Teaching Nihilism in Sunday School, Part I: Why am I teaching Sunday School?
not just "why chill with," but "why interested enough to go"
I’m actually teaching Sunday School to middle schoolers (6th-8th grades; 11-13 year olds) at a Christian church.
I’m actually doing a lesson on nihilism.
This is the first in a three-part series:
1. Why am I teaching Sunday School? (this post!)
2. Nihilism via comics
3. Pray like no one’s listening
This post will get into why I go to a Christian church, because that’s probably surprising/perplexing/upsetting to you, even if you were around for my first post where I mentioned it. If you don’t care about my backstory and you just want the nihilist content, wait for (or skip to) the next post!
Why do I go to church?
It’s fair to ask. I ask myself, too. I have nothing resembling standard Christian beliefs, and would grate terribly against the things preached from most pulpits.
As context, it’s useful to know what kind of church. The Mennonite tradition spans a theological & cultural spectrum. You’ve got significant overlap with the Amish on one end. At the other, the theology is more loose & egalitarian; lots of femme or neuter pronouns for God and sometimes a preference for referring to Jesus as “role model” rather than a more deity/authority-related term like “Savior” or “Lord.” The whole broad spectrum is mostly united in nonviolence, conscientious objection to war, not partnering with the state, peacemaking, acts of service, and simple living.
Mennonites are a force, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It’s one of the hot spots. When we first moved here, we did a whole tour of Mennonite churches. A different one every week. There were a couple that seemed like a good fit, and of those, we picked the one we could walk to.
Even with all that, I still sometimes do some remapping in my head, as I listen to sermons. I don’t resonate with the idea of personal sin, but corporate/collective sin? I can’t think of a more powerful metaphor for war, genocide, land theft, ecocide. I don’t believe in monarchy or kingdoms, so I remap the idea of “God’s Kingdom” to something like “the Beloved Community” or I think of taxonomic kingdoms (some people like saying “Kin-dom”, but I find this too cutesy). I don’t believe in hierarchy, so “higher power” gets remapped to “deeper power” or “source.” And instead of thinking of “heaven” or “the heavens” as the place where God resides, I place God in the void, in the soil, or nowhere at all.
God is a concept I do not interrogate. In the words of Le Guin: “To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.” I tried to reason my way into belief for a decade, and the more I searched, the more God receded. This interrogation ended at 30 when I read Finding God in the Waves. The author talks about brain scans. You ask an atheist to think about god, you get a few blips, like any other noun. You ask a believer, their whole brain lights up. You ask the right side of a lobotomized person if they believe in god, they say yes. You ask their left brain, they say no. Or at least, a specific lobotomized person in a specific study. So maybe the goal, then, is to get your left brain out of the way so your right brain can have its experience. Let god take over your whole brain again. All this trying to locate god turned god into a noun. Give your left brain a minimal definition of God, and then go to church and sing with people. “God is at least the fundamental forces that started the universe and guide its evolution.”
But back to “standard Christian belief”: I think it is to Christianity’s and our culture’s detriments that Christianity has been so focused on “correct belief.” The whole religion—the whole going-to-church, the whole ecology of practices—in most of our minds: about belief! In fact, it’s hard for me to even talk about this without accidentally describing Christianity as a “faith.” If it’s all about belief, and faith, but you don’t believe, then there’s nothing worth participating in, and you’re not even invited to participate. Religions throughout the long sweep of human history have contained so much more than that.
Ok, but I still didn’t answer the heading. “Why, tho?” I gave a bunch of reasons why I feel chill with it, but not why I feel drawn enough to show up.
First of all, there’s all the being-part-of-a-community stuff. Singing together. People to bring you meals; to bring meals to. Constant invitations to give more of myself, not just to this insular group but to the surrounding city and all of “creation” (I grew up a literal six-day Creationist, and went through a pendulum swing on the word “creation,” but now feel mostly chill with it, too.)
And as for the belief system itself, I think there’s value in engaging with it, even if just cultural value. These are my people’s holidays. Our customs. This is our mytho-poetry. These are our grand narratives. And there’s beauty in it! Sure, there are lots of horrible ways to read and understand the Bible. And I no longer think there’s even a single Correct Reading. But there are Good Readings. Hermeneutics is an art form that still carries tremendous power in our culture, and I don’t think we should leave all biblical interpretation to the wolves.
not tryna proselytize
i swear.
i am not trying to get you to believe any supernatural truth claims.
If you read all of the above, you probably figured that out already, but it was a lot of words so I forgive you if you just skipped to this attention-grabbing heading.
Scientific Animism and Christianity are two separate pursuits, as far as I’m concerned.
This Substack is not a front. It is not a repackaging of Christianity. I really don’t want it to be a “you turn on the lights and it’s just a bunch of Mennonites” situation (a friend made this joke to me).
That said, my worldview is obviously inflected with Christianity. I’m attempting to be aware of my blind spots and make this an inter-religious dialogue (not interfaith, because I’m meh on faith, as discussed). I am attempting to include other authors and voices from outside the influence of Christianity.
In many ways, I am the worst advocate and mouth piece for Scientific Animism. I’m impure and unqualified in so many ways.
And in many ways, I am the worst advocate and teacher of Christianity. So when I got roped into teaching Sunday School to middle-schoolers, I wasn’t sure what to teach. One of the parents told me her daughter says she doesn’t believe in God anymore. Ok, well, I’m not gonna try to convince her!
What do these parents want of me? What do they want me to teach?
I’m teaching them nihilism
Just one class on it. And not, “you should be a nihilist.” More an intro, a softening, a permission. You’ll see.
My brain is melting a little. Great post. Especially “Pray like no one is listening.” That works on so many levels.
"In the words of Le Guin: “To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.” Love this. As someone who still likes to wrestle with what's unanswerable, I appreciate the reminder!