Kiss-Ass Brownnosing Students (We all know them)

The literature professor begins class with a written quote on the dry erase board:

“To be or not to be: That is the question.”

The professor speaks. “We come, finally, to our goal, our purpose, in this lesson on Hamlet. We are to study, and understand, the eternal question posed in our blackboard quote.”

A male student raises his hand. “Professor, I don’t see a blackboard quote. I see a quote on a dry-erase board, but there is no blackboard in this classroom.”

The professor does not even need to respond. One girl tells this young man to shut up. Another guy, clad in a hemp necklace and Phish t-shirt, appearing more concerned with—yes, to be stereotypical—the bag of weed waiting in his apartment for after class, says, “Dude, you’re not cool.”

The above scenario is fictional, but situations like this play themselves out everyday in college classrooms around the country. And I actually feel kind of bad for this student. There are always guys (and, sometimes, girls) willing and ready to speak out, entirely irrelevant to the class discussion topic, to get a laugh out of the class, to show the professor how witty they are, often in an attempt to impress the ladies. This fictional guy who made the blackboard comment, sadly, falls into the smaller category of awkward guys who can’t pull off a good joke, or even subtle humor, and just hit the ‘what the hell is your problem?’ zone, seen full mode in Super Troopers in the character of Rod Farva. But, at least this guy elicits some sympathy. I have no sympathy for the class brownnoser, or the know-it-all who loves to hear herself speak, or the class idiot.

The class brownnoser is that guy who raises his hand at the most inopportune, the most annoying, times. If the professor has made known his affinity for, say, Steve Carell’s character Michael in The Office, Mr. Brownnoser, you can be sure, will raise his hand and ask the professor’s opinion on Carell’s gay heartbroken Proust scholar character in Little Miss Sunshine, where everyone in the room can tell that he really is not asking the professor a question but bragging to the professor about sharing his artistic tastes. Mr. Brownnoser, having memorized his professor’s CV (Curriculum Vitae), will raise his hand and ask his professor to clarify a point in an essay he wrote in some obscure academic journal, when his real reason for opening his yap, again, is not for a clarification on some point made in a journal, but in bragging that he reads his favorite professor’s writings.

The know-it-all raises her hand all too frequently, not to butter-up the professor, but to butter-up herself. In a class on World War II history, she will be the one to raise her hand not to ask a question or make a real point, but to say how awful she thinks the Holocaust was. “Congratulations,” I feel like saying to her. “I’m glad to see you are against genocide. Now tell us something we don’t all know or agree on.” Sometimes, instead of raising her hand to make a statement showing how great she is, she will actually ask a question. The question will always be along the lines of, “in light of the fact that A is a result of B’s violation of C, following D’s appraisal of E, what would you say about F?” What she is really doing is not asking a question but showing how smart she is.

Worst of all is the class idiot. The class idiot is usually a non-traditional student, someone in her late thirties or forties. After raising a family and feeling a calling to something greater than her current career, she catches the academic bug and enrolls in the local college or university. She will always ask the dumbest questions; questions that don’t even need asking. She is the student who, for example, in a religion class, might say, “But I thought Jesus was a Christian,” after the professor tells the class that Jesus was a 1st century Jew. With a minute or two left in class, and the professor ready to release the students early, but not before his obligatory request for final questions and comments, the class idiot will be sure to raise her hand and keep the other students there past time.

Camp Guggenheim: A Critical Evaluation

Have you ever gone to a themed ride at an amusement park? You know, one of the ones where the staff member pretends to really be a safari guide or space explorer or whatever the ride experience is. He or (or she) will introduce himself with WAYYYYY too much enthusiasm, asking the group, “Is everybody excited to be here!?” Once everyone yells back “yes!”, the tour guide still isn’t satisfied. He has to yell, “I can’t hear you! Say it one more time,” or something of that variation. I hate That Guy. That Guy can be seen in many roles, such as camp counselor, campus minister, RA, Freshmen Orientation leader, and tour guide. I always feel like saying, “dude, you heard us fine the first time. Shut your trap and get on with the show.”

