Once Upon a Time in CCD Class

It all goes back, I suppose, to that guy in CCD class with the half-goofy smile, half-quizzical look on his face, an avuncular, inattentive fellow with freckles, big teeth and a clean-cut head, on the verge of growing his hair out long, this being the early 1970s; he was your typical teenager-in-waiting with no discernible interest in religion, theology, philosophy or spiritual matters in general and no intellectual curiosity extending beyond what the snack would be on a particular Saturday, but he did have a way of "getting a rise" out of people so as to garner his daily fifteen minutes of negative attention. And so on this routine occasion, like a patient monk chanting a single mantra to charm an obstinate brick wall, he kept asking the nun who was substituting for our regular teacher, in the midst of a discussion of the most important event in human history next to the creation itself: How do you know? How do you know? What if it weren't that way? How do you know for sure? -  How do we know? repeated the nun with bemused incomprehension. Yeah, said the kid. How do you know that all this stuff really happened? The nun was beginning to reach for the answer to the easiest question ever asked, when Bobby Blaylock preempted her: It says it did in the Bible, stupid! said Bobby. He had no patience for fools. But how do you know for sure? We just do, Timothy. Trust me...we do, said Jean Anne. She was impatient for the art project to begin. And in truth, the art project was usually the best part of CCD class. I just want to know, Timothy declared, how we know that someone could die and then be alive again and then never die after that. And then...I mean because of that, we wouldn't have to die either. After we died the first time. How does anyone know that for sure?-  They saw it with their own eyes, Timothy, Jeanne Anne said. Really. Who had time for this nonsense? It was bad form somehow to drone on about such settled pieties. The point was to just deal with it. Chin up. Smile. Put a brave look on life. God has a plan for you... She was almost giggling at this male tendency to pick apart unbroken objects, whereas Bobby B. simply could not restrain himself: Hey genius... there were witnesses....Okay? They saw Jesus, knew him, hung out with him, saw him rise from the dead; they wrote it down, moron. It's all there in the gos-pels. We got four of them, is that enough evidence for you? Bobby was indignant. He couldn't stand questioning-for-questioning's sake. The nun told him not to call other people morons. Timothy knew somehow that he was on a roll. But what if....he paused - let's just say they didn't see it for themselves...what if they just heard it from other people. Then would it still be true? - Then wouldn't some of the information get garbled or something? He was almost being shouted down at this point, but the nun had found a teachable moment. I think perhaps what Timothy is telling us is that we need to have faith. We may not know (with absolute mathematical certainty if you will) that this or anything else in human history actually happened, but we have a strong sense that it did. Timothy did not make any more comments. Someone in the back of the class said, I forget who, raised his voice somewhat anonymously and declared to no one in particular: that faith might start to feel pointless if not enough people saw the reason behind it. The nun was beginning the art project at this juncture and I was the only one who heard the comment that has been haunting me ever since. Flash-forward to what I remember as the last CCD class I ever attended at the end of my 8th grade year, when I was embroiled in a conversation about the perfection of the universe with the leader of the guy clique...Much like a typical doubting teenager, he was taking the bold (if well-worn) position that the universe was - to all appearances at least - hopelessly flawed and seemingly random in scope, with no apparent goal or design...and that this made it hard not just to conceive of a Supreme Being, but feel obliged to commune with such a power, with any kind of feeling of gratitude, obedience,  reverence or humility. I was arguing the point that human nature was so "messed up" and "self-centered" that we were not in a position to accurately judge of the status of evil in the grand metaphysical scheme of things. The mixture of good and evil was necessary to maximize the dramatic potential of our individual destinies and to bring out the absolute best in us through a series of mysteriously-planned but precisely calibrated hurdles and challenges. My opponent's name was Gus - who had his peanut gallery backing him up, Gus who gathered minions around himself, Gus who wore well pressed shirts with big starchy collars, Gus who just laughed in my face as if I was spouting outdated science. Our teacher at that point was a former hippie, quasi cultural Catholic, and part-time Buddhist who had an open mind and couldn't resist a good debate.