Stuck on Stupid

Unwanted Breakfast

“Stupid,” thought Andrew as he eyed the toast and bacon Marge had prepared for his breakfast. He knew he didn’t have a choice, he’d have to eat it. The fact he wasn’t hungry made no difference to Marge. She insisted that he eat something. She was the housekeeper and Andrew’s mother had told him she must be obeyed.  But that was not what was stupid.

His dad wouldn’t make him eat it. Andrew was sure of that. But his dad wasn’t there. He didn’t know where his dad was, other than at some remote site as part of his engineering job. He knew his dad only by intermittent interaction, limited to the few weeks of the year his dad happened to be at home. Andrew was in sixth grade already, and his dad was simply not a part of his life. But that wasn’t what was stupid either.

Nor could he appeal to his mother about eating the toast and bacon.  She wasn’t there so must be showing a house again. That’s what she did for a living, showed and sold houses. If she wasn’t showing a house then she was probably out shopping. She did that a lot too. He couldn’t remember her ever doing that on Sunday morning but, who knew? It made no difference anyway, she wasn’t home. But even that wasn’t stupid. It was just normal life.

 Only his two older sisters were around. They were upstairs, getting ready for church. Agnes was a year older than he, Rebecca a year older than Agnes.

Going To Church

Like his sisters, Andrew had never been to a church. Unlike his sisters he had never been invited to one. His sisters were going because they’d been invited by one of their high school friends. He could hear them chattering as they came down the stairs, all in a tizzy about their outfits, how they looked, what might happen inside a church, all that stuff. 

Going to church. That was what was stupid.

Why was it stupid? Because it made him feel better to call it stupid. He wanted to go to see if it was like he’d seen on TV.  But to go meant he’d have to beg his sisters to tag along with them. That wouldn’t work, he knew, because they’d say no. Plus, it would mean he’d be the only boy. So, definitely not an option.

Going to church. It was stupid.

“Tell me if it’s like the TV preachers,” he said to them.

His sisters’ surprised reactions revealed they’d never thought of that possibility.  They became  even more excited. 

“My God! Agnes! Do you know what that means? We might be on TV!” squealed Rebecca. 

Andrew shook his head.  Stupid. 

Topping it all off, his toast and bacon were now cold. Eating it cold would be stupid. And just like that there were two kinds of stupid. Going to church without him was stupid. Eating cold toast and bacon was stupid. It hadn’t been stupid before, when it was still hot. But now it was cold. He was stuck on stupid.

First Bible

Later that afternoon his sisters returned, each carrying a small Bible.

“Let me see,” said Andrew.

Inside, he saw different sections, some of them named after people. He paged through a few of them and saw the English was all weird. They used words like “thee,” “ye,” and “saith.” Who talked like that?

“We both asked Jesus into our hearts,” said Rebecca. 

“Huh?” said Andrew. 

This was something new, asking someone into your heart. How did that work? 

Now he was glad he’d thought going to church was stupid.  He’d been right!  

He knew about his heart. It was beating inside his chest. Physically speaking, what they said they’d done was impossible. He’d heard of a boy and girl loving each other with all their hearts, but that was different.

“We prayed with some people,” said Agnes, “and asked Jesus to forgive our sins and to come into our hearts.”

“You prayed,” said Andrew, “like they do on TV, to someone you can’t even see?”

“Yes,” Agnes replied.

“Why? What did they do to get you to do that? Did they make you?” 

“No, it’s so we can go to heaven,” said Rebecca.

“Yeah, when we die,” added Agnes.

“How do you know if it worked?” asked Andrew.

“Well, they said it did, and they gave us these Bibles so we could learn more about it, and it seemed like the right thing to do, somehow.”

Andrew looked at them, first one, then the other. He saw both believed whatever it was they had done was real.  He believed it was real too. Real stupid. In fact, it took stupid to an entirely new level.

So much for that. 

Light Speed

Later that school year Andrew learned about the speed of light. It intrigued him so much he received permission to do an extra credit project on it. 

Surprisingly, his sisters took an interest in what he was doing and, watching him work on his light splitting apparatus, Agnes said, “Even though they teach it, I would never have guessed light has a speed. It just seems instantaneous.”

“That’s what makes the universe so big,” said Andrew. “There are stars we can’t even see because they’re so far away that their light hasn’t reached us yet.”

“I wonder why God would do that,” mused Rebecca. “I mean, why create something that’s impossible for us to see?”

Andrew looked at her, squinting, confused,  “What?”

It Was Created

“It says in the Bible that God created everything.  The sun, moon, stars, animals, and man,” Rebecca told him.

Agnes added, “Yeah, and I read that the earth is only ten thousand years old.  Not the millions and millions of years they taught us in geology.”

