My son has been talking a lot about God lately.
And he’s asking me — an agnostic atheist — questions.
You’re not laughing with me, I can gather, because you can’t hear my internal dialogue. I’m laughing at the irony. And flashing back to a scene from the 1990s sitcom Roseanne, when D.J. Conner is chasing his dad, Dan, through the house, asking about God and religion.
I feel like Dan Conner in this instance.
My upbringing, as secular as it was, still had the bare minimum of Christianity. I was christened Anglican at the Holy Trinity Church in Fonthill — I think it was the only non-Roman Catholic church in the small Pelham community.
The only other times I went to church growing up were for a baseball umpire clinic or a wedding. I come from a small family, so there wasn’t a lot of death.
I’ve been reflecting a lot lately. My wife is a casual Roman Catholic, and I’ve evolved from agnostic into an atheist. (Being a newsman will do that to you.) But I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t have some spiritual caveat emptor.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson once said — in one of those quick-hit Instagram videos — that even though he doesn’t believe in God, God can hypothetically exist in everything around us in nature. In that moment of waxing spiritual, he captured my thoughts exactly.
Nature is my “god.” Seeing how nature, on its own — to borrow from Dr. Ian Malcolm — finds a way. That’s why I get so incensed by politicians who deny the climate crisis and pass policies like Bill 5 here in Ontario that steamroll the environment and protected species.
But the fact is, my family side-stepped organized religion. Sure, we celebrated Christmas and Easter, and I’d hear the occasional gripe about the Lord’s Prayer being taken out of public schools. But that was usually countered by the sarcasm reserved for overzealous, preachy Christians.
We’d laugh about the time a Jehovah’s Witness knocked on my paternal grandparents’ door and my grandfather — a WWII POW not known for being overly emotional — told them he wasn’t interested. When one of the pair dared to ask if he feared the Bible, family legend has it he tore through the screen door, chased them up the street, yelling, “God-damn sons of bitches!”
My dad would tell a story about a friend who, while driving him to work, suddenly decreed from behind the wheel that he “had the power.”
I had my moment, too, when a born-again friend’s friend challenged me while I was studying for an archaeology exam. The topic was dating methods. He scoffed at carbon-14. I closed my book and explained it, including the margins of error and limitations. When he balked, I offered up the other dating systems I was studying: thermoluminescence, potassium-argon and so on. When he asked what those were, and I explained, the fight was beaten out of him.
I’ve probably shared this parable before. But the man had all his eggs in one basket, and his Goliath fell on them. I’ve probably mentioned that I did well on that exam, too.
My family has a profound love for nature and wants to preserve it. We’re rooted in humility and respect, but we don’t bend the knee to any man or man-made idea. Start talking God at me when I’m not wearing my journalist’s cap, and I’ll walk the other way.
But having a son who’s curious about ethereal beings adds a new layer.
My older daughter knows I’m an atheist. She’s unbothered. But she’s never really asked about the G-unit with me.
But I digress. How do I talk to my son about God without making like Dan Conner and avoiding the conversation? Or earning a gorgon glare from my wife when I finally do open up? I think it’s by keeping it simple, and circling back to what Neil deGrasse Tyson said: God is in everything around us. It’s neither human nor spirit — it’s the energy that surrounds us.