Winnie lowered the sun visor in a feeble attempt to block the sunrise beaming through the windshield of Rowe’s car. She naturally assumed that a Tesla Model S was beyond his means as an apartment maintenance man, so she guessed that, like his toolbox, it was a hand-me-down from his father as well. On a different day, she might have railed inside about the life of privilege he led, and how his father probably had no love for the environment but was only virtue signaling, but deep inside, she knew she was not exactly a child of poverty. She had never known real want. And she knew nothing about his father except that he owned three small apartment buildings. She imagined him as a doctor, investing in real estate on the side: the kind of person for whom a 2013 Tesla was old news and something to pawn off on his son. But most of all, she wasn’t railing inside because she was enjoying the ride. The sunlight dancing on the posh leather seats was such a contrast to the old Corolla she shared with Jess, it felt like a flash-forward to a future she imagined for herself.
They pulled into the parking lot of “The Toast”—Anderson’s classic diner, built in 1962, and he parked the car.
“So, what’s an atheist do for fun?” she asked as she unbuckled her seatbelt.
“Pretty much what you think… we kick dogs… rob old ladies,” he said, opening the car door.
“Trip Nuns?” she gave him a sly smile over the roof of the car as she exited the vehicle.
They walked across the parking lot to the diner, silhouetted by the orange morning sky.
“We do the same things Christians do,” Rowe shrugged, “there’s just less singing involved.”
“Less to sing about I guess,” she teased.
“We do need to work on our image. People think we’re angry, dull.”
“Immoral,” she added.
“Ugly,” he said.
“Oh no, you’re very cute,” she raised her eyebrows. “That’s how the Devil appears, in the most seductive form possible.”
Rowe flashed his crooked smile as he held the diner door open for her. Winnie mused about how much he embodied a young Marlon Brando.
“That might be the nicest compliment I’ve ever gotten,” he said.
“Accusing you of being Satan?” she asked.
“He’s the bad guy, right?” he said.
She smirked, amused.
They entered the diner, with a chrome bar, Formica tables, the strong smells of coffee and bacon, and awaited to be seated.
“How are you today?” a waitress asked as she approached.
“We’re doing well, how are you?” Rowe asked.
He met her eyes when he spoke and seemed to mean his words. Winnie noted this. “You can always judge a man by how he treats the help,” her mother used to say. Not that her family had “help” but perhaps it was a phrase her grandmother had used. Winnie’s grandmother on her mother’s side was raised in a fairly well-to-do family and her grandfather was quite impoverished at the time of their meeting, making their relationship quite scandalous.
The waitress led them to their table and quickly returned with two glasses of water. Rowe thanked her and they ordered their food. She got the southwestern scramble and an orange juice. He got the egg white vegetable omelet and water. The waitress left and Winnie turned to face him.
“So. What is God?” he said.
“You start.”
“No, you’re the theology major, or minor rather. I don’t want to mansplain.”
“If I go first, you’ll say I’m a know-it-all Karen.”
“I won’t say that.”
“But I really do… know it all, so…” she gave him a sly smile. “You go. This whole thing was your idea.”
“Okay. So, let’s start with the most common definitions. There are, what, 10,000 gods of antiquity?”
“Yeah.”
“Their size and relative import correlated with the size and import of the culture that worshipped them. So, we have like the Egyptian God Ra, this dude was big news. Zeus, from the Greeks, Vishnu, Hindu God. Odin the Norse God, then we have Baal and El in the middle east.”
“Please stop mansplaining,” she said with an eye roll. “I need to talk to the manager.”
They shared a chuckle.
“I would never call you a ‘Karen’ by the way, I think that’s a sexist term indicative of a society that can’t accept middle-aged women in positions of power.”
She studied him with squinty eyes. “I can’t tell if you’re being earnest or just trying to impress me.”
“Is it harder to believe that a man would not be sexist than it is to… believe you’re in contact with the creator of the Universe?”
“Absolutely,” she said, furrowing her brow as if this was obvious.
He smiled.
“Anyhow,” she said, “I cut you off. You were doing quite well; I’m extremely impressed with your knowledge of Gods.”
“Well, I haven’t even gotten to Chi Nu, the Chinese god of weaving.”
She rolled her eyes.
“And then, of course, the Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Judaism, Christianity,” he said.
“And Islam,” she added.
“Yes,” he agreed. “So, I would suggest you’re already an atheist with these other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine gods. Just not Yahweh.”
