May God’s Love Be With You
By
Timothy Braun

I often find myself getting into trouble in various places. Karaoke contests in Wyoming. A salsa festivals in Santa Fe. Eeyore’s birthday in Austin. In each situation I seem to attract the odd and bizarre, like a psychic pet detective or glass eye ball salesmen, and the vast majority of this all rarely takes me by surprise. I’ve been to rodeos, strip clubs, weddings and funerals and I heard and witnessed kids and adults alike say things that brought rooms to screeching halts. I’ve seen tornados, hurricanes, and Johnny Cash sing Ring Of Fire. Yet, I’ve never been taken by surprise until two months ago. Not until I asked one of my students about the bible.

I teach Humanities at the University of Texas at San Antonio. This is a loaded statement and subject-- as humanities covers a spectrum that can include art, history, sociology, anthropology, politics, literature, drama, diplomacy, sexuality, religion and just about anything your hearts desires. My reading list includes Fast Food Nation, Freakonomics, A Brief History of Time, and other writings by Stephen King, Gloria Steinem, Fredrick Douglas, E.B. White, and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and his remarkably medieval angle on homosexuality. Technically, I teach Writing 1 and Writing 2 to freshman and sophomores, but the scope of my department and our textbooks is such that I can include almost anything I wish. Including a section on religion in America.

Writing 1 is basic rhetoric and exposure to essays construction. This class deals with informative writing. “This is the Fields Medal.” “This is the history of graffiti.” “ This is the basic of Hinduism.” And, this class is rather pedestrian. Place the comma in the correct place, do a bibliography, use parenthetical citation, come to class, and do the reading and you will do just fine. Writing 2 is a different story. Writing 2 is devoted to critical thinking, utilizing persuasive and argumentative techniques from classic Greek structures to the Toulmin System of influence as applied to various contemporary subject matters. In the class we look at the scope of government, we ask is public education on the rocks, we examine the rights of Americans, and we question the thought and reasoning of why we are all on this amazingly complicated spinning rock we call Earth. The goal of the class is to question.

Each of my classes has been composed of students from central casting. You have the EMO kids in the corner, wearing all black and constantly commenting on how stupid Americans can be. These are the students that hold mock gay weddings in the food court at lunchtime, screen Japanese cartoons in the library basement, and offer to swap bibles for pornography just to piss off the “Christies.” There is the sorority girl, consumed with the weekly results of America Idol, and how much money they can make with charity car washes on the weekend. There are the jocks, the nerds, the geeks, freaks, bad boys, and, sadly, the alcoholics that don’t know where else to go after high school. My classrooms have been filled with a buffet of state college students at UTSA, and I yet to have student I wouldn’t go to Hell for. My students are like my children (probably because I sold my kids to Vietnamese pirates, at least that is what I like to tell people) and I look forward to getting letters and postcards and emails for years to come regarding all the great and ponderous adventures they had, from traveling the world, to having families, to getting older and wiser. I don’t want my students to be like me or think like me (who would) but I do want them to graduate from college and think for themselves. Which is why one student crushed me this year.

I’m an atheist, and I have absolutely no clue as to why anyone would buy into the idea of a higher power. It simply makes no sense to me. The thought process in which someone is watching over us all and has provided basic rules of conduct is grand in the comfort department, but the idea of a talking snake, a dude surviving a whale attack, and a cat loading a bunch of animals onto a boat is very impressive when you are eight years old. But, for those of us beyond the eight mark, it all seems rather childish. This is not to mention the thousands of other religions, from Buddhism, to Islam, to the fun lovin’ Hindus. The stories of Vishnu are fun, especially when Robert Oppenheimer tells them with regard to The Bomb, but an ass kicker with multiple arms and skin the color of “sky” are the things of comic books and Hollywood blockbusters, at least from where I am sitting they are.

Most of my students have been able to handle the idea that I don’t see eye to eye with them on the theories of divinity. Before the Texan Hill Country, I lived in the Big Apple for a decade where godlessness is a sport, and when I handle religion in my class I like to have students sit on the floor and in a circle in so they can all see one another at the same level. This way, we can all have the greatest understanding of one another and the beliefs we all hold. No one is better. No one is worse. We are stupid.

This is why I was shocked when my student Neil barked that homosexuality is wrong and “all fags will burn in Hell” after all this is what the bible “says.” When questioned on this Neil quoted that “man “shall not rest with man.” I was curious if god had written the word “fag” or was this Neil’s interpretation of God’s vocabulary. His response was “God says, “man shall not rest with man” like a programmed robot boy from fantasy land. Neil’s response was cold and blunt as if it was drilled into him.

I said his phrase over and over again, and I’m certain my lips moved to the rhythmus of his language. “God says, “Man shall not rest with man.” Many of the students simply let Neil’s statement slide and went about their business. We quickly moved onto the next students’ idea on religion, but I was rocked for days. I had heard about people like Neil, but I thought they weren’t real, like fairies or talking snakes.

Neil is a relatively good student; as good as any student can be at the age of 18. He would come to class on time, turn his papers in on due dates, and enjoy a good politically incorrect joke. He loves extreme sports like snowboarding and rollerblading, is fan of horror movies, and loves women. In fact, Neil had the habit of announcing his womanizing ways at the beginning of class, telling his friends of the great conquests he had over each weekend. I remember him telling tales a red head, an Asian chick, a blond bombshell, and a girl he could only describe as having jet-black hair. When asking Neil what this last girl’s name was, he blushed and informed me “I don’t know.”

The most piercing experiences I had with Neil involved his older sister. Neil introduced her to me in the hallway one day. She wore a necklace with a picture of an infant glued to tarnished silver. This was Neil’s nephew. “I love him and I love my sister,” he told me. The two come from a broken home. His sister is not married, nor has she ever been, and Neil described the father that left as an “asshole.” For his passion of horror movies I suggested Neil see the movie Grindhouse, the double feature exploitation romp. He loved it. Neil told me it was the coolest flick he’d ever seen, but he wanted the blonde girl and the Rose McGowan to make out in the zombie portion. I almost called him on his raw hypocrisy, but that would’ve shaken Neil’s confidence and that was the last thing I wanted.

When reading A Brief History of Time, I asked my students “Why are we here?” Neil responded with “It’s God’s will.” I stood up in front of the class and asked Neil how much of the bible he believed. “Every word” he said.

“The talking snake” I asked?

“Every word.”

“The boat with all the animals?”

“Every word.”

“The dude inside the whale?”

“Every. Word.”

I wanted him to explain how kings in Europe chopped the Hell out of his holy book, edited the crap out of it, and even changed large passages of the bible. I wanted to tell him that the bible is literature and nothing but stories to help us get from one day to the next, the way Moby Dick explains revenge will rot a man from within. But I looked into Neils eyes and I saw a dead kid trying to hold on. He comes from a shattered home life, he has a fatherless nephew, and maybe he sleeps with so many women because he can’t find the strength to be honest to only one. Does Neil believe everything the bible has to offer? “Every. Word.” Cold. Unflinching. I asked Neil if he read the Stephen Hawkins essay. He said “No.” It bored him. And I let that be that.

I occasionally get emails from Neil, although that is not his real name. Now that he is no longer my student, I allow him to call me “T-Bone.” He asks me what movies I am seeing, how I think the NBA play-offs will unfold, and he asks me of all the people I meet and trouble I get into when I travel. I tell him I‘m in Minnesota seeing a St. Paul Saints game with a Korean bartender, I’m in Omaha catching a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club concert, and I’m in Boulder eating sushi with a psychic pet detective. And I always end my emails with “May Gods Love Be With You.”