those atheist colleges.” What atheist colleges? What constitutes an atheist college? Is it a college for atheists? A college run by atheists? A college featuring a board of trustees the majority of which profess atheism? Is it at all possible that there really isn’t any such thing as an atheist college in the United States?
Any way… the communication between us, while amusing, was not especially worthwhile. Here he was supposing… almost hoping that I’d based my skepticism upon Nietzshe whose writings I am basically unacquainted with, while I think I had provided a far more relevant indication that my doubts about God have more to do with the Bible than any other literary feat.
Related links:
How I became an Atheist
