A Third Fisherman

my one Christian belief

“Leave all things you have,
And come and follow me,
And come and follow me.”

This is the refrain from the song Two Fisherman by Sister Suzanne Toolan. It’s a Catholic standard hymn that drifts seamlessly from easy-to-sing anthem to sea shanty to unstoppable ear worm that will gnaw away at your brain for the remainder of your Sunday. Back in my liturgical singing days, we would close out mass with this banger. It was the ‘hymn of sending forth’ whenever the gospel for that week told of Jesus’ call to his first disciples.

In this tale, Jesus is strolling by the sea of Galilee. He rides on up to Simon Peter and Andrew. They’re brothers and they fish. That’s all we need to know. Jesus waves to them and is like “Hey, y’all, drop your shit and come with me. You can catch men instead.” Peter and Andrew drop their shit and follow Jesus. This same tactic later works on James and John. Thus they are the first disciples.

Outside of this song leaving a psychic imprint that’s impossible to shake decades later, the gospel story of Peter and Andrew forms a core tenant of Christianity -

Reject the world.

It’s something that was drilled into my young Catholic education. One must reject all the trappings of the world in order to reach God. Don’t listen to secular music. Don’t watch movies worse than a PG rating. Don’t consume anything that doesn’t put God in the center. Don’t drink, don’t do drugs, don’t curse, and absolutely no sex. Never sex. Sex is bad, bad, bad. Always go against the grain of what your heathen contemporaries are doing. It’s the only path toward salvation. Eternal damnation is waiting for you if not.

Reject the world. Leave it behind. Find God.

In an extremely unpredictable turn of events, this is one of the very few Christian principles I find myself leaning toward…just in a Patrick way.

I have been logged out of Instagram for almost two months. I’ve done zero scrolling. I don’t know who’s posted what or what’s going viral. I haven’t seen any messages on the app (sorry if you’ve sent me things). It’s not on my phone and I haven’t accessed the platform from a computer. If there was a 60-day Instagram sobriety chip, I would have earned it. Go me.

The internet, in my very humble opinion, has devolved into a burning cesspool of AI slop, sponsored content, regurgitated algorithmic barf, misinformation, disinformation, fake news, and cat videos. All the worst of humanity has been put into a blender. We denizens of Zuckerbergland are expected to drink up and ask for seconds. The good news is that all of this is free, minus the cost of body dysmorphia, political violence, porn addiction, eating disorders, rampant gambling, suicidal ideation, and a loneliness epidemic.

And, sure, there are occasional good things thrown in the mix. Genuinely interesting videos about foraging, delightful moments of dogs hearing the word “treat,” mind-blowing makeup tutorials, kitchen hacks, hilarious celebrity interviews, mouthwatering recipes, and actual comedians telling actual jokes.

The problem is that I find myself having to jump from lily pad to lily pad, frogger style, across the toxic vomit pond of flaming diarrhea to get there. And that’s almost impossible to do without getting a little flaming diarrhea on my pant leg or falling in completely and swimming around the bottom as hours of time slip through my fingers.

I keep thinking about that girls school in Iran. On Saturday, a bomb fell in the city of Minab and hit a school. Iranian health officials say as many as 175 civilians were killed. Most of them were girls between the ages of 7 and 12.

My niece is 10.

And where is the collective grief? Where is the international outrage? Where is the media coverage?

But most importantly, where is my grief? Where’s my outrage? Where’s my call to action?

I haven’t shed a single tear.

While there a billion reasons for this, I can’t help but blame social media the most.

Day in and day out, we scroll Instagram, X, TikTok, and YouTube for hours on end. We see violence and rage. A split second later we’re ingesting unboxing videos and get-ready-with-me reels. One more swipe of the finger and we’re back to people in cages and bodies underneath rubble. In the next breath we’re onto another cat video.

On and on and on.

While I’m not a psychologist and have zero credentialing for just about anything, I can’t help but think that the breakneck speed in which we consume horror and joy, death and decadence, has numbed us to all of it. All of it gets washed out in the blur. We can’t grieve a girls school being bombed because we’ve lost our ability to distinguish that from everything else, from frivolity and entertainment.

Reject the world.

It’s one place where me and Christianity agree on something.

I wanted off that ride, the one of chaos and hatred and scrolling and numbing, and so I did. I rejected that world (at least on Instagram, at least for two months, at least right now). I decided I want to turn toward something else.

I want afternoons making up stories and writing them down. I want craft projects and movie nights. I want to do things the long way just because. I want wine-soaked dinner conversations and impossibly difficult recipes. I want stretches of time without a phone in my hand. I want walks in the Botanical Gardens and singing in the car. I want to look up and get sun in my eyes.

I want to shed a tear when my heart gets broken.

Those are the “god” I wish to turn toward. That is the Jesus I want to follow. Those are the men I want to fish (among others…let’s be honest). And if it requires that I leave all things I have, as the good Sr. Toolan instructed, then leave I shall. Or, at least, shall attempt.

Let’s just hope things turn out better for me than Simon Peter (crucified) and Andrew (also crucified).