Andrew snickered, “Really? It says that in the Bible?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Agnes. “But In the book I read, they used what was written in the Bible about people’s ages, and using that, they calculated the Earth’s age to be no more than ten thousand years old.”

Andrew shook his head, “See? Now that can’t be right. We see stars whose light took a lot longer than ten thousand years to get here.”

Both Agnes and Rebecca looked at each other, neither knowing what to say.  

Then Agnes shrugged and said, “Well, maybe so.  But at least the creation story makes sense. And that part’s in the Bible, so we can trust that. Plus, you know what? Maybe the shorter time is correct. Since God created Adam and Eve all grown up, maybe he created the Earth with the stars’ light already reaching it. That makes sense.”

“That’s true!” said Rebecca. “Plus, its way easier to believe the Bible than evolution.”

At this, Andrew’s mind snapped. They were even going to make up things just to continue believing the Bible! It was useless to argue with them. With an exasperated sigh, he shook his head again, and turned back to his experiment. 

Adjusting the prism and mirrors he was using to split the light, he wondered at the obstinance of his sisters.  Ever since they had “asked Jesus into their hearts” they seemed different somehow. He didn’t really have a problem with the Jesus and heart thing, other than it seemed stupid, in a harmless way.  It bugged him a bit that his sisters continued to go to church on their own now. He’d known that was stupid from the get-go. 

But what really clinched it was that now they were denying reality. Even if this God in the Bible had created everything with light reaching the earth like they imagined, their discounting evolution was denying reality. That was categorically stupid.

It All Evolved

Everyone knew evolution was true. After all, they taught it in school. Agnes had even mentioned she’d learned it when her class was studying geology. But yet, neither of them believed it. Why? Because the Bible said something different! Stupid. Dangerously stupid.

It was almost as if they’d been brainwashed. He remembered watching a TV special about people being brainwashed. This Jim Jones guy had killed people by convincing them to drink poisoned Kool-Aid.  Those people should have known better, but they were stupid. They’d been brainwashed. 

No, his sisters wouldn’t have fallen for something like that. But this Bible stuff they were believing was seriously affecting their view of reality. And that was seriously stupid. 

The trouble was, in other ways his sisters seemed to have benefited from what they’d done. They still teased him mercilessly at times.  That hadn’t changed. But he’d been dumbfounded when Rebecca had asked him for forgiveness for making him do something they both knew was wrong. Something that would’ve gotten him in serious trouble if he’d been caught. 

He’d gotten away with it, free and clear, but Rebecca asking for forgiveness had seriously jolted him. She’d even said her forcing him to do it had been sin.  He knew she would never have regretted it like that before she’d “asked Jesus into her heart.” 

Double Truth

How could this being saved business make them better, but also make them deny reality?

He asked Marge what she thought. 

“Good question,” she said, looking at him thoughtfully.

“What should I do?” Andrew asked, “Don’t they see they’re being stupid?”

“I think it would be best to not make a big to-do about it,” she answered.

“But they’re—” he began.

“Look at it this way,” she said, “they believe the Bible is the Word of God and is error-free.”

“See, that’s the stupid part,” Andrew started again.  “How can they believe that?”

Marge affectionately looked at him.“Wondering why people believe certain things is often frustrating. Think of a book. A nonfiction book, you know, like a true story. Before believing it, you have to decide whether you can trust the author, right? For the Bible, that means you have to determine whether you can trust God. He authored it by guiding the thoughts of the humans doing the writing.” 

Andrew frowned. He hadn’t thought of that. 

She went on, “Actually, even before deciding if he’s trustworthy, you have to decide if he really  exists.  If he does, and you trust him to tell the truth, would he deliberately write something  false, and lie to you?”

Andrew was squinting, following her logic.

“You don’t like it when your friends lie to you do you?” Marge asked

“No,” said Andrew.

“So if God exists, he wouldn’t earn any brownie points if he lied to you, right?” asked Marge.

“No,” said Andrew again.

“Exactly,” said Marge. “Your sisters have decided God exists, loves them and hasn’t lied to them. That’s why they believe everything in the Bible, including the creation account that you see conflicting with reality.”

A Difficult Choice

“But,” Andrew was now shaking his head in disagreement, “that’s not what they teach in school.”

“What they teach in school,” said Marge, “is an explanation that doesn’t rely on the existence of God. And that brings us right back to where we started, determining if God exists and whether we can trust him.”

“Personally,” she added, “I think it takes a far greater leap of faith to believe evolution than it does to believe God.”

Andrew raised his eyebrows, then walked away. How could someone be so smart, and make so much sense, and be stupid at the same time?