An experience in late August 2005 caused me think, “wait, I am That Guy.” I had just begun my first year teaching religion and history at St. Gregory’s School for Boys. We began the school year by taking the boys on an overnight trip to Camp Chingakook in Lake George, NY. My fellow teachers and I were pretty mellow guys, but upon arrival, the camp counselors met our students with whistles and horns, quickly screaming and shouting with way too much enthusiasm and excitement. They divided the boys up into groups, ran icebreakers (which were quite unnecessary in context; this was not a group of random kids coming to camp who did not know one another. This was a group of boys who had been going to school with one another for years), and, to make matters rather awkward, forced the boys to hold hands in group activities. At night in the cabins, I overheard plenty of talk from the boys about the counselors. Terms such as “annoying,” “dorks,” and “tools” came spouting from these middle school mouths.

I have never been an RA; I have friends who were RA’s. They were very good at it and really enjoyed it. But I would never recommend being an RA to any incoming college student. There are so many other enjoyable work study jobs; why take a job where you are put in a position of being a behavior monitor (that’s what it is) of your peers? Jobs like RA take a certain type of personality. But this same personality type gravitates to camp counseling and campus ministry, two jobs I have done. And while I certainly did enjoy my time at Camp Guggenheim, a Catholic overnight summer camp for youths 12-15 (and one week 16-18), there are certain things, looking back, that I would have changed about the camp.

I was a little more optimistic (and a little more naïve) as a 20 year old embarking on his first summer on staff. I thought I was going to turn the campers into disciples for Christ. I thought I was going to meet a nice female staff member and fall in love (that never happened). I though Guggenheim would be Disney World and Candy Land rolled into one.

It was a great place, I had a lot of fun, and I made some good friends. One of my best friends is a guy I worked with there who just got ordained. But three years distance from the place gives an opportunity for detached perspective. In hindsight, Guggenheim was a good summer camp. Nothing special. Kids had a good time there; I’m sure kids at the thousands of other summer camps around the country had just as good a time. Guggenheim is unique only in the sense that every snowflake is unique. It’s not the greatest thing since sliced bread (for the record, the greatest thing since sliced bread is cheese whiz).

Did the kids cry from joy at the end of each camp week because of the new friendships they made? Did they cry from sadness at having to leave these newfound friends? Yes, but there is also what I consider the “onion” factor that needs to be weighed. If you see a picture of someone crying, her wet eyes may be tears of sadness. Or they may be tears of happiness. She could have tripped and fell and they could be tears of physical pain. Or, maybe she is cutting an onion and they are the natural tears from an onion’s scent.

Again, maybe the tears at the end of each camp week are natural; or maybe it has a little to do with the emotional onion we camp counselors carved by showing video clips of the week with musical background such as Phil Collin’s "True Colors" and Dashboard Confessional’s "So Long Sweet Summer". I call it cued emotional moments.We cued emotion every Wednesday night for the Penance Service. After three days of fun and games, plus uplifting Mass each afternoon, we tell the kids it’s time to be quiet, act sad, and pull out all those sinful moments to confess. Two hours later, its time to bottle those emotions back up and have fun again at the variety show.During prayer gatherings, the play button on the CD player was a cue to hold hands. I was rather indifferent to the hand holding, except when it was really hot out, the song was really long, and my hands got sweaty. What I really found amusing was the overemphasis on hugging during the sign of peace. Now, I have nothing against hugging, per se. I hug people I am close to during the sign of peace. Some people kiss during the sign of peace (which is also fine; the sign of peace is known as the kiss of peace). I personally feel more comfortable giving a handshake, especially to a bunch of kids I just met that week. And, it was not enough to emphasize hugging during the sign of peace. It had to be drawn out for like five minutes so everyone could hug everyone. The funny part was watching the boys go around making sure to hug all the pretty girls.Again (again, again, again), my goal is not to insinuate that Guggenheim is a bad place. It is a good camp. The kids have fun. The counselors make friends with each other. But there is a danger that places like Guggenheim (and events such as retreats: my personal example is the St. Michael’s retreat LEAP. I would explain more about it, but I would offend a lot of people because of that ridiculous pledge of secrecy about the events of the weekend when nothing really needs to be kept secret about what goes on, save personal tidbits that people share) can build up the group equivalent to the Joseph Stalin or JFK cult of personality. At the end of each camp week, we counselors would profess our love for the campers and tell them to go out into the world as disciples. Maybe this is an exaggeration, but maybe it would have been best if we just said “goodbye.” If we just said, “we’re glad you had a good week, come back next year and make more friends.” I don’t know. I just don't like the idea of "timing" emotions, so to speak. Yes, people need times to be happy, and times to be sad. But you can't put a time schedule on it. You can't tell people that Wednesday night between dinner and the variety show is their time to feel bad about their sins. You can't tell kids that a week at camp makes them ready to be disciples. It has to come naturally. The goals of a summer camp (and I speak as a believing Catholic) should be to give kids a good God experience and a good time. I'm not sure a summer camp with a bunch of untrained college students as camp counselors is the place to open children's emotions. But, feel free to criticize me. I could be wrong.

