Dear God, we don't talk much. I used to talk with you all the time; I needed strength and, often, you actually came through. So often, in fact, that one day I just stopped asking for it, forgot about you and stopped believing.
Just as I had lost my faith, I found a job, as a psychologist, in a project headed by an evangelical church designed to help rehabilitate teenaged gang members in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
As a kid, I dreamt of being a detective, like Sherlock Holmes, getting into the bad guy’s mind and cracking the case wide open! “This”, I told myself, “is as good as I’m going to get. So better take the job and worry about the fact that I don't believe in God later.”
Despite its religious bent, the project wasn't without a scientific merit. The sense of community and service that small churches foster can help with rehabilitation. More importantly, Honduran gangs only allow their members two outs, evangelical Christianity or the grave. So while I would love for there to be a secular path to rehabilitation, it’s just not viable.
It isn't enough for you to call yourself a Christian and live up to whatever you interpret the Bible as saying, however, you have to live up to their standards. After taking any life savings you might have, leaving you with 5 Lempiras (Approximately $0.21), they have someone follow you around town, to make sure you don't drink alcohol, do\sell drugs, go on a night out dancing suggestively or have any form of premarital sex. You fail to live up to any of those standards and they help themselves to the other alternative.
So while the preferred choice might be obvious to most, it's an almost monastic life, and I was part of a team that was trying to convince teenagers to take it.
The pastor heading this project knew me from a year earlier when I was writing an article about him for a blog (Dear God, while I have your ear, help me get a stable job). I tailed him around during his daily routine in bad neighborhoods. During our conversations, I mentioned that I was a trained psychologist working as a writer. That must’ve stuck in his mind more than my lack of religious persuasion, since it came as a surprise when I told him that, even though I don’t believe in God, I believe in his work.
As you can imagine, God, the fact that I’m an atheist caused some conflict, which I will save for some other time, right now I just want to talk about the kids.
"Kids", that's what they were in the end. Murderers, thieves and/or rapists, yes, but kids never the less. It’s easy to forget that, not because of what they are, or where they are, but because of their eyes.
When they first meet you, they immediately hate you. They don’t know who you are, they don’t know where you’ve been, they don’t even know why you are there, but they hate you. If you’re not used to it, it’s a chilling experience.
You eventually get used to it, however, as they get used to you. Once it became clear that I wasn’t going to go away, the other psychologist in the facilities alerted me that I was going to receive a talk, one where I would be asked "Are you afraid of death?" by the young inmates. The implications of such a question from convicted murderers should be clear to everybody. The guards assured me no one would come to my aid.
This attitude is commonplace amongst jailed members of powerful gangs, and I doubt God has the ability to have thoughts like this, but most humans hear that and think they’re not worth saving. “We're there to help them, to offer them an out and they threaten us? Fuck them, they deserve a pit in the middle of a dessert if they don't want to get out of that life”
That was actually the mentality of one of the members of the project, one who, as far as I know, was never even verbally threaten. A good guy, generally, but I don’t agree with him on this.
Not to get on my high horse, but when I looked into their eyes and saw all of that hate, I didn’t feel threatened, angered or even repulsed by their past deeds. I mean, I knew that they potentially posed a threat to my physical well being, you would have to be insanely optimistic not to recognize them as such. But that was I thought, not what I felt.
What I felt when I looked at them, was a profound sadness. Not pity, not really, but just a deep and haunting feeling of senseless human loss; as if their mere presence was itself a tragedy. It was like watching a young man drown in a pool of their own hate. You extend your hand for them to reach, but, even if they wanted to grasp it they can’t because the hate in which they’re drowning is getting into their lungs and they can’t even breath much less notice that you’re there to help.
Hopefully, that metaphor is not too convoluted, that’s as best description of what I saw in their eyes as I can muster. I’m talking about kids, ages 12 to 17, I was an emo prick back then who made a scene when someone bought him a shirt in a color other than black. Meanwhile, they are now in prison for heinous crimes and too blinded by their lot in life to realize it. It’s so unfair, I’m sad just thinking about it.
Maybe that’s why I chose this particular topic to talk to you, Dear God, this is so unfair. Why did the little asshole get his nice black shirt while they get shit? I’m willing to bet that they used to talk to you as much as I did, maybe more, why did you ignore them?
Despite feeling like an eternity, I was part of the team for a very short time, three months to be exact. I left after a bunch of drama regarding my lack of faith, I started to see myself as a distraction, and despite it all, I really believe they were doing a good job. I’m not particularly proud of the work I did, I felt like a fraud.
You are the only way for those kids to get out of that life alive, you’re the only way they can transition to a semi-normal life. I know this. I’ve seen it happen. But at the same time, if you really were there, or, at the very least, there for them, they wouldn’t need you in the first place.
I know, I know, I’m just rehashing ‘the problem of evil’, but it really is a problem, and that’s why, you and me, we don’t talk as much. Just easier to not believe in you than to think you don’t care.