This Modern Writer: Jesus and His Toga by Kathleen Radigan

In kindergarten I went to a school where I learned that Jesus was the man who fermented peoples’ water and went around doing good deeds. Sort of like a leprechaun, but half naked all the time.  I learned that God was his dad, but so was Joseph, which confused me.  I figured Joseph was more like an adopted dad, and God was like the sperm donor, which I knew about from listening to NPR.  Every day we were handed biblical coloring book pages and commanded to fill them in.  I colored Mary and Joseph purple and red, and extended Jesus’ toga into suspenders so that it was less revealing.  Mrs. Swain got me in trouble for that.

“KATHLEEN,”  she screamed, “JESUS IS WEARING A TOGA BECAUSE IT IS HOT IN NAZARETH. DO NOT REDESIGN HIS ENTIRE OUTFIT, OKAY? JUST COLOR WHAT THEY GAVE YOU, OKAY?”

I wished I could color Jesus and his toga as nicely as Emily, the girl who sat across from me.  Emily’s Jesus was always perfectly orange skinned, with a nice brown toga — each brush stroke struck with dazzling precision.  Emily always had perfect braids, and her jumper was never stained.  I despised her.

One day we were given a more creative assignment, and we were asked to draw what we think God looks like.  I drew King Tritent from the Little Mermaid, because he was the biggest authoritaty figure I could think of. Only instead of a mermaids’ tail I gave him a long white robe.  He looked just like Gandalf, but I was unaware of the existence of Lord of The Rings at the time.     Next we drew heaven, and my heaven was purple.  It was filled with stick figures, and they were all smiling and dancing with each other in  different colors. Even their skin was purple, red, green.

“KATHLEEN. HEAVEN IS WHITE. THE ANGELS WEAR WHITE, OKAY? JUST CHANGE AROUND THE COLORS AND GIVE THEM SOME WINGS.”

But I didn’t want heaven to be white.  White seemed to me a boring shade, and I didn’t think that God and Jesus would give their house such a blase color scheme.  White meant you could not drink grape juice lest you spill it on the couch.  White meant finicky, it meant un-fun.  My mom never let me buy white jackets because she said I’d stain them.  I kept my heaven a rainbow fantasia,  and it was handed back with a check minus.  ”NOT KINDERGARTEN QUALITY.”  Mrs. Swain’s black print scrawled — her handwriting that looked like a scream.

This didn’t bother me. But it bothered my mother.  In first grade I was withdrawn from Catholic school and dropped into public, where I spent the next five years of my life saying the pledge of allegiance without “under god” and not celebrating birthdays in class because some children were Jehovah Witnesses and it would be insensitive to eat cupcakes and sing songs when Jean was forbidden to by orders of his religion.  We sang Kwanzaa songs in class for diversity, but we were not allowed to sing about Christmas.  We learned about the eight days of Hanukkah and the oil that burned out and we ate potato latkes in class, which were enjoyable and interesting activities.  But Jesus was taboo. He and his toga had gone out of style.  Instead we sang about snow.

For the start of middle school I returned to the world of kilts and knee socks, as my parents had decided that five years of being referred to as Kathleen She’s Smart were enough.  Immediately I was introduced to Sister Perpetua, who hated me because I covered my book with tin foil to make it shiny.  The next year there was Sister Perpetua, who loved me suddenly because she was senile and could not remember who I was.  She was constantly saying “Mahgaret you are so MATURE.” I smiled, not bothering to correct her, and pulled up my knee socks.

In many ways I was becoming more spiritual, and yet the more I learned about religion and faith the more questions bubbled forth. In seventh grade I had a lot of issues with original sin, with blind faith, and blind forgiveness.  Anything that started with ‘Blind’ gave me the creeps. It seemed like the opposite of knowledge.  It reminded me of cults and Tyler Durden in fight club. Every time I raised my hand the teachers would try to answer as best they could with their textbook replies.

“That’s a good question.”  They always started out. “But the Bible tells us that…..faith and love……are the answers to all mysteries…… even when……. and faith….. and love……. do you understand now?”

Sometimes I’d say yes to take them off the hot seat.

But sometimes I’d say “No.”

I don’t understand, and the answer they gave wasn’t satisfying.   I wanted to assign definitions to faith. I wanted to know that questioning was okay, because if faith means that you shut up all the questions like whack-a-moles I was sure that I could never have any.

I understood Doubting Thomas better than any of the other apostles.  I didn’t understand why he got so much blame just for being a little more skeptical.  We receive so much spurious information every day — like rumors, the stuff of the National Enquirer.  How do we delve into any of it deeper, or know the people we love deeply until we doubt what we first receive?

I got A’s in religion, and was told not to ask any more questions.

“But what if someone is an atheist? Or they’re gay and don’t want to repent, but they’ve been a great person and done good deeds for people their entire life?  And someone else, who is a Catholic, prays all the time but never helps anyone and is mean to people? Will the mean Catholic go to heaven over the Nice Atheist?”

“Um,” was their reply.

Um.

Kathleen Radigan is a sixteen year old person, writer, and girl. Her poems and short fiction have appeared (or will appear) in The Newport Review, Certain Circuits, Hackwriters, The Birds Eye ReView, Slow Trains, and several others.