What Would Jesus Teach?

Jimmy and I were in his back yard tossing the baseball around. Dana from the trailer next door walked outside and ran over to us. "I need a big favor," she said to Jimmy. "That was my work on the phone. They need me to come in, like, right away, so can you pick Sierra up from school?" She clasped her hands in front of her. "Please?"

"I can't," Jimmy said, tossing the ball into his own glove. "Wait a minute, when does she get out of school?"

"Three o'clock."

Jimmy shook his head. "No, I can't. I have to load up the boys and go to Hagerstown to get WIC at 3:30."

Dana stamped her foot. "Fuck!"

Jimmy turned to me. "Well, Steve, would you have time to go pick her up?"

I shrugged. "Yeah, sure. I guess I can." I looked at Dana. "If you don't think she would mind."

"No, she won't care," Dana said. "She likes you. So, you can go get her?"

"Sure," I said. "I'll pick her up."

"And then just bring her back here. She has her own key, and David will be home around 3:30, so she should be fine."

I looked at my watch: it was 2:38. "Where's she go to school - up here at Fountain Rock?"

"No," Dana said, "it's at, um, Broadfording Christian Academy. You know where that's at?"

"Yeah," I said. "I'd better get going, then."

"I'm going to call the school and let them know you're coming to get her," Dana said, "and then I have to go to work. Thank you, so much." She ran back inside her trailer.

Jimmy tossed me my baseball. "Get goin', school bus driver," he said.

I parked along the curb in front of the school and Sierra came walking out a few minutes after three. She climbed into the truck and sat down next to me. "Hey, kid, how are you?" I asked.

"I'm fine," she said pleasantly. "How are you?"

"I'm good." I put the truck in drive and pulled away from the curb. "Did they let you know I was coming to get you?"

"Yes, my teacher told me a few minutes ago."

"Your mom had to go to work, and your dad wasn't home yet, and Jimmy had to take Hunter and Cameron with him into town. And I was around, so . . ."

"You volunteered!" she said, smiling.

"That's exactly what I did. I volunteered."

"Are you going to be at Jimmy's house after you take me home?"

"No, sweetheart, actually I have to go my girlfriend's house to make dinner."

"You can cook?"

"I can boil water," I said with a shrug. "Then after dinner, I think we might go see a movie."

"What movie are you going to see?"

"We haven't decided, I don't think."

"Oh." Sierra stared out the windshield and watched the road for a bit. "What's your favorite movie?" she asked me eventually.

"It's called Sherlock Jr.," I said. "It stars and was directed by a wonderful actor named Buster Keaton, and it was made in 1925."

"Wow, that's old!"

"It is, but it's a very good movie," I said. "What's your favorite movie?"

"I don't know," Sierra said. "I think it might be Jonah."

I wrinkled my brow. "I don't think I ever heard of that one."

"It's from a Bible story," Sierra explained.

"Oh, I see."

"Only instead of people, all the people are vegetables."

"Oh, you mean that Veggie Tales movie," I said, wrinkling my nose. "Shit, Sierra, your mom makes you watch that?"

"I enjoy it," she said. "And you said a bad word. You shouldn't say that word."

"Who told you that?"

"It says so in the Bible."

"Where at?"

"I don't know," Sierra said, "but it's in there."

"You should look it up," I said. "Find out for sure where it says I can't say 'shit.'" We passed Sheetz. Lloyd was sitting at the intersection waiting to pull out. He saw me and waved. I blew the horn at him as we went by.

"Who was that?" Sierra asked.

"A friend of my dad's," I said. "What did you do in school today?"

She heaved a sigh and shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing."

"You got homework?"

"A little," she said. "I have a story to read. And some math to do."

"What have they got you reading - like, St. Thomas Aquinas?"

"What's that?"

"Nothing, nevermind."

Sierra looked behind the seats. "Are those your books for school?" she asked.

"Yep."

"They're really big."

"Yeah, but fortunately I don't have to read every single page," I said.

"They look heavy."

"Well, maybe by the time you're old enough to go to college, they'll have smaller books."

She reached behind my seat and pulled the top book off the pile. "What's this one?" she asked, holding the book in front of her.

"Oh," I said, glancing over at her, "that's actually not for school. I'm just reading that one because I want to."

"What's it about?" she asked, flipping through the pages.

"The origin of the universe."

"What does that mean?"

I grinned. "Where the world came from."

"Oh, we learned about that in school, too!"

"Did you?" I said, a little surprised. "What all did you learn?"

"How God created everything in six days," Sierra said. "And how he made the first people and put them in the Garden of Eden. And the first man's name was Adam, and he's who named all the animals and plants and things."

"They teach you that in Science class?"

