It started with a flat tire in a church parking lot.

I had been driving last Saturday to help some atheist friends move from Fort Worth, Texas, to New York when the tire blew out. I was already running a bit later than I promised, and I felt bad. It was a bit hot outside (hotter in the car), my phone only had 2% battery, and (of course) I had forgotten my jack.

It was about 12:30. Two men with pickup trucks drove into the church parking lot. I approached one parked car — a wiry man in his thirties with sun-burnt skin and some crooked teeth, but a pretty nice truck. I asked him if he had a jack in his car. No luck. Asked the heavyset man with the other truck. No luck there, either, but he said there was going to be a wedding in the next 90 minutes there, so a bunch of guests would be showing up.

I had finally found a way to call up my insurance company, but they wouldn’t be there for another hour. I really wanted to get out of that parking lot sooner, if possible.

I was really trying to help my atheist friends move — it was the last time I’d see them here in Fort Worth — other than, possibly, the occasional visit. We had had a lot of good times. Complained about religion, discussed atheism, talked about life, hung out in Fort Worth quite a bit. They were family.

That’s something that gave me doubt when I was a Christian. Supposedly belligerent atheists were going to hell…and yet many of them seemed to have a lot of the same dynamics we Christians had in their groups. Some of them actually seemed to behave better, in my mind at the time, than many of the Christians I knew. They weren’t bad people; they just thought differently than I did. Didn’t God make them, too, atheism and all? Why would God send people I knew were decent to hell?

When I became an atheist, I found a lot of support from people. They mean a lot to me, and so I wanted to be sure I got there, as soon as possible, to help them move — showing solidarity and so on.

The irony is that I was trying to enlist the help of some Christians to do it.

Or maybe “ironic” isn’t the right word. Maybe we’re all just people — atheist, Christian, Muslim, etc. — and people who care about each other help each other.

I guess that’s what I saw at the church that day. When I asked another person, he genuinely looked like he wanted to help. He opened up his car and looked for a jack. Didn’t find one. I said “thank you.”

I was already a bit apprehensive about approaching him. I drive a beat-up car and I wasn’t wearing the nicest clothes, and I’m black; the church was very nice, he was white, and I could tell from the car the guy drove that he did OK for himself.

But he wasn’t patronizing. He seemed full of respect, as if he wanted to ensure he did right by me not out of a sense of obligation, but because he was putting me in his shoes. I told him it was OK; my insurance company was coming in the next hour, and prepared to wait in the sun. He said, “Um, I can let you into the church. You can wait in here.”

He unlocked the door and let me in. Treated me like a king. Took me into the kitchen and offered me two bottled waters. I took one. “You sure you don’t want another?” he asked, eyebrows raised. I was sure.

Then he made small talk — with the obvious attempt at being hospitable. I asked him how old the church was, how long he’d been going there, what he did for a living, etc. He helped his brother with sound control at the church and its two satellite campuses. I have a friend who does sound for churches (an atheist, by the way) and I asked if he knew him. He hadn’t, but we continued to talk. I didn’t tell him I was an atheist, and he didn’t invite me to church or ask what church I went to. We were just a couple human beings chatting about life. Then he had to go and get ready for the evening service, so he left me near the front entrance.

I noticed scriptures on the walls as I sat down. Two were about helping the needy, and one was about raising godly families with male-female roles.

And that’s what bothers me about church. Like, this person was genuinely a nice, good-hearted person, and the church wanted to do some beautiful things for people. There are a lot of scriptures to choose from; the fact that they chose scriptures about helping others as a church said something about the church. And yet, there were some ugly insinuations about what a “proper” family consisted of.

I experienced this as I continued to wait. There were these young pre-teen girls who were singing for the wedding — four people. They practiced in front of a small crowd of spectators, singing a melody so beautifully that I felt tears down my cheeks. I saw real beauty there, in this corner of the vast universe. And I saw it knowing how disturbing some of the words behind what they sung in a hymn or two were. There was a sincere and deeply felt closeness there.

I saw hugs, I saw friendship, I saw beauty, I saw people of many different races and backgrounds coming together, and as much as I’m an anti-theist, I had to admit…it was beautiful in its way.

I slowly realized, as the minutes ticked on, that underneath it all we’re just human beings. We’re not perfect, and sometimes we’re wrong. But we’re part of the same life, so to speak.

To be honest, I had also been feeling a bit down about atheism in general, as well. There are a lot of disputes and names and accusations of scandal being thrown around these days among atheists that have really impacted me, and to be honest its hard for me to make heads or tails of it now. The whole thing has been really demoralizing for me, personally.

But when my car finally drove away from that church and I made it to help my friends move…those were beautiful moments I won’t forget. Oh, it was rushed and stressful as hell — we were working against a hard deadline and had a LOT to do. But all that hustle-bustle was an expression of caring and friendhip. It just underlined and accentuated it more. It made me feel warm inside, and grateful that I had friends like this and could be a part of ushering them on to the next stage of their lives. I think we all felt that way after a hard day of work when, at about 2 am in the morning, finally all packed up and in a completely clear house, we unwound and said our goodbyes. We saw the family drive to the airport shortly after (they had a 5am flight) and sadness mixed with a sense of accomplishment and friendship.

Atheism seemed like a beautiful thing, then, because of the people. Forget the bullshit; we were just human beings caring about each other.

So, that’s what I learned that day. We’re human beings, underneath it all. That’s all we are, on some level. And I’ve been thinking that if we understood that — if we could just see that in each other — then we would get along more, across the lines. There would still be problems, many of them very serious. But existing at the same time as those problems are opportunities to love — little pockets of connections you can have with people who disagree with you to show that although we have important differences in thinking, and although there might be drama in different corners of an organization, on an individual level we still care about each other.

Not sure I would have seen it quite that way, if it hadn’t been for a flat tire. Which is something kind of beautiful in itself. Don’t get me wrong; I hate flat tires, and waxing eloquent about love doesn’t fix them — repairing a tire, just like repairing a lot of problems in general, takes actual tools, logic and know-how. But in the problem, I unexpectedly found love in an unexpected place.

I guess life is like that sometimes.

Thanks for reading.