This week, I embark on a new camp quest. I am working at a Catholic camp in Vermont this summer. I am glad I waited three years to work at a camp again. If I had gone to a new camp in 2005, the summer right after my last one at Guggenheim, I probably would have wanted to make the new camp into a kind of Guggenheim. I would have been that annoying guy who said, “This is the way we did it at my old camp.” Now, I am excited to experience this new camp the way it is. I have no desire to make it into a “Guggenheim 2.” I am content to enjoy this camp for what it is, and to take me experience as a teacher to be a mellower camp counselor. I’m sure I will bring out the craziness for things like “Tarzan,” but I know through teaching that kids like it better when I speak to them calmly and friendly, rather than throw on all the extra fake enthusiasm.

Put Down That Book and Turn on the Darn T.V.

I like the new Al Gore. His movie on global warming was enlightening, and if his thesis is true (it probably is) he is a modern day prophet. He has transformed from a stodgy condescending presidential candidate into a venerable public citizen. If only he would have stuck to global warming and not tried solve all our country’s problems, like he is attempting to do in his new best selling book, Assault on Reason. He praises the power of the printed word and its ability to inform citizens in public debate (all well and good), before going in a predictable direction and criticizing T.V. as the cause of all our problems. Fear not! There is a silver lining, says Gore. The Internet can save us. The Internet is the new information superhighway.

I know the Internet has lots of useful information. During my junior year at St. Mike’s, one of my friends had a sketchy roommate. Once a week, my friend had a four-hour night class he had to go to. One evening, as he headed to class, he realized halfway there he had forgotten something. He hurried back to the dorm room to pick it up. As he opened the door, he saw his sketchy roommate sitting in front of the computer, wearing nothing but tighty-whitey underwear, dripping with sweat.

A few days later, I was visiting my friend. His roommate wasn’t around, so we decided to check the computer and see what kind of important research he had been doing. His cookies revealed visits to websites on women from Asia. Apparently, he must have been doing an investigative study of the effects of warm climate on females in southern Asian countries, because most of the websites (I assume, I didn’t open any of the cookies) seemed to be information spots for hot Asian women.

So, Al Gore is right. The Internet grants access to a wealth of important information. Who knows how my friend’s sketchy roommate would have researched that project without the information superhighway. My beef is not with Gore’s praise of the Internet, nor with his praise of books. The written word is swell. I just don’t understand why he believes it necessary to criticize T.V.

Ever since the dawn of man, or at least since the invention of T.V., people have been scolding us to stop watching so much T.V., turn off the T.V., and read more books. Usually these people are delivering their message on T.V. Whenever a film is made based on a novel, you can be sure before the credits roll on the movie premiere, someone will start telling us how much better the book version is.

Somehow, the story goes, civilization began falling apart sometime between the invention of moving pictures and the innovation of the small black and white home television. People put away their books, libraries started growing cobwebs, and families that used to have stimulating conversation over tea about the newest Sherlock Holmes mystery now sat mindlessly staring into the idiot box.

Just like the story of the pretty girl who wears glasses and a ponytail who the boys don’t realize is hot until she takes off the spectacles and lets down her hair, the tale of T.V. ruining us is a myth. The cultural curmudgeons like to trot out their gloomy story of a world where humans read books since the dawn of civilization, but the invention of T.V. has slowly but steadily been pushing books to the dustbin of history. This story is not true. For most of human history, the majority of people were illiterate. The written word was not invented until sometime around 5000 years ago. Modern (homo sapiens) man had been around upwards of a hundred thousand years or more before that during what we call prehistory, since history by definition is the story of man since he first began to write stuff down. The humans of old communicated first through grunting, then through speaking. They left information to their descendents through pictures and stone carvings (such as the pictures in the Lascaux Cave, an early ancestor to the moving pictures we now call T.V.).

