Jesus loves me...

I had another post entirely in mind, but in the meantime, a rather annoying and stupid thing has happened that makes me want to write about it instead.

As I’ve mentioned, I am in the final throws of my bachelor’s program in English. I am finishing it online. Frankly, with a full time job, a long commute, and a young child, there is no way I could be doing this otherwise. For the most part, I like the flexibility of the hours, the lack of schlepping back and forth, and the efficiency of taking classes online. What I hate, and have had to contend with in almost every class, is the (mostly) young, uneducated, and earnestly Christian student who finds it necessary to announce their beliefs in the class forums in ways that are not only inappropriate, but obnoxious and irrelevant, too.

This last one was a doozy. I had replied to a long-time fellow student about his interpretation of Dante’s Essay, and this little girl stepped in and went off on me because she felt I had personally attacked her religious beliefs and “intentionally hurt her feelings.” So many times, my first response is wanting to ask “Are you five?” Because that is how she sounded. However, I calmly replied to her and tried to state that not only had I not been personal – at all – in my post, but that I was criticizing the reading of a text, and that she had missed my point. Of course, she attacked my character, called me “mean,” (oh, snap!) and got herself really worked up about how I should not mock religion. It went on for a while.

Where do these stupid little nutjobs come off using every forum as a chance to proselytize and make sweeping judgments about what god thinks and wants? Do they not realize that most of the world is not living in the Khristian Kids Summer Kamp they seem to live in, and not see the world in such simplistic and linear terms? That we give a shit what they think? That we appreciate a good intellectual debate being hijacked by the God Patrol? That college class discussion boards are the place to make new Friends and hold hands and sing “Kumbaya”?

Not to mention their utter lack of knowledge of world history or literature, or the background of so many of the current political and social problems we face today.

Plus, she just pissed me off. If we’d been in class, one good raised eyebrow and withering sarcastic comment would have shut her up. Online, she feels free to let her “I’m a dumbass” flag fly. She needs to take her shit back to the junior high girls’ bathroom where it belongs, where she’d have gotten her ass kicked.