Finding God in TV reruns of Community

Dear Hipster:

Was wondering where hipsters stood on the subject of God and religion. The other day, a dude I know took to Facebook to complain about how a plumber in his house went on and on about how God saved him during a bike accident. I didn’t care for his need to mock the guy. Live and let live and all. Let him have his story. But, later, I realized the same dude always talks about gin and his boring vinyl collection. So, is it hipster to be anti-higher power?

— Cheryl

I confess, I sat on this one for a bit. Partly, I felt a bit chicken. You start impugning people’s gods, and the next thing you know the death threats come rolling in. Maybe that’s an exaggeration. Maybe I get some angry emails, but it’s not like heads of state will be calling for my execution, Salman Rushdie-style. Even so, playing around with religions is asking for trouble. Notwithstanding any reticence here, I also couldn’t come up with the right answer.

Fortunately, old TV reruns came to my rescue. I was rewatching the first season of Community, and I came to the episode where all the characters cop to their various religions. In the episode, each character announces his or her religious bent, and then they come to the smug hipster character, Jeff, who proclaims his agnosticism, and is promptly boo’d for it. Even Chevy Chase’s character, who is part of a weird cult where one can be reborn as a “level five laser lotus,” catches less flack than the agnostic hipster.

When you say “anti-higher power,” that makes me think of a dyed-in-the-wool atheist. Someone who believes in the absence of a higher power with fervor equal to, perhaps even surpassing, that of sincerely religious people. Someone truly anti. And that’s fine. Live and let live, as you say. But it’s not the hipster way. You might better describe the hipster option as “anti having an opinion one way or the other about the whole thing.” This approach has two upsides, and a major downside. Obvious advantages include being free from religious hatred, which is a real one-up on the atheists, who are pretty much consumed with hating everyone all the time. The other big plus is not having to suffer any existential dread over your cosmic fate. That frees up a huge amount of time to worry about bespoke gin and vinyl LP collecting.

The downside is if it turns out that any of the bonafide religious dogmas turns out to be the right one, you can pretty much guarantee the agnostic hipsters are going to whatever vision of heck ultimately prevails. Maybe if you believe in the wrong religion, the right religion’s god grants you a pass. For example, I can totally see Jewish God being generally cool with Presbyterians, Scientologists, and mensch Hindus alike. He would recognize their honest mistake, award an A for effort, and not deny them the opportunity to nosh heavenly bagels with Jesus, Warren Zevon, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Not so for the agnostic hipsters who couldn’t even bother to pick a side. There’s no way anybody’s god spares agnostic hipsters an eternity of torment at the hands of merciless little Underwood Ham devils and their fiery pitchforks.

I guess when you’re a religious person, the only thing more annoying than someone with a different religion is someone who can’t be bothered to have a religion in the first place.