Even when humans did create written language, it was (by necessity, since Gutenberg did not invent his printing press until the 15th century AD) limited to a small number of educated people. Stories were told, and information was shared, by word of mouth, or through artistic performance. All the great writers and storytellers through history up until the modern age wrote plays or epic poems. Sophocles wrote Greek tragedies meant to be performed on stage. Shakespeare, the greatest writer the English language has ever known, wrote plays intended to be seen more than read. The epic poems of Homer, Virgil, and Dante were meant to be listened to. We are social creatures, and art is best experienced in community. Motion pictures allow the timeless art of public performance to be transposed to the masses in the comfort of their own homes.

I have no problem with books. I read all the time. But we don’t need to condemn television to appreciate books. Yes, there is bad television. Most new sitcoms suck, and reality T.V. is vapid waste of time and space. But not every book is a classic, either. Have you ever read a Dan Brown novel? Some books are better than the movie version; certain books are too long or dialogue oriented to fit well on screen. Some movies, though, such as The Godfather, are better than paperback originals. Some, such as Lord of the Rings, if done well, though not superior to the book, add to the novel as a nice companion piece. Tonight, put down that book, stop trying to show off, join your friends for a few hours, and turn on the darn T.V.

I Was Wrong: The Grand Inquisitor Story Reinterpreted

In the 1980’s, Madonna was a material girl living in a material world. I was a little boy wetting his pants and watching cartoons. Now, in the 2000’s, Madonna is all grown up and so am I. We no longer live in a material world; I am a Wikipedia boy living in a Wikipedia world.

What does it mean to be a Wikipedia boy in a Wikipedia world? We live in the information snippet age. The Internet grants access to so much info, so much stuff, creating an ever-growing field of important cultural facts and writings to be aware of. But there is just not enough time to really read and become expert in all the important stuff. That’s okay, because Internet sites, most prominently Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that allows users to create and change entries, let us skim the classics of literature, philosophy, and science, giving us just enough sprinkles and hot fudge to confidently take part in the ice cream sundae of intellectual conversation.

Recently I had what Mike Tyson would call an “epithany.” Ever since sophomore year at St. Mike’s, when I first read the legend of the Grand Inquisitor in my Theologies of God class, I have been fascinated with Dostoyevsky’s tale. I’ve read the fable many times over the years, seeing in it a great moral lesson on things such as freedom versus authoritarianism. I even wrote a blog entry on it a while back (http://spidgetales.blogspot.com/2005/11/faith-and-miracles.html). In my “epithany,” I have come to realize I was wrong. I entirely misread the story. You see; The Grand Inquisitor, though often read and taught as a stand-alone narrative, is not an isolated short story. It is a story that takes place in the context of Dostoyevsky’s great novel The Brothers Karamazov. Of course, I had never read the entire novel. Using sites like Wikipedia, I skimmed through plot summaries to catch myself up with the book’s context. To really know something, of course, one (in this case me) cannot just skim Wikipedia; one needs to really read the book.

I began The Brothers Karamazov a month and a half ago. I still have not finished it, but I am almost two-thirds through, and I have long since passed The Grand Inquisitor chapter. In light of what I’ve read in the novel, I am fairly confident I have a better grasp on the old legend. The Grand Inquisitor story, I believe, is far darker than a story of freedom versus authoritarianism, as I had mistakenly assumed. And if I’m wrong again, I can always check Wikipedia to fix my new mistakes.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the great nihilist philosopher, was a contemporary of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. They held diametrically opposed views on religion. Dostoyevsky was an orthodox Christian and Nietzsche an avowed atheist. Yet, they did admire one another and were in agreement on the implications of the Enlightenment. They both agreed with Dostoyevsky’s words: “If there is no God, all is lawful.”

