“Why is Grass Green, Daddy?”
What I learned from a Sunday School Teacher who went to church less and less over time
The personal story you’re about to read is NOT a religious story, nor does it endorse or criticize a specific religion or faith. However, it is set in a religious context.
As a child of the 1980s and a youth of the early 1990s, I grew up in a Christian family that went to church every Sunday. I attended Sunday School from childhood until grade 6. Then, from 12 to 17 years old, I attended a Sunday School / Youth Group program at the church that was called 7-ups (as in, grade 7 and up).
On occasion, a gentleman named Gus would serve as our 7-ups teacher. In his 50s at the time, I thought Gus was very intelligent and well-read, but he was somewhat of an odd fellow. For instance, he would say things like:
I would like to thank God for my awesome body.
I spent some time with the Quakers last week.
During youth group sessions, he would do the traditional bible scripture reading that Sunday schools do, followed by a round table discussion with the youths. He would follow up with his own thoughts on the reading once the youths gave theirs.
Interestingly enough, those thoughts were rarely what you would get from a typical go-to-church-every-Sunday, middle-aged, Protestant-Christian Caucasian man of that era and place. Gus’ thoughts tended to be more profound and developed, as if said by a man who was grounded in his abundant experience of the realities of life balanced with the values gleaned from Christianity.
We saw Gus less often as the years passed. During one of the last encounters I can recall, one of the youths asked him why he hadn’t attended church as frequently as he used to attend. He replied with the following story:
A father and his very young boy were walking in the park one day. The son asked, “Why is grass green, Daddy?” The father replied back, “Because God made it that way, son.”
Several years later, the father and son found themselves walking in that same park again. The son asked, “Why is grass green, Daddy?” The father replied back, “Because there is a green pigment in the blades of grass called chlorophyll.”
Many years later, the father and son (now a young man) were walking in the park again. The son asked, “Why is grass green, Dad?” The father replied back, “Because light from the sun (which is composed of a wide spectrum of wavelengths) hits the grass. Some of those wavelengths are absorbed by the molecules in the grass while other wavelengths are refracted back into the air and in the direction of your eye. Your eye has receptors that receive those wavelengths of light, triggering electric impulses that travel the nerve network to your brain. Your brain then interprets those signals as ‘green’.”
What Gus was trying to say is that he stopped going to church as frequently as he once did in the past because he got tired of hearing the same “Grass is green because God made it that way” explanation every Sunday.
It’s not that he found the God made it that way explanation invalid. Far from it. It’s that his need went beyond that initial level understanding of the world around us. His curiosity could no longer be satiated by the rerun messages that were being delivered by that church every week, year in and year out.
In between what became infrequent church visits, he had explored other channels to get to the higher chlorophyll and wavelength levels of understanding of the world we live in.
… other channels like spending time with the Quakers, I suppose.
Again, this personal story is NOT a religious story, nor is it an opinion piece of a specific religion or faith.
With that, I’ll take this story out of the religious context and extrapolate the “Gus” wisdom here to the rest of life in general.
Over the years, I’ve found some lessons in this story that can benefit everyone.
First, if you are a seeker of deeper meaning, it’s your responsibility to pursue the appropriate channels to get to the higher levels of understanding of the world around you.
- Looking to one source to completely satisfy that need rarely works.
Second, while some of us seek out those higher levels constantly, there are those who are perfectly satisfied with staying at the initial level.
- Admittedly, I know I have gotten frustrated in my own dealings with people (who I love) that are seemingly residents of that initial level understanding of the world that rarely venture away from it.
- I’ve learned that I don’t have to agree with them, I just have to accept that they have opinions and perspectives that are not aligned with mine and give them the respect they deserve as human beings. Not always easy to do, to be sure, especially when they don’t give you that same courtesy.
The third and final lesson: The initial level of understanding is something that you can and should come back to every now and then so that you stay grounded.
- It should be noted that although Gus didn’t come to our church as often toward the tail end of that era in my life, he still came back at least once in a while.
- So, even though the church couldn’t give him those higher levels of understanding, he could always come back to get reminded of the initial level. In Gus’ context, that initial level was a rooting in the foundation that was his Christian faith.
Gus’ wisdom was something that I could only appreciate after many years of having lived my own life and seeking to go beyond a superficial understanding of the world that was in front of my eyes. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to learn from him.
I know I didn’t use your real name but if read this and recognize that you’re the “Gus” I’m referring to in this story:
Thank you!
