I attended a Catholic school until I was fourteen. In the eighth grade, we spent most of our religion classes preparing for the sacrament of Confirmation.
The school’s deacon, Mr. Rowe—the unacknowledged winner of a non-existent Ward Cleaver look-alike contest who pandered to the predominantly Italian-descent school body by insisting that he too was Italian; all you had to do was flip the “W” in his name around; See? Mr. RoMe! — presided over the first religion class that year.
With gravity befitting a funeral, he solemnly instructed us to engage in what he termed “a vital lesson in thinking about God.”
The thrust of the lesson was simple enough. He gave everyone a blank sheet of white paper and instructed us to draw how we imagined God.
“I want you to go beyond how you have imagined God until now. Reach deep down into your faith and see what you find there,” he said evenly.
I drew an adult man. Not a venerable man with a Michelangelo-esque flowing white beard reclining on a cloud, but a nondescript man with a gentle face and a short, dark beard standing with one hand outstretched toward the viewer.
Mr. Rowe made his rounds in the class while we worked. When saw my drawing, he paused and cupped his chin with his right hand.
“Is that supposed to be Jesus?” he asked.
“Yes. I guess it is.”
Mr. Rowe’s eyes narrowed a tad, and I listened awkwardly to the tense breath he inhaled through his tight lips.
“He’s wearing pants.”
“Well, a lot of time has passed since he went to heaven,” I answered meekly.
After another tense inhalation, Mr. Rowe nodded and continued making his rounds.
When everyone finished their drawings, Mr. Rowe selected a few to present to the class. The drawings he chose as exemplary depictions of God featured things like crosses floating in the solar system, clouds emitting all sorts of strange rays and beams, amorphous blobs of energy suspended in nothingness, or three crackling orbs of ball lightning united within one seemingly translucent sphere.
“These,” said Mr. Rowe, sweeping his hand dramatically past the drawings he had pinned to the corkboard, “display a mature awareness of the complexity of God as pure spirit, a vision of the Almighty glorious and absolute, rising above more underdeveloped notions of God as a man that a few students produced.”
He paused and leveled a brief, pitying glance at me before turning it upon the other “God-as-man" artists in the class.
“It’s not that those ideas are wrong. They’re just simple. They lack complexity. The sort of complexity you should all meditate and pray upon as you prepare for Confirmation.”
I felt my face redden a little, and I averted my eyes to the floor. When I raised them again, I focused on the amorphous energy blobs and orbs of ball lightning on the corkboard.
I silently wondered how anyone could ever hope to pray to those things.
The incident made a deep impression on me. I ended up withdrawing from the sacrament of Confirmation altogether.
The school’s deacon, Mr. Rowe—the unacknowledged winner of a non-existent Ward Cleaver look-alike contest who pandered to the predominantly Italian-descent school body by insisting that he too was Italian; all you had to do was flip the “W” in his name around; See? Mr. RoMe! — presided over the first religion class that year.
With gravity befitting a funeral, he solemnly instructed us to engage in what he termed “a vital lesson in thinking about God.”
The thrust of the lesson was simple enough. He gave everyone a blank sheet of white paper and instructed us to draw how we imagined God.
“I want you to go beyond how you have imagined God until now. Reach deep down into your faith and see what you find there,” he said evenly.
I drew an adult man. Not a venerable man with a Michelangelo-esque flowing white beard reclining on a cloud, but a nondescript man with a gentle face and a short, dark beard standing with one hand outstretched toward the viewer.
Mr. Rowe made his rounds in the class while we worked. When saw my drawing, he paused and cupped his chin with his right hand.
“Is that supposed to be Jesus?” he asked.
“Yes. I guess it is.”
Mr. Rowe’s eyes narrowed a tad, and I listened awkwardly to the tense breath he inhaled through his tight lips.
“He’s wearing pants.”
“Well, a lot of time has passed since he went to heaven,” I answered meekly.
After another tense inhalation, Mr. Rowe nodded and continued making his rounds.
When everyone finished their drawings, Mr. Rowe selected a few to present to the class. The drawings he chose as exemplary depictions of God featured things like crosses floating in the solar system, clouds emitting all sorts of strange rays and beams, amorphous blobs of energy suspended in nothingness, or three crackling orbs of ball lightning united within one seemingly translucent sphere.
“These,” said Mr. Rowe, sweeping his hand dramatically past the drawings he had pinned to the corkboard, “display a mature awareness of the complexity of God as pure spirit, a vision of the Almighty glorious and absolute, rising above more underdeveloped notions of God as a man that a few students produced.”
He paused and leveled a brief, pitying glance at me before turning it upon the other “God-as-man" artists in the class.
“It’s not that those ideas are wrong. They’re just simple. They lack complexity. The sort of complexity you should all meditate and pray upon as you prepare for Confirmation.”
I felt my face redden a little, and I averted my eyes to the floor. When I raised them again, I focused on the amorphous energy blobs and orbs of ball lightning on the corkboard.
I silently wondered how anyone could ever hope to pray to those things.
The incident made a deep impression on me. I ended up withdrawing from the sacrament of Confirmation altogether.
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