Nietzsche wrote a fascinating book called “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” Zarathustra comes down the mountain and enters the village ranting and raving like a crazy man. “God is dead,” he shouts. “And you killed Him,” he accosts the villagers. These villagers he speaks to are not born again Christians, fundamentalists, or any other pejorative we moderns assign to those we consider backward religious folk. The villagers are atheists themselves. Nietzsche’s prophet Zarathustra is accusing atheists of killing God.

The town atheists are symbolic of the Enlightenment movement. Following the Reformation and the religious wars, thinkers came to the conclusion that we ought not kill one another because of our differences over belief in God. Morality and values judgments to this point had been tied into religion and religious belief. Enlightenment thinkers said that instead of basing morality on what we believe God regards as just, right and wrong should be based on human reason. Through human reason, we can deduce what are the right actions to do.

(This is actually somewhat close to what St. Thomas Aquinas said. Aquinas taught that man can read the natural law through his heart and know what actions are just and unjust. This natural law, like all of creation, he taught came from God. William of Ockham, however, shifted most of the Church in an unfortunate direction away from Aquinas. While Aquinas had taught that, for example, murder is wrong because life is an inviolable good given to us by God, Ockham taught that murder is wrong because God arbitrarily decided to condemn murder through divine command—the implication being that God could easily change his mind and make good be bad, up be down, etc. The Enlightenment thinkers were not really criticizing a true Christian ethic as embodied in the teachings of Aquinas, but rather the nominalism of Ockham.)

Most people mistakenly pluralize the Book of Revelation, referring to it as “Revelations.” What they should pluralize is “Enlightenment.” It’s not really accurate to speak of THE Enlightenment. What we witnessed in the 17th and 18th centuries is a series of Enlightenments. There is no one Enlightenment thinker. We meet diverse thinkers like Descartes, Locke, Bentham, Kant, and Hume. All claimed to construct a way of seeing morality and making value judgments from below. That is, each claimed to create a universal moral outlook from the viewpoint of mankind, not from God above. Each claimed to step beyond, to step outside of, narrow parochial interests and viewpoints, and create a way of looking at the world from a detached perspective.

The problem with the move to shift morality and value judgments from the realm of the divine to the mind of man, Nietzsche points out, is that each Enlightenment thinker came up with his own slightly (sometimes more than slightly) different perspective. If we shift values from the mind of God to the mind of man, which man gets to be the new God? All the Enlightenment did, said Nietzsche, was transpose the old Christian framework to a new base. The Enlightenment man tries to keep the old God inspired worldview while simultaneously dropping God. This can’t be done, says Nietzsche. When you “kill” God, when you remove God from the equation, you can’t hold onto a world with values. Value and meaning go out the window too. “You have killed God,” shouts Zarathustra. Be ready to accept the implications of your deicide.

Dostoyevsky the man struggled with the question of God his whole life. In his last and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, he creates characters with diverging viewpoints to wrestle with the question of God. Our family patriarch, Fyodor Karamazov, a drunken womanizing buffoon, is unsure about the existence of God. He realizes he is a great sinner, and instead of struggling to reform, he chooses to bask in his licentious ways; if he is going to be a sinner, why not go all the way. As he says in Book 4, Chapter 2, “I mean to go on in my sins to then end, let me tell you. For sin is sweet; all abuse it, but all men live in it, only others do it on the sly, and I openly.”

Fyodor Karamazov’s three sons, Dmitri, Ivan, and Alyosha, symbolize the flesh, the mind, and the soul. Dmitri, like his father, delights in sins of the flesh. Ivan received a Western education, and is an atheist intellectual. Alyosha is a kindhearted monk. They are all aware of our fallen world, and the suffering that fills it. Each represents a different response to life on a post Eden Earth. Dmitri dives into the swimming pool of sin; why fight it when you can enjoy it. Ivan tries to detach himself from sin and suffering, and look upon it with scorn from an intellectual distance. Alyosha confronts sin and suffering through a life of self-giving love.

Issues become complicated with the introduction of two women, Katerina and Grushenka. Dmitri offers Katerina money to sleep with him. When Katerina accepts his offer, Dmitri relents out of shame. He lets her keep the money, but refuses to defile her. Katerina feels to indebted to Dmitri, and vows to love him forever for this kind deed. They become engaged.