“I don’t believe in the specifics of any of those gods. Including Yahweh. They are all but different lenses by which man glimpses the true god,” she stated, as if quoting.
“I see,” he said.
“You look skeptical.”
“Well, it seems a little convenient to just explain away ten thousand mistakes.” he said.
She studied him and sighed. “I had an angry atheist phase too you know,” she put on some airs, ribbing him.
Rowe is completely unthreatened. “Oh yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Let me guess, bad breakup with the boyfriend in high school?”
“No, not exactly.”
“Well?”
“It was when the AFRC rebels attacked our mission village and turned the church we built into a torture chamber rape house.”
Rowe could tell he had just been put in his place. He inhaled, managed a small nod, and waited her out.
“It was the summer after my freshman year of high school, we were on a mission trip to Gambia, building a church in a Jarawa village when there was a coup. A government coup… The AFRC overthrew the sitting president. Our plane was like, a week away and before we knew it, teenage boys carrying AK-47s took the village.”
She studied a bit of nothing on the table. He listened intently.
“I never actually saw anyone die… mostly due to the fact that I managed to divert my eyes… but I did… hear them…”
She lifted her head and gathered herself. “For some reason, they never touched me, my sister, and my dad. I think they were scared we were from the UN or something. Anyhow, we had just built a church. It was made from cinder blocks, so it was the only building in the village that didn’t burn… so they, like, made it their headquarters. So here was our church, built out of love and sweat… completed just in time for the rebels to use it for… the most despicable acts imaginable. Things went on in there that no human should be allowed to witness… and no God would allow this to happen…”
Her voice trailed off. He waited but then spoke softly – gently. “So, you lost your faith?”
“You could say that.”
“What changed your mind?”
She inhaled, gathering herself again. “My dad sat me down one day once we were back home and asked why I was so angry, and through clever Socratic questioning, he finally got me to realize it was because I loved those villagers. I loved humanity. I loved justice. I couldn’t bear to see that taken away. Hate and anger wouldn’t exist if we didn’t care about anything. In order for good to exist, there has to be an alternative… Otherwise, life is meaningless. There’s good and evil in almost every situation. The fact that I survived and wasn’t completely screwed up in the head meant something to me. The fact that I’m more sensitive to the plight of the third world means something to me now… I was wondering where God was and all the while, He was inside me.”
Rowe considered the words and nodded in agreement, respectfully.
A small child, two booths away, ran a hot wheels car along the top of their booth and made eye contact with Winnie.
“It’s good that…” he chose his words carefully. “I’m glad that you were able to use that wisdom to better yourself, and the world.”
She smiled and studied him.
The waitress came and set their breakfast down. Rowe exchanged pleasantries with her.
“So,” Winnie said, changing subjects. “How did it all happen?”
“What?”
“How does a nice, upstanding young man such as yourself get lost on the path of the wicked?”
He grinned and took a sip of coffee.
“Didn’t you go to Sunday School?” she asked, taking a bite of the Western scramble.
“I was raised in the church. How do you think I ended up at Holy Trinity?”
“Let me guess. Strict Texas fundamentalist.”
“No,” he smiled.
“Strict Catholic?”
“Colder…”
“Snake handlers?”
“I grew up in the most normal suburban church you can imagine.”
“Protestant?” she asked.
“It was like, non-denominational. Just like a community church,” he reflected. “Very open-minded, very friendly.”
“Sounds dreadful, how did you ever escape?” she said.
“I had my first inklings of doubt really early on…. I remember in Sunday School, I was looking at this map of world religions and realized that if I was born in a different part of the world, to different parents, I would believe in a different religion. Suddenly, everything that was being pitched to me as so certain was just so arbitrary.”
Winnie nodded. “Yes… but then you grew up and came to realize that all religions are different lenses through which we see the same God.”
“Yeah, that’s a theory… but we could also say the common denominator of these religions is that they fulfil similar psychological needs… and provide simple explanations to common questions.”
She didn’t reply, nor did she get defensive. She just thought about it.
“Then came ninth-grade biology. That was the nail in the coffin. I just think science provides better answers. It was like, every day, we have all these clear-headed explanations for how things really happened. It was like the entire world fell into place and made sense…”
“So, you were an atheist in high school?” she said, studying him.
“I was an agnostic. It wasn’t until mid-college where I was surrounded by other positive atheist role models that it somehow seemed okay.”
“Holy Trinity turned you into an atheist!”
