It is not God’s fault – NOR is it mine

I like to think of myself as pretty open minded. I know I have my issues, that certain behaviors make me cringe or want to bitch slap people, I know that I am FAR from perfect.

BUT today, this pissed me off when I first saw it – then hours later after the anger wore off, I just feel sad and defeated.

A stupid comic that has apparently making the rounds on Facebook finally showed up in my feed this morning – go figure, a former student posted it.

In this comic there are two students standing and talking:
First student: “Why didn’t God stop the shooting?”
Second student: “How could he? He’s not allowed in school anymore.”

This offends me on so many levels.

First off it makes me sick that people honestly still ask in 2013 why God doesn’t do something. Be as scientific as you want, of have faith in whatever – when in recorded proven history of mankind has God ever stepped in and fixed mankind’s fuck ups?

If you want to say “Where was God?” Then you better keep asking – Where was God when millions of people were murdered during the Holocaust? Where was God during any of the massacres in the American west, perpetrated by all involved? Where was God when Aborigines in Australia were hunted like animals? Where was God in Africa when millions of children died of diseases or hunger that can be prevented? Where was God….

You hopefully get the picture because I can come up with a hell of a lot more questions wondering where God was when something tragic occurred.

In the end I honestly do not see the point in asking because I do not believe that any higher power steps in and fixes our fuck ups for, nor does he/she/it step in to stop us from making monumental mistakes.

People did this. We did this.

People allowed the world to become this way. We made the choices we made which lead us to here at this very moment in time. Were they good choices? Were they bad choices? There is no answer to that – they were just choices, and we can only measure them by arbitrary standards that we mostly agree upon as a society. But there are always those little voices trying to place blame elsewhere in a misguided attempt to understand.

What is there is understand? I got it when I was little and my father, an Alaska State Troop, returned from a call where a man murdered his wife and children then himself. That day my father told me that “Some people are just assholes.”

How is it God’s fault? How can anyone blame God – any god – for what people choose to do?

The second thing that offended me, when was God not allowed in schools? The only things I see in the news are not people saying God is not allowed in schools, only that the forced teaching of specific religious beliefs with the intent to “convert” students is not allowed. I am more than okay with that as I feel it is NOT my place to teach students religious beliefs, that right belongs to their parents and I do not want to interfere with that.

As a teacher I have not said “God is not allowed in my classroom.” In fact I welcome God – AND Allah, YHWH, Jehovah and Odhin, as well as the Maiden, Matron and Crone and the Goddess. Whatever the name used, I do not care – all gods are welcomed in my classroom because I welcome all of my students.

Since I started teaching I have had students who were Bahai and students who were Catholic. I have had students who were members of any number of Protestant faiths. I have had students who are members of the Latter Day Saints as well as students who were Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’ve also had students who followed Judaism and I have a lot of students who practiced Pagan faiths and came from families of practicing witches. I also have students who are Atheist and others who identify themselves as “Spiritualists” rather than following any one religion.

Regardless of what they believe, all students are welcomed in my classroom and they are respected. And you know what? I teach them to respect each other – even if they do not agree, they can at least understand, and it works.

I think back and I can remember students asking if it was okay to read the Bible or the Book of Mormon during reading time in class, and every time I tell them it is okay – that they are not only allowed but welcomed to do so. I have had students ask me timidly if it was okay to pray for someone or for me, and I have always told them it is okay and how deeply moved I was by their kindness. I’ve even had students ask me prior to giving speeches about themselves if they were allowed to speak about their faith – and they seemed shocked when I told them of course, that they were free to do so entirely and that I would stand up for them if anyone even dared to say anything negative towards them about their beliefs.

In the past I think to most shock came from parents when they asked me if it was okay for their child to share their faith in speeches or in personal essays, and every single time I have told them that of course their child could share that part of themselves in any way they chose – that they were not only allowed by welcomed to do so freely in my classroom and that they would be respected for doing so and I would protect them from any negative comments.