Dmitri soon falls in love with another woman, Grushenka. This same Grushenka is the love interest of Dmitri’s father, Fyodor. Katerina, herself, has fallen in love with Dmitri’s brother Ivan, and he with her. But she vows to remain true to Dmitri even in his infidelity, to show him how great she is and make him forever indebted to her because of her “suffering love.”

When Fyodor Karamazov is murdered, accusations of patricide are thrown, and questions of guilt are raised based on each brother’s attitude toward life, including supposed illegitimate son Smerdyokov (the son of a local retarded woman pejoratively nicknamed Stinking Lizaveta; the liaison between Lizaveta and Fyodor is speculated but never definitively proven).

The Grand Inquisitor legend takes place in Book 5, Chapter 5. Ivan, the atheist brother, tells his brother Alyosha, the monk, a grand tale. He prefaces the story with an old tale of the Virgin Mary’s descent into Hell. She witnesses the suffering of the sinners burning in the lake of Hell, and pleads with God for mercy on their behalf. God grants the sinners a reprieve from suffering every year from Good Friday through Easter Sunday.

Ivan then moves on to his main story, which takes place in Seville, Spain during the height of the Inquisition. Cardinal Torquemada, the ninety-year-old Grand Inquisitor, is busy burning heretics at the stake. He has lost his own personal faith, but feels that faith is necessary for the people, or they will fall apart in despair. So, he tortures those who question Christianity to prevent the common people from doubting and falling into anguish.

Into this pit of suffering walks Christ. He is not back for the Second Coming, but rather just a visit, so to speak. The people instantly recognize Him. They flock to Him, and He embraces them, performing healings and miracles. The Grand Inquisitor sees this and has Christ arrested. ‘You have no right to come back now,’ Torquemada admonishes Christ. ‘We have things under control.’

Torquemada brings up the three temptations in the desert, when Satan confronted Christ. ‘You were wrong to reject the Devil’s temptation to turn stones into bread,’ says Torquemada. Saying ‘man does not live on bread alone, but on the word of God,’ means nothing to the common people who are starving and need bread, not words of spiritual comfort.

‘You were wrong to reject the Devil’s second temptation, to jump off the Temple and have God send His angels to save you (and reply to the Devil, ‘Scripture says don’t tempt the Lord),’ says Torquemada. The people don’t want to have blind faith; they want to be awed by miracles.

‘You were wrong to reject the Devil’s final temptation, to bow down before him and have power over the people,’ says Torquemada. If Christ had compelled obedience instead of condemning people to freedom, then there would be no heretics raising doubts about the faith and Torquemada would not be “forced” to burn people at the stake to insure happiness.

‘I will burn you with the other heretics,’ says Torquemada. Christ does not respond with words. He instead gives the old man a kiss. Torquemada shudders, then releases Him, telling Him to go and never return.

There are many interpretations of this story. Torquemada is seen as the Russian Orthodox caricature of Catholicism, using hierarchy and power to control the people and compel belief in Christ. The Christ figure in the story is seen as the Russian Orthodox caricature of Protestantism, with its emphasis on freedom of conscience as the path to Christ. We can also see an allegory of Communism (The Grand Inquisitor) versus Capitalism (Christ). In my original analysis of the story, I saw the Grand Inquisitor as a representation of dogmatic faith used to compel people to belief, and the Christ figure as the symbol of freedom. I saw the Christ figure as the hero of the story, representing the noble truth that faith must come freely, not through compulsion. Yet, my interpretation was wrong.

The Grand Inquisitor story is often (mistakenly) seen as Dostoyevsky’s personal view on freedom versus authority. It is seen as an allegory for the endless debates and arguments in religion, government, and public life about how much freedom should be granted and how much freedom should be taken away to ensure security. This is NOT Dostoyevsky’s view. The Grand Inquisitor story is a legend told by Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan, from the point of view of Ivan.

Ivan is an atheist, and in Book Five, Chapter Four: Rebellion, the chapter immediately preceding the Grand Inquisitor chapter, Ivan outlines the reasons for his atheism. He begins in acknowledgement of an understanding of Theodicy. Ivan understands the Christian teaching that God is omniscient and completely good. He understands the idea of God creating humans with free will, that man sinned of his own accord, bringing suffering and death into the world. He understands that God will reward the just and punish the wicked, setting things back in balance. But he cannot accept this viewpoint of the world.

