Those Angry Christians

I’m a teacher down here in NZ, and although I love my job, and it can be extremely satisfying, there are some drawbacks. One of these is having to interact with the caregivers of some of our students. I’ve talked to angry parents, drugged parents, drunk parents, mad parents and dumb parents, and they can be very difficult to communicate with. However, the worst ones I’ve ever had to deal with are the Angry Christians. We don’t seem to have that many down here, but like everywhere else, when they are encountered they have very closed minds.

My latest encounter was with an Angry Christian(AC) who was demanding that we remove her son from a class and put him in another because there was an openly gay boy in his Form Class, and as everyone “knows” gay people will burn in Hell, and she didn’t want to risk her son from contamination and risk of hell-fire. It didn’t matter which argument I put forward, her mind was completely closed, and I really felt sorry for both boys involved; the openly gay boy, who has shown a lot of courage in expressing his sexuality (always difficult at 15, regardless of option) and the son of the AC, who didn’t have his mother’s depth of belief and who was just embarrassed over the whole thing. The two boys are both nice kids. They’re not friends, but there’s no friction between them. One’s a sportsman the other’s academic. There is absolutely no reason educationaly to split the boys from their classes, so I said no to the request.

The AC said that I would burn in hell, the gay boy would burn in hell, the Deputy Principal would burn in hell (he probably would, but that’s just because he’s a devious arrogant bully who deserves the worst) the Principal would burn in hell, the Chairperson of the School Board would burn in hell, the Minister of Education would burn in hell (hope she does, she’s still not settled our last pay demand) , the Prime Minister would burn in hell.

Now I may be dim, but I think I’m spotting a pattern here. According to AC anything that happens which she does not like is the fault of the people who do not see the world her way, and we’ll all burn in hell.

I don’t mind, I’ll be in good company.

For a good and relatively short discussion on Angry Christians, try the video below (Thanks to The Curmudgeon, who saw it and left me the link). Very clear and succinct argument.

I hope I’ve not offended anyone mentioned in this post, so if you’re gay or straight or anything in between, if you’re male or female, if you’re a principal or board member, then I’m sorry if I’ve offended you in any way. If you’re an Angry Christian, I don’t.