Truth and artificial legs
I’m not addressing these remarks to those that nothing
excites. I’m afraid I don’t understand such people though they make a
welcome change from a steady diet of those on the opposite end of the
spectrum. But I can’t help smiling now and then when I listen to two or
more people debating a political point as if life for the world depended
on who is right. You must understand that I’m far from believing that
politics is a waste of time or that political questions aren’t worth
debating. As it is in every facet of life there are profound questions
and trivia. But you’ve seen them, veins bulging, blood pressure up to
high doh and eyes popping—refusing to give an inch. Some of that makes
perfect sense (to some of us).
But let two religious people behave that way and the eyes of the wise
ones are rolling in despair. "Wouldn’t you think they could get along
without all that argument? After all they all believe in the same God."
And so religious, biblical or theological issues are all reduced to a
needless beating of gums. (This is often done by those who wouldn’t know
a biblical text from a ship in a bottle.) It’s perfectly acceptable to
take political issues seriously but we mustn’t argue about what the
Bible does or does not teach or about what that teaching does or does
not mean to us. To be that dismissive about religious questions is
(perhaps) to say more about oneself that about those who want to thrash
questions out. Here again there are questions and questions. There are
some not worth spending time on. We’d do better to save our breath for
cooling our soup. You understand that those aren’t the kind of questions
that I bother with...ahem. Now, where was I? Yes, on questions and issues worth fully pursuing.
In a real sense it’s only those who are up to their necks in football
that can speak with authority about football. It’s only those who are
passionate about the life of society that can speak with authority about
politics or law or crime and its only those that are up to their hearts
and minds in religion or Bible that can lead us to listen well if we’re
going to listen at all.
It really doesn’t help when an "outsider" castigates as trivial what
the "insiders" are very serious about. At the very least, the "outsider"
should give the "insiders" a good hearing and maybe they’d come to
understand what’s at stake. I don’t suggest that we should all be
serious students of philosophy but a bit of modesty is appropriate if
we’re to rabbit on about something we haven’t spent a lot of time
working at. It’s too easy to dismiss as nonsense David Hume’s remark
that we only say sugar is sweet and water is wet because we’re too lazy
to work with the claims. Maybe if we knew as much as Hume did, or (more
modestly) gave him a hearing, we’d be slow to scoff.
But speaking as an "insider" I feel there is too much time and
energy spent on too much that’s trivial in biblical, religious and
theological discussion. I know I’m speaking from where I am in life and
thought so I’m trying to keep that in mind as I listen and watch and
talk. Whether I'm making a good fist of it is another question. There
are things I’m passionate about, things I believe are much more
important than others grant them, things I cannot and therefore won’t
back away from unless I’m shown otherwise. I must call them as I see
them and it doesn’t really matter to me that others think I’m wrong
(which I may discover I have been)—I can’t think or live with integrity
beyond my perceptions.
But—and this is an important but—I don’t believe that because I
disagree profoundly with someone that that means I cannot join hands
with them in many fine endeavours. The singer celebrity Bob Geldof and I
would disagree profoundly on jugular questions about God and life but I
glory in what he does for the needy in the Third World.
Episcopalian Wilfred Grenfell, a doctor who did mission work for so
many years in Labrador, amputated a leg of an elderly neighbour of his, a
Roman Catholic lady. Artificial legs don’t grow on Labrador bushes so
when he was in America at a Congregational church he appealed for an
artificial limb. A widow lady (a Methodist) offered her dead husband’s
artificial leg (the husband had been a Presbyterian). So a little while
later a Roman Catholic lady was walking around on an artificial leg that
had belonged to a Presbyterian man, fitted by an Episcopalian doctor,
donated through a Congregational church by a Methodist woman. The leg
worked!
I’m not about to sink my religious convictions in a lake of sugar
but I’ll be hanged if I refuse to recognise, applaud and get involved
with goodness and truth wherever I’m privileged to find it.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.