Sierra shrugged. "I guess so." She studied me for a few seconds. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. That just sounds like something they ought to talk about in church instead of in school."

"Why?"

"Well, because. It's a little complicated. The story of the Creation in the Bible is a religious myth. And as a religious myth it might contain some truth, but it's not the sort of thing that should be taught in schools, especially to little kids like you who don't know any better, and least of all in a Science class."

Sierra regarded me from her seat, puzzled. "Then what should they teach in Science class?"

"Well, for instance, if you want to talk about where the universe came from, you should teach the scientific facts and theories about that, and leave the Bible out of it."

"So, you don't think that God made the world?" Sierra asked.

"I don't know that he did, and I don't know that he didn't," I said.

"Where do you think the world came from?"

"I don't know for sure. That's the thing - nobody knows for sure. But I can tell you what a lot of very intelligent people think about it."

"What do they think?"

"They think the universe - which includes everything, the Sun and the Moon and all the planets and stars and everything - was created a very, very long time ago in an explosion called the Big Bang. Before the Big Bang, everything in the entire universe, including the stuff that you and me are made of, was smashed into a tiny little dot, smaller than anything you could possibly imagine. And then, for some reason, it just exploded, and everything that was pressed together in that tiny little dot was thrown outward, and the universe was created."

"So the Earth and everything was smashed into a little dot?"

"Not exactly. But all the stuff that the Earth is made of was in there. See, after the Big Bang, everything was very hot. It took a long time for space to cool down, but once it did, all that stuff that was released in the Big Bang started to come together in all sorts of different ways to make new stuff. Eventually, after millions and millions of years, stars and galaxies formed. And then, a long, long, long time after the Big Bang, our Sun was formed from a big disk of gas and dust in space. And then all the planets and moons were formed from what was left over after the Sun. One of those planets was Earth. It was big enough to hold on to air, and far enough away from the Sun that it could have water. But not too far away, so that it was still warm enough that all the water wouldn't turn to ice. Finally, after all that happened, things started to grow. First just little things in the water, way too small to even see without a microscope, and then, after a long time, plants and animals, and eventually people."

Sierra thought a bit about what I had said. "Then does that mean God didn't make everything?"

I shook my head. "It doesn't mean that at all. You can believe in science and believe in God, too. The first scientists believed they were doing God's work by trying to figure out how the world he created is put together. Science just comes from what people can see when they look at how things are, how they operate. There's nothing in there that says you can't believe in God."

"Then what did God do?" Sierra asked.

"What do you mean, 'What did God do?'"

"What did he do if he didn't make things like the Bible says?"

"I don't know," I said. "But he must have done something, because here we are."

Sierra paged through my book again. "Is what you said in this book?"

"Some of it," I said. "But there's lots and lots of books besides that one that talk about where the universe came from. When you grow up and can understand a little better, you should read a few of them. It's really interesting stuff."

"Do you think reading it will make you go to Hell?" she asked.

I laughed. "Jesus Christ, Sierra . . ."

"You shouldn't say that! That's taking the Lord's name in vain!"

"Where's it say I can't do that?"

"In the Bible."

"Where at in the Bible?"

"It's one of the Commandments."

"Chapter and verse!" I said, chopping the dashboard. "I want chapter and verse!" Sierra folded her arms and sat quietly. "Did you know that one of the men who created the Big Bang theory was a Catholic priest?" I said after a minute.

"He was?"

"Yep. I betcha he believed in God."

"Yeah, I bet he did, too." I pulled into her driveway. Sierra unbuckled her seatbelt and popped open her door. "Here's your book back," she said, and handed it to me. I tossed it back behind my seat. "Thank you for picking me up."

"You're welcome, sweetheart. Anytime."

Sierra walked up the steps of her front porch. David was home, and he came out to greet her, rubbed her head and stepped aside to let her in. He saw me, smiled and waved. "What the fuck kind of school are you sending your daughter to?" I wanted to ask him. "Do you honestly want her growing up believing that the Earth was literally made in six days by God with his bare hands, and that most of modern science, the culmination of thousands of years of observation and inquiry, is just somehow wrong? What the fuck kind of world are you preparing this girl to live in?" But I didn't say any of that. I just smiled and returned the wave, and backed out of his driveway.

That night I watched a few minutes of television while I waited for Ashley to get ready. There was Ann Coulter on C-Span, addressing a women's group in Washington, D.C., discussing her latest book, going on about how the theory of evolution was this ridiculous fantasy cooked up by atheistic god-hating Darwinians to destroy Christianity and replace it with the religion of science. "You don't even hear real scientists coming out in favor of it," she said. "You never hear physicists talking about evolution; it's always biologists!" I turned off the TV.

I closed my eyes and bowed my head. "Pay attention in school, Sierra," I thought. "You'll be better prepared than I am."