I, Too, Don’t Know How To Love Him

How the rock opera ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ helped me answer all my theological questions

Faith is not the absence of doubt. Faith is doubt with a positive attitude.

When the nun explained to my class the sacrament of Communion I had many questions, especially about the miracle of transubstantiation, which occurs when you eat the Holy Eucharist during the climax of the Mass.

She endured my inquiries without emotion. My questions were generally ignored.

“Will my dad go to hell if he isn’t Catholic?”

“Jesus said love thine enemy but was that just a suggestion?”

“Does God hear all my prayers or do some go to voicemail?”

Eventually, I wore her down. The usual answer to complex Catholic mysteries is “have faith.” And transubstantiation is one of Catholicism’s greatest mysteries. But I managed to get an answer from the nun that wasn’t the usual boilerplate.

Once you’ve eaten the sacrament, you see, Jesus is part of you. That is the miracle. The bread and wine transform into His actual, literal body and blood. “Communion.” Like magic. We were told that this was a time to really, really pray to Him, because he was inside of you.

So I asked, “how long?” I asked that a second time and a third time.

That’s when the flinty nun responded, “Twenty minutes.”

Which, I would realize later, was exactly how long it took for the Mass to end. So during those twenty minutes, I silently addressed Jesus directly like he was my personal Santa.

The Eucharist itself is a tasteless, almost plastic, wafer. I remember sitting in the pew and silently concluding two things: French onion dip would improve the flavor of the wafer, and even thinking that was probably a sin.

During my first Communion, I didn’t even think that this smooth cracker with a cross on it was the actual Eucharist. Catholics love tchotchkes — I had a drawer full of rosaries and devotional scapulars, and plastic statues of saints who I’d use to fill out the ranks of my Star Wars action figure collection.

Naturally, I thought the first Eucharist was one of these tokens. You know, so I’d remember this event forever? So I put the souvenir in my pocket.

When I showed it to my mother later in the day she exclaimed: “You put Jesus in your pocket!”

My dad chuckled because he was the son of a Baptist preacher. I grew up Batholic, which means the Baptist side of me knows how to sing and the Catholic side of me really loves incense. Yes, I was raised to be a Catholic, but I was also dragged to Baptist services in addition to the hours I spent at Mass. I also spent 12 years in CCD, which is like Bible Study for Catholics who aren’t committed enough to eternal salvation enough to enroll in Catholic school.

I might have paid more attention in CCD if the apostles were called The Jesus League. Usually, I just doodled while the teacher or nun droned on about Catholic Catechism.

Catholics and Protestants had spent centuries murdering one another, but you wouldn’t have known that from my parents. My dad explained to me that Jesus doesn’t choose teams. That seemed fair to me at the time. I didn’t really question it. During Mass, my Dad would pray and that was that.

Although, once, he slyly told me that Jesus would forgive my sins if I asked him, and that took the pressure off of me having to sit in a small closet with a priest and confess all of my childhood misdeeds. This came in handy once I discovered the miracle of masturbation. I asked for forgiveness but gave up after I concluded masturbation was proof God loves us and knows it can get boring on Earth sometimes.

My mom was a devout Catholic but not so devout that she wouldn’t marry a Baptist. But she was the popular principal of my CCD school, so the Catholics assumed my soul was still salvageable.

She was also a bit of a radical, a member of a generation of Catholics who wanted to modernize the church. I’m sure she dreamed of a female Pope one day but settled for folk music during services. This is why, on the rare, mortifying occasion that she would substitute teach my CCD class, she’d try to push the boundaries.

There was the time where we listened to U2’s Joshua Tree, on the hunt for Christian themes and lyrics. I prayed for the Angel of Death to visit me. Then there was the class where she played Jesus Christ Superstar.

Jesus Christ Superstar is a rock opera about the last week of Jesus Christ’s life. It’s the best musical Andrew Lloyd Webber has ever helped create. It’s a hard-rockin' hippie caravan of love child pop tunes about Western Civilization’s most enduring story. Its primary thesis is that Judas simply didn’t believe Jesus was the Messiah. He doubted. He betrayed. He suffered. In the musical, Judas believed in Jesus’ words, but not his divinity.

The musical blew my mind because of all the ’70s rock and roll screams, the hot licks, and the sympathy for Christianity’s great villain. It also offered up a Jesus who was human. A man who could be tender, joyful, afraid. Loving to society’s misfits. Overwhelmed by the agony of being human. Impatient and tired. He gets angry at His father for His fate, suggesting that it is His choice to die on the cross, anyway. When Judas betrays him, Jesus is weary. Heartbroken. He loves Judas. Because His burden is to love all mankind, even though we don’t deserve it.

Thus began my career as a casual theologian. To this day, I perform an intense and personal karaoke version of the song “Gethsemane.” It’s very moving.

I eventually answered my own questions, without the help of any nuns.

Here are a few:

Baptist heaven is like Catholic heaven, only Catholic heaven has a daily fish option.

“Love thine enemy” is not a suggestion. It’s an impossible commandment that humans can barely fathom.

God does not answer prayers. But he hears them all as he broods over this broken world.

Judas failed his friend. But Jesus forgave him, anyway. He forgave us all. To be human is to fail. It must be exhausting to have to constantly forgive your cruel children, century after century.

I am a grown man now and I do not believe in hell. I do not believe in heaven, Catholic or Baptist. I do not believe in God.

But I have faith anyway.