When all is said and done – because I love my students, all of their gods are welcomed in my classroom.

At the same time, I often end up teaching about different Religions. For context – when teaching The Crucible I teach about the Puritan faith and way of life; and right now since I am teaching Holocaust History and Literature I teach about Judaism as best I can so my students understand the context of what we are talking about. When I teach Siddhartha and Jonathan Livingston Seagull I teach the basics of Buddhism and Hinduism so they understand the framework of the stories.

Not once in over eight years at my school has a single student ever been offended by my doing so. I even had two wonderful young ladies, both devout Mormons, who thanked for me teaching them more about other faiths as related to what we read because it not only helped them understand, but they told me I taught the subjects with respect. – I still have those notes saved in a special folder – I keep everything my students give me; I am as bad as any parent.

More often than not my students ask me to teach more about different faiths and if my students have a question about a faith different then their own, I try to explain as best I can and with respect. This happens more as they spend more time reading world news, especially with their curiosity to know of a world outside of where they live.

What I do not do is teach beliefs. I refuse on all levels to tell them anything along the lines of:
“This is what you must think / must believe.”
“This is the only truth.”
“Anyone who does not believe the same is a sinner and going to hell.”

I do not teach beliefs – that is not my place to tell them WHAT to think. I am trying to teach them to think for themselves, to apply their knowledge, and to question whatever topic is placed in front of them. I teach them to show compassion and understanding towards others, to actually look at others and accept them and love them for who they are.

Oh, but some might now argue with me “separation of church and state.”

I had a very patient and intelligent history teacher many years ago, and you know what I learned from that man? When I was a high school student there were no actual federal laws about “separation of church and state.” That phrase itself was written by Thomas Jefferson, and almost 17 years later I cannot remember who he wrote that to – I believe it was in a letter. Oh, how much I have been reminded recently just the amount of information I have forgotten over the years.

There are past practices and policies with the US that lend themselves to the idea of the separation of church and state – but in actually there were no laws that decreed the “separation of church and state” at the time that phrase was written.

I do not want to get into laws that have been enacted or changed since then; the lawyer part of my past hates dealing with analyzing laws for different reasons.

HOWEVER, since I am teaching the idea of Doublespeak when it comes to Persuasive writing and teaching my freshmen how to break statements down and look at the Denotation and Connotation of phrases, let’s look at the phrase loved by so many:

“Separation of church and state.”

At its base, all this phrase means is that there should be a fundamental separation between the Church and the Government; what at the time of Jefferson were two governing bodies. In all reality these are two organizations with their own ideas and agendas.

What this phrase does not say or give any indication of is a separation of Faith or Belief from how we choose to live our lives. So in my mind, God is more than welcomed in my classroom, and I wish other people thought the same.

Ultimately what upsets me the most is the implication that somehow either God or schools are to blame for the deaths of those innocent little children in December.

It was one man who killed them. One sick man. He made that decision – and God or schools had nothing to do with it. The blame for those deaths rests solely on this one person – BUT as a nation we cannot understand that anymore.

We live in a time where no one is responsible for their own actions; it is the fault of ——. AND the blank can be filled with anything: video games, movies, drugs, music, guns, the mental health system, the laws, Mercury being in retrograde… The list of bullshit goes on and on and on and on – And while we are placing blame all around, it is no longer laid at the feet of the person who actually committed the act.

People are given an “out,” an excuse for being an asshole. And somehow in this case, the “out” is “Where was God?” and “He’s not allowed in schools.”

That is pathetic. That offends me and breaks my heart. This stupid comic reduces the pain of those families and anyone who has ever lost a loved one down to political fodder for any number different sides pushing their own damn agenda. It makes the lives lost seem worth little more than a poorly thought out political cartoon that people use for their own means without ever even thinking to honor those poor souls whose lives were taken, without considering the pain their families have suffered.