By Michael Nettleton
While shelving videos at my library-subbing job, I
happened to spot The Life of Brian
the Monty Python sendup of the story of the central figure of Christendom. I
first saw it back in the early eighties when it was newish. On a whim, I took
it home to watch again. It’s still laugh-out-loud funny and thought-provoking
movie. Unless you’re a Bible literalist. In that case it’s high heresy, anti-Christian,
and perhaps the spawn of Satan. Or perhaps you take yourself too seriously.
Whatever.
It started me thinking. (This is the point where
my wife Carolyn jumps in and says “Uh-oh.”)
I feel the need for music to accompany this next part. How about REM?
I am a fervid agnostic. Which is like saying I’m a
well-organized anarchist. An agnostic is a person who believes that nothing is
known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond
material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God. Fervid
might be the wrong modifier. We don’t proselytize much.
To paraphrase former Secretary of State Donald
Rumsfeld, who was trying to defend the lack of proof that Iraq was involved in
911: “There are known knowns, there are things we think we know. We also know
there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do
not know.” Now there's some state-of-the-art gibberish, yes?
Maybe I’m a born skeptic. I was the kid in Sunday
school who asked questions like, “Why did Adam have a navel?” and “Adam and Eve
had sons. Where did they find wives?” I was sent home with a lot of notes for
my parents to read. I’m not sure what they said. I’m guessing the word “heathen”
might have been included.
So, what led to me losing my religion? If indeed I
ever had one. A couple of incidents come to mind. One of the teachers of my
small town Sunday School class, a pillar of the local community, banged his
bible and ranted about the “wages of sin,” and “burning eternally in hell,” for
our transgressions. Because of him, I learned how to pee without touching
myself. A bit messy, but apparently necessary. Until . . .
One day my friend Donny and I were standing on a
corner in a nearby larger town waiting for my mother to pick us up from a
movie. Suddenly, the doors of a local saloon banged open and our smug,
self-righteous Sunday school teacher tottered out, arm in arm with a busty lady
wearing a heavy layer of war paint. They staggered toward a motel with a
flashing VACANCY sign.
From that moment forward my bathroom habits became
much tidier.
Later in life, I was a disc jockey in another
small town. My immediate boss, the program director, had been a drug-taking
hippy until he was “saved” and “born again.” Rod (not his real name) and his wife
made it a habit of dropping by the apartment I shared with my future former
wife and “testifying” to us and trying to get us to see the light. We began
spending evenings with all the lights out and ignoring the knocking on our door.
Rod’s most annoying habit was attributing anything good that happened to him as
“God’s will.” This included a last minute touchdown that won a football game
for his favorite team. Anything negative that happened, even if he had
instigated it, was “The work of Satan.”
Rod was also a certifiable paranoic. He was
convinced the big boss had it in for him and was poised to fire him. He began
picking up the general managers private phone line on the production room
console at the same time the boss did and listening in to the conversations.
One day, I got called into the GM’s office. My
stomach roiled. This couldn’t be a good thing. “Mike,” he began. “I have some
bad news.” Now, my stomach is flip-flopping like Simone Biles halfway through
her floor exercise. “I’ve had to let Rod go. I thought he was doing a really
good job, but I found out he was listening in on my telephone conversations. I
couldn’t have that.”
That sizzling sound you hear is Satan rubbing his hands
together in glee.
Following Facebook, I see a lot of people using
their religion as a bludgeon: Quoting scripture (or what they claim is
scripture) to castigate those who practice a different religion are of a
different race, of a different sexuality, possess different political beliefs
or, face it, have different anything.
Many of the people I work with, do community
theater with, sing in choirs with or have chance encounters with are devout
Christians. None of them try to convert me or express scorn that I don’t share
their convictions. It seems to me they are living in the spirit of the savior
they believe in. Them I like.
And I, it appears will remain an agnostic until my
last breath. I won’t let fear of death prod me into believing something I can’t
prove.
I enjoyed my rewatching of The Life of Brian. It made me laugh and think about man’s need to
explain the unfathomable. The film is not about ridiculing people’s religious
beliefs. Instead, it uses satire to point out the absurdity of listening to
people who claim to be prophets or speak directly to God. It is a counterpoint
to those who use the Bible to reinforce their prejudices or repay petty
grudges.
A closing note to those people. I am not the spawn
of Satan. Honest.
