Since today is the most important day of the Christian calendar, I thought I’d share a snippet from my first novel, Solid State, in which I offer some of my own perspective about religion. This is in the final chapter of the book, and the conversation is between the ostensible bad guy of the story and an elderly man he has met during his travels. It takes place in a seedy bar in the middle of the day.
Mac turned to his companion and said, “Kyle, I want to thank you again for helping me out. I must have been out there a full half hour, and not a soul even checked on me. Cars, mostly. They whizzed right by. Bicycles too! It’s like nobody even cared.”
“Oh, it’s okay, honestly, I was happy to help,” he replied, looking nervously for the bartender and wondering if their drinks would be there soon.
“It was mighty Christian of you to stop and help an old man,” said Mac with a grin.
“No, it wasn’t. You got me pegged wrong there,” said the bearded man. The bartender placed their drinks in front of them and said, “Enjoy, boys. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Thanks, Rose,” said Mac. Turning his attention back to his companion, he asked, “What do you mean?”
“The whole Christian thing. I’m just saying I’m not into all the God and Jesus crap. Sorry, it just rubs me the wrong way.”
Mac took a sip of his bourbon and said, “Really? How come?”
The bearded man picked up the bottle of Blue Moon and poured it into the mug. “They forgot the orange wedge,” he said, eyeing the edge of the mug’s rim
“It ain’t that kinda place,” said Mac with a sly grin.
“Yeah, I figured that out for myself already.” He placed the empty bottle down and took a sip of the cold beer. It tasted perfect, and he began to question why he was resistant to enjoying a free beer in the first place. “Well, it’s not just Christianity. The whole religion thing in general. More people have been killed in the name of religion than anything else, you know.”
Mac let out an unexpected laugh and took another sip of his bourbon. “Awwww, Kyle, you sound like a freshman in college during his first week in school. Come on, man. That’s just plain wrong. Lots of people have killed lots of other people for a very long time, but it isn’t just religion. They want land, they want power, they don’t like the color of someone’s skin, they don’t like someone’s politics, they’ve got some ancient grudge. You really think Hitler or Stalin had religion on their minds when they were killing tens of millions of people? Religion is pretty far down the list. So I take it you weren’t exactly raised in a church-going household.”
The bearded man took another big swig of his beer and, wiping off his lips with the back of his hand, replied, “Well, my parents weren’t zealots or anything. We went to the local church on holidays. I think they called us CEOs, Christmas and Easter Only. I’ve never cared much for any of that stuff. I’m a fairly committed atheist.”
“Committed, huh?” said Mac. “That sounds like a belief system to me.”
“No, not really. More of an anti-belief system. Looking around the world, a godless universe makes a lot more sense to me than any other alternative. I mean, some of the smartest people around are atheists. You don’t see many scientists dropping to their knees to talk to God, do you?”
“Maybe they’re just not very imaginative,” said Mac, downing the last drop of his bourbon. He smiled at the bartender and gave the shot glass a little shake, indicating his interest in another helping.
She came over and poured Mac another shot, and he said to her mid-pour, “You’re the real angel here, Rose. Thanks.” She winked at him and said to the bearded man, “How about you, darlin’? You all right?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Thank you.” As the bartender walked away, the bearded man said, “What about you, Mac? Are you into the God thing? Do you really think there’s an invisible man in the sky who wants us to sing his praises all our lives?”
Mac held his glass up to the light and looked through it for a moment to make sure it was relatively clean, then he took another sip. He said, “The God I believe in isn’t quite that insecure. I think he needs us way more than we need him.”
Setting his glass on the bar, Mac said “See, I think about this stuff in a different way. What I believe is that God, or Yahweh, or the Source, or whatever name you want to dream up, he’s more like a giant cloud in the sky instead of a king on a throne, and the rain that comes down from that cloud, that’s you, that’s me, and everyone else in this room. And at some point, after we’ve lived our lives, we go right back to that cloud, and that cloud is getting bigger and wiser all the time.
“So instead of the notion of humans getting cranked by God so they can scurry around and tell him what a great guy he is, I think he put us here for a nobler purpose, which is that our existence is that of someone who learns and thinks. It’s the big guy upstairs learning from us, not the other way around. What you learn, what you feel, who you love, it all gets brought back to that cloud. It’s a beautiful cycle, don’t you think?”
The bearded man looked toward the dirty hardwood floor beneath them for a few moments and said, “Huh. Well. That’s an interesting perspective, I guess. But it doesn’t explain much.”
Mac said, “I never expected it would. The only thing I know for sure is that people don’t really understand anything about anything. A three year old boy thinks he knows it all, because he’s so ignorant. A ninety-three year old man understands that he doesn’t know squat. That’s wisdom, Kevin. That’s real wisdom.”
Wincing at the sound of the name, the bearded man looked at Mac and said, “It’s Kyle.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot, it’s supposed to be Kyle. Well, pal, I’ve got two things to tell you. First, I’m your friend, and you could use one right now. And second, I know your real name’s Kevin. So stop trying to fool your old drinking buddy, OK?” The bearded man stared at Mac, dumbfounded.
Mac gave him another wink and said to the bartender, “Rose, get my pal here another Blue Moon, and with an orange wedge in it this time! We’re gonna sit a spell.”
