The disappointment had left an almost metallic taste in Jared’s mouth. Just two and a half weeks after meeting with Aly, Jared interviewed once, and then again before being passed over for the position. He felt heartbroken and foolish. He had actually allowed himself to mentally move into “Baby Brooklyn,” even spent a whole evening searching the Internet for real estate and schools for his kids. He tried his best not to allow the disappointment to show, but he was stunned. The regret not only sat on his tongue, but also wrapped itself around his knees, sapping the energy he had for his youth ministry job. When he would recognize this melancholy, anxiety would follow. Why am I feeling this way? he wondered. I’ve always loved this job . . . but now, I feel so freaking tired. He continued going through the motions, but the sluggishness and anxiety was taking a toll. Occasionally his mind would go back to the conversation with Aly, but he had no energy to consider the challenges that her story presented to his ministry.
By the time Jared loaded sixteen high schoolers into a bus for the summer mission trip, the emotions had become less extreme, but his energy had not yet returned. It was a good trip, though Jared felt little of the exhilaration he’d had in previous years. Yet, he did recognize a deep-seated sense of enjoyment of the young people themselves. He wondered if he had felt this before. He was sure he had, but the disappointment had somehow washed away the cluttered ambition that made building a program more rewarding than the young people themselves. It was as if before the wave of disappointment, Jared was driven to build his ministry into a shiny successful city. But now that wave had crashed over him and washed that away. In its place were just the young people themselves—funny, interesting, and insightful in their own right.
By the end of the trip Jared could feel his energy returning, but it was now directed toward just enjoying the young people, as opposed to building them, or the ministry, into something. But Jared couldn’t think about this too deeply. When he did, thoughts of Aly returned, and he worried that his shift to just enjoying the young people would leave them in worse shape than Aly in the future.
When Jared allowed himself to think about his conversation with Aly, he imagined that at some point between her youth group days and her residence in Baby Brooklyn she had just let go, or subtracted faith from her life. Jared imagined that science in particular was a kind of formidable crowbar that pried faith from her life. Jared knew there was no way to keep young people away from science, and at a certain level he understood that he himself was as dependent as anyone on its findings and accomplishments. But, he couldn’t help it; somehow he blamed science for subtracting faith from Aly’s life. If Jared had his way, he’d just keep these scientific tools away from young people. If they didn’t have any crowbars, there’d be a lot less prying apart.
Of course, he wasn’t sure what kind of world he’d live in if this could actually be accomplished. But, if subtraction of faith was the problem, then the tools used to do the subtracting were the culprit.[1]
These thoughts were racing in Jared’s mind as he rested on his bunk after another day on the mission trip. But like being awoken from a dream, he was pulled from his contemplations. “So are you ready for the zombie apocalypse or what?” He realized quickly that the question wasn’t for him. Rather, Martin, an eleventh-grader, was addressing Louis, a tenth-grader. Jared quickly looked at his watch and noticed that it was still twenty-five minutes until lights out. So Jared decided to listen in, ready for a laugh.
“No,” Louis responded, the tone of his voice signaling concern that he was soon to become the butt of some joke.
“Well, you’d better be,” Martin returned with intensity and a pointed finger. “You had really better be.”
Martin had been part of youth group since ninth grade. His family had come from a much smaller church because they wanted Martin and his younger sister to be part of a youth ministry. Yet it always seemed like Martin was more into sports than faith. He was a smart and athletic kid, but no honor student or varsity athlete. And similarly he rarely missed a youth ministry activity, but had little interest in leadership. He was always just there. Not necessarily a wallflower, but rarely risking much other than his presence and a few sarcastic comments framed as jokes.
Jared felt like he knew Martin well, but then again he wondered if anyone really knew Martin, or if Martin even knew himself. Watching Martin ask his seemingly ridiculous question, Jared felt like he was seeing him for the first time. “Seriously,” Martin said, now raising his voice as he directed his question to the full room of six high school boys and Jared. “What are you chumps going to do when the mass extinction comes? Because I promise you fools, it’s coming.”
Everyone laughed, assuming Martin was joking. “I’m serious, dumbasses!” Martin shot back.
“Hey, watch the language,” Jared hollered from his bottom bunk. But now Jared was in the conversation, no longer just a spectator on the fringes. And that was good, because he was taken by Martin’s intensity. Did he really believe this? What was Martin getting at?
“Martin,” Jared said, “I don’t think anyone is laughing at you; we just don’t know what you mean. What do you mean? Do you believe the TV show TheWalking Dead is a documentary?”
Martin still had a hard exterior to him, not sure he was ready to let his guard down, but ready to answer Jared’s questions. “No—well—maybe. There might not be a true zombie apocalypse, how would I know? But, I am sure a mass extinction is coming,” Martin said.
“Why?” Jared asked. “Why are you so sure?”
“Well, besides all the evidence of an ecological crisis, it’s just science.”
“What do you mean it’s ‘just science’?” Jared asked, intrigued.
“I mean,” Martin said, sensing he was climbing to some intellectual high ground, “It’s j-u-s-t science.”
“HOW?” Jared shot back with enough force for Martin to remember who he was talking to.
This seemed to mellow Martin enough to take a breath and shift from bombastic pundit to teacher. As Martin began to explain, Jared was now sure this was indeed the first time he had seen Martin. He had known Martin for almost three years, spent hours and weekends with him, but only now was Martin truly revealing himself.
“What I mean is that mass extinction is part of the process of evolution. We’re living in the time when mammals have excelled on this planet, but only because the lizard era of dinosaurs met its mass extinction. So, okay, you’re right, I’m not sure if our extinction will be in fifteen years or five thousand years, but it’s coming. That’s just how evolution works.”
“And you believe all that?” Jared asked, shocked by Martin’s ability to articulate this position. “Well again,” Martin said, “it’s just science.”
“And you believe everything science says?”
“Mmm,” said Martin, “I’m not sure. But I don’t want to be one of those people that doesn’t, who is too scared to face the fact that earth is four billion years old and that our lifetime is so short it doesn’t even show up on a timeline of the planet. That actually, the whole history of human beings makes barely a blip on the timeline! I want to be brave enough to face that, not be too scared to know that mass extinction is coming.”[2]
“What about God in all this? Do you think God will allow or cause this mass extinction?” Jared asked, now more honestly probing for himself than for Martin or the boys listening.
Martin looked as if he’d never really thought about how those things go together. He bit his lower lip. “I don’t know,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know what God does—diseases, earthquakes, other bad stuff—I don’t know. It just, I guess, seems to me that evolution or natural selection makes a lot more sense in regard to what causes stuff. It’s actually easier. All you need is a butt load of time, and not, like, some dude doing good or bad things. I mean I still like God; I guess I just think natural selection causes stuff and makes more sense. I guess I’m just down with Darwin, that dude’s dope.”
The rest of the room laughed.