Maybe adults deserve suffering, because “they’ve eaten the apple and know good and evil…and go on eating it still. But the children haven’t eaten anything, an are so far innocent,” says Ivan. He gives particular examples. There is the story of a Turk soldier pointing a gun in a baby’s face. The baby smiles and laughs, holding its hands out to the pistol before the soldier pulls the trigger and blows off its face. There is the story of a general who kept a kennel of hundreds of dogs. A little boy about eight throws a stone at the dogs and hurts the general’s prized hound. The boy was taken from his mother, stripped naked in the cold, and ordered to run. The general sent the pack of dogs after the boy, and they tore him to pieces.

Ivan cannot accept a world in which children such as these have to suffer. Explaining this suffering through free will does not justify it. Even if the general or the Turk soldier get punished, or get sent to the fires of Hell, it still does not take away the cruelty done. Even if that little boy is reunited in Heaven with his mother, still, it does not make sense why he needed to be torn to bits to justify a creation in which humans have freedom to inflict this kind of suffering. “It’s not that I don’t accept God…it’s the world created by Him I don’t and cannot accept,” says Ivan. “It’s not God that I don’t accept, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.”

Is there a better option for Ivan than traditional Christian Theodicy? Maybe the world would make more sense if we got rid of God, if we built a world based on the reason and rationality of man, as the Enlightenment thinkers attempted to do. Or, maybe there is something missing in Ivan’s indictment. Alyosha brings up this point, pointing to Jesus as “a being in the whole world who would have the right to forgive and could forgive” humankind’s atrocities. Ivan smiles at this question and responds in the following chapter with his story of the Grand Inquisitor.

My earlier reading of Torquemada as the bad guy and the Jesus figure as the good guy is too simplistic. The figure of Torquemada is representative of Ivan. Torquemada and Ivan are both atheists. Neither can understand why God would create a world in which (according to them) humans are burdened (condemned) to a blind freedom in which they must come to faith in Christ with nary a miracle to inspire them (save the handful of miracles recorded in the Bible). With these odds, most will fail to come to faith in Christ, resulting in eternal suffering. Even if the legend of the Virgin Mary’s visit to Hell is true, the annual three-day reprieve from suffering cannot justify the suffering sinners face because God condemned them to blind freedom. The Christ figure in the Grand Inquisitor story is not the good guy, but the bad guy. Instead of giving man bread, miracles, and authority, things that would actually give man sustenance, hope, and order, he condemns man to blind faith, resulting in suffering for the multitudes and bliss only for the small number of devout faithful strong willed enough to keep the faith and make it to Heaven.

The Grand Inquisitor story is not really an allegory about freedom versus security or freedom versus authoritarianism. It is Ivan’s critique of life itself. It is Ivan’s critique of life, God or no God, as seen from the perspective of Torquemada. At the beginning of the story, as I noted, Torquemada is an atheist. He sees himself as one of the enlightened few who is burdened to bear the truth about the meaninglessness of life. If the masses knew the truth, they would despair. It is better to give the people ‘bread, miracle, and authority;’ it is better people believe and go into death and nothingness in a state of happy ignorance than know the truth that there is no pie in the sky. When Jesus comes, it makes the problem worse. Now that Torquemada sees that God is real, the problem of suffering is worse. The free will excuse is not good enough. Free will is not worth it if it condemns humanity to suffering.

Ivan sees only two options. Either there is no God, life ends at death, and existence is a meaningless fraud, or God is a monster for condemning us to suffering because of our free will.

What is the response to Ivan’s view in The Brothers Karamazov? I have not yet finished the book, so I cannot answer. Yes, I’ve skimmed Wikipedia. Wikipedia says Dostoyevsky’s response can be seen in the words of Alyosha’s spiritual mentor Fr. Zossima, and in the way Ivan’s life plays out. But I’ve made the mistake of relying on Wikipedia for background information already. Before an analysis or critique of Ivan’s view, I will finish the book.

