Vol. 105 - Get Over Yourself

On Jesus Christ, the God of Wine and Pleasure, feigned outrage, and three-way sex

Early this morning, before the sun even rose, my son and I snuggled on the couch watching the men’s skateboarding finals at the Paris Olympics.

Before the competition started, they introduced the skaters, passing very near each one with a camera and what was apparently a hot microphone, into which we both heard the Canadian skater, Cordano Russell, praise Jesus Christ.

My son—who, at six-and-a-half, is deeply in a questions about everything phase—asked who the skater was talking about.

“Who is Jesus Christ, daddy?”

And so I gave my son a fifteen-minute history of Christianity, of which he paid full attention to about ninety seconds. After all, by then, the skating started. But still, he had fair about of very good follow-up questions, some I was more equipped to answer than others.

We talked about how Christianity began as a tiny cult, growing quickly, which irked the Romans. We talked about how Jesus (if he even existed), was a brown-skinned Jew who hung out with the destitute and prostitutes, all things that are very much in opposition to the contemporary Christian right. We even talked about how I grew up in the Catholic church until my mother removed us when I was about eight-years-old.

Of course, we talked about all of that in a way that a six-year-old could understand. (No, he doesn’t yet know what a prostitute is nor did I explain that my mother left the church in the wake of one of its first major public scandals of sexual abuse.)

To be clear, Emily and I aren’t religious. She grew up Jewish and I grew up, until around the age of eight, in the Catholic church (I also graduated from a Catholic college but I was there for the education, not the catechism. I also have a gigantic tattoo of the Virgin of Guadalupe and wear a medallion of Saint Anthony around my neck. Of course, the connotations and meanings behind those are deeply personal rather than anything having to do with religion. Still, I reserve the right to be inconsistent). Considering as much, our kids aren’t growing up with religion. That’s not to say that we won’t allow them to explore faith as they see fit as much as it’s to say that we’re not terribly inclined to indoctrination in our home.

To wit, I refuse to allow my son to wear a yarmulke at any of Emily’s family’s Jewish holiday gatherings. Not because I don’t want my son to be Jewish. I frankly don’t give a shit. After all, it’s his life. But I want him to learn, to know, and to understand why he’s wearing a yarmulke before he ever puts one on his head. Once he educates himself, he can do whatever he likes with, to, and for his relationship to religion. Until then, there will be no yarmulkes just like there will be no medallions of Saint Anthony.

Anyway, I digress.

So my son asked about Christianity and we had a great conversation in which he (hopefully) learned something about the world. I could have just as easily told him it was mumbo jumbo and let his attention skitter off to big flips and Smith grinds (skateboarding tricks, to the uninitiated).

I didn’t ask for this conversation. I didn’t ask for this curiosity in my son to be sparked by some skateboarder evangelizing on international television. I certainly didn’t ask for such a dense topic before I had a cup of morning coffee. Given the choice, I’d much rather not talk about religion as, if anything, I’m an antitheist. But there we were, one person with a litany of questions, the other with some modicum of the answers.

As we talked about everything, I thought back to the Olympic opening ceremonies just a few days prior. I thought about all of the manufactured outrage that came off the back of what I thought was a beautifully designed and masterfully executed performance (though the ménage à trois scene did run a bit long). It was so distinctly French that I almost wanted to pull on a Speedo, play one of my Françoise Hardy records, and pick up smoking again.

I’m sure you’ve either seen or read about the opening ceremonies, the biggest headline of which was grabbed by the live recreation of the “The Feast of the Gods,” a seventeenth-century painting by Dutch artist Jan van Bijlert.

In addition to a man painted as Dionysus, recreating a work of art that had nothing to do with the Last Supper, there were severed heads, plenty of blood, and the aforementioned three-way (again, very French). There were a lot of things that had people rushing to their social media vacuums to admonish the Olympics for greenlighting such vagary on a such a public stage.

“My kids were watching and now I have to explain to them what they just saw!”

The Tweets and status updates and Instagram reels all told something of the same story, to which I thought, “Good.”

Because if I have to sit here and download a brief history of Christianity to my six-year-old (gently skittering around part where the Catholic church has spent decades, likely centuries, covering up the sexual abuse of children), you might have to explain to your kid that throughout history, people have worshipped different gods, how art is all about interpretation, and how some adults like to get fucked by two people at the same time.

Of course, I recommend doing it in a way that a kid can understand it.