“Well, it is a college… there’s a thriving academic underground.”
“Your goth girlfriend?”
He nodded. “She was a prominent member.”
Winnie seemed skeptical and put-on airs. “You can always count on college pseudo-intellectual rebellion to stamp out any sign of God.”
“Yeah… that’s education for you,” he said, underplaying the irony.
She smirked and buttered her toast.
“I could almost respect you if you were still an agnostic.” She said “I think it takes a leap of faith to say God exists, but an even greater one to say he doesn’t. You always say I can’t prove my position, but you can’t prove yours either. At the end of the day, we have to choose our reality. Why not choose the one that makes you happy?”
He thinks this one over as he eats and then speaks.
“I can’t prove Santa Claus doesn’t exist… but I have good enough reason to think he doesn’t. I mean, thinking Santa Claus is real would probably make me feel good too, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t trick myself. And if I did trick myself, every Christmas, I’d have to explain why rich people got huge lavish gifts and some poor people got none… I’d have to shrug and say, ‘Santa Claus works in strange and mysterious ways.’ But if I focused on the actual truth… I could be donating toys to the less fortunate.”
She didn’t respond, but he could tell he may have hit a nerve.
“I upset you.”
“You did just take everything I base my life upon and compare it to Santa Claus.”
He nodded, but he could feel the tone of the conversation change. The flirtation left her voice and there was a hint of anger under her words. The fire between them had started with a spark and was now at the stage where it must be protected from the wind by a strong hand, but fed air by blowing on it. Too much, or too little air and the flames could easily snuff out. He inhaled a deep breath, his mind racing, until he stood up and stepped toward her, and knelt beside her.
“I’m sorry I disrespected your beliefs.” He said looking earnestly into her eyes.
Her eyes widened. “What are you doing!?”
“I’m apologizing.”
“Why are you kneeling!?” she said in hushed tones, looking about the diner to see if they were causing a scene, which, in fact, they were.
“I’m very tall, it’s hard to apologize when you’re looking down on someone.”
“You don’t have to do this,” she said, restraining laughter.
“I just want to say you were kind enough to agree to this debate and sometimes disagreeing can sound disrespectful. I don’t want it to, that’s not my intent. I wouldn’t even be trying to change your mind if I didn’t respect you, your intellect, and the person you are.”
She studied this man in front her, her mouth agape. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing or hearing. Just then, she was distracted by a mobile phone flash from a group of girls a few tables away who had clearly mistaken this moment for a marriage proposal.
“He’s not proposing,” she said, eyes still wide.
“I’m apologizing,” he said, looking over his shoulder. This elicited a chaos of “awwws” from the girls, who were no doubt influenced by Rowe’s physical attractiveness.
“Get up!” Winnie begged through laughter.
He stood. “Hasn’t anyone ever apologized to you before?” he said.
“Apparently not,” she eyed him as he sat back down. “But you don’t have to do that, I’m not as fragile as you may think.”
“Good to know because I’m winning this debate pretty handily,” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“Did you forgive him?” the waitress asked as she returned to refill their waters.
Winnie furrowed her brow. “I’m thinking about it.”
Rowe thanked the waitress for the water. She winked at him and wished him luck.
“So… where were we?” she said.
“You were upset with my depiction of your belief.”
“All I’m saying is that you have to properly define God if you’re going to state that it doesn’t exist. Anyone can say the old white man isn’t up there.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “But that’s no easy task. There are as many definitions of God as there are people. I probably have five or six myself.”
“Do you believe in one of them?”
He smiled, sheepish – then nodded his head “no.”
“Does it bother you that most people do?”
“In America.”
“Most people in the world, even those that don’t go to church, the numbers for actual atheism are very low, around 10%. Do you just think the other 90% are just wrong?”
“I think they’re wrong about a lot of things, and have been throughout history, I mean this nation was founded on the extermination of one race and the enslavement of another… Astrology is far more popular than astronomy.”
“I know, people suck” Winnie rolled her eyes.
He changed gears: “Tell me what God means to you. Give me the Winnie Stafford view of God, what you hold dear?”
She absently caressed the saltshaker. “I think the definition of God evolves over one’s lifetime.… I think the phrase God is love is compelling, but I can actually pinpoint down to the very day that I had my first religious experience, when the idea of God became personal.”
He nodded, respectfully – listened, pondered.
“But I need to be outside to show you.” she said.
“I’m ready to learn”