Will my response to Ivan be an exhortation for the detached perspective of the Enlightenment? I have to say it will not. While taking Nietzsche’s perspective on a world without God, Ivan embodied the Enlightenment view of remaining detached from the nitty-gritty of life. I’ve already erred as Wikipedia boy of the 2000’s. I will not advocate going backwards further, rejecting God, embracing a purely ‘natural’ viewpoint, and becoming a 1980’s Material Girl.

Getting Punched in the Face at the Public Library

“The jealous man can forgive extraordinarily quickly (though, of course, after a violent scene), and he is able to forgive infidelity almost conclusively proved, the very kisses and embraces he has seen, if only he can somehow be convinced that it has all been ‘for the last time,’ and that his rival will vanish that day forward, will depart to the ends of the earth, or that he himself will carry her away somewhere, where that dreaded rival will not get near her. Of course the reconciliation is only for an hour. For, even if the rival did disappear next day, he would invent another one and be jealous of him. And one might wonder what there was in a love that had to be so watched over, what a love could be worth that needed such strenuous guarding. But that the jealous will never understand.” Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.” Matthew 6:5-6

Yesterday I got punched in the face at the library. At the public library. I sat at a computer screen in the middle of the main room, minding my business, when what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a fat man (not St. Nick) rudely berating his dear. I sprang from my seat to see what was the matter; the angry man screamed and screamed much blather.

This was no scene from a Clement Clark Moore medley. A short fat man, appearing in his mid 30’s, about 5’6”, 230 lbs, wearing shorts, a t-shirt, a baseball cap, and a mean looking goatee, confronted a woman in the far corner of the library’s main room. Presumable his girlfriend or ex-girlfriend, he began yelling and swearing at her, commanding her to give him the keys to their house. Me and the four or five other male patrons (all appearing in their 50’s and 60’s), glanced eerily at the confrontation, not sure whether to intervene or allow the lady librarians to politely ask him to be quiet and/or leave.

He grabbed the woman, and at this she yelled for the librarians to call the cops. She tried to walk away, but he followed her. Me and the other men got between them. I stood between the man and the woman. The fat ass told me to get out of his way. I stayed where I was. Apparently, this made him a teeny-weeny bit mad. He took a ring out of his pocket and put it on his finger. Now, that’s the sign of a real man.

I glanced around to make sure the woman was okay and the other men were around (yeah, I was concerned for my own pretty face, too). Wham! He gave me a quick bop in the nose with his right fist. It didn’t really hurt. My first thought was, “shit, I better not have a broken nose.” Thankfully, my nose turned out okay, with two small cuts and a little bleeding. Another man wasn’t so lucky; the short fat guy bit his arm.

We noticed a knife on the fat man’s belt and backed away. The woman ran to the back wall. He got to her and grabbed her hair. Fortunately, the cops arrived then and pulled him away.

I didn’t feel personally violated or hurt at the punch. But I pressed charges at the police station anyway. And I hope the man who got bit does too. This is a case of an abusive relationship, and sadly, sometimes the woman blames herself and actually believes the man when he says it won’t happen again. If it takes me pressing charged to get him put away, so be it.

I passed on taking the ambulance to the hospital with the man who got bit. One, I really wasn’t hurt, and two, I had a doctor’s scheduled anyways for later that day. Which I kind of wish I hadn’t, because what I most felt like was going to the bar and having a drink, something that would have to wait for after my doctor visit. Along with this thinking in twos mentality, two things went through my mind all day after this happened:

(1) What makes a man believe he is justified in hitting a woman? This man truly believed that he was in the right. He could not understand why everybody confronted him. Why do women go for these jealous, emotionally fragile, sorry excuses for men? The apologies of this sort of man are not authentic but rather manipulative attempts to allow himself to abuse the woman again.

(2) I know Jesus said we should keep our good deeds to ourselves. We should be good without any desire for reward or honors. We should be like the guy who prays in quiet, not the man who brags about how righteous he is. But I am a flawed human like all others (save Mary and Jesus) since our first parents ate the fruit of the tree. And, I will say that my actions “were nothing; anyone would done what I did if he were in my place.” But, did I like it when a couple of older ladies witnessing the scene complemented me on my bravery? You bet. Will I tell the story about my adventure in the library when people ask me throughout the week how I got this cut on the right side of nose? Damn right I will. Will I tell it in a way where I downplay my actions but secretly hope people are impressed anyway? Yes.