[Continued from 36.7]
© 2006, UrbisMedia
On the fourth day we were on a northward heading in the Moçambique Channel between the African continent and the Island of Madagascar. This is an areas that the captain told us (afterward) is noted for “rogue waves,” those huge waves that come randomly that can turn your cruise into The Poseidon Adventure . The only “rogue” this day was the appearance of a diminutive and quite elderly Jewish man arrived in the group. He seemed almost child-like swallowed up by the lounge chair cushions. Sid looked old enough to have lived through some of the worst of Jewish times in the 20 th Century. He had the bearing of a Talmudic scholar, slumped in his chair with a lap full of books. His mind, we were to learn, was sharp, and his memory long.
Donald began again reading a couple of African parables from a book he had discovered, but again, no one seemed to be able, or inclined, to comment or pick up on the theme of parables he had been pushing since the last meeting. He really needs to learn something about conducting seminars; it’s not that a lot of the stuff and approach he uses is uninspiring, but he is repetitive with what doesn’t work. It had already been remarked that they were stories with morals, or lessons, and that was about as far as the group had considered the subject. When the mic was passed around no one had anything to add, [1] but Sid took the opportunity to remind the group that the original language of the Bible was Aramaic, which he said he could speak, as well as Hebrew. The presence of that ability among these ‘born agains” was perfunctorily “welcomed” by Donald, but it did nothing to keep him or others from taking scriptures at their most literal in spite of all the translations they have been through. Sid’s remark also emphasized that this was primarily a group of amateurs (although some knew their way around the Bible quite well) who did not take an analytical approach to the Bible, but rather accepted Donald’s and each others’ Christian affirming interpretations of scripture uncritically.
I would have liked to introduce the questions of the curious and tortured relationship between Christians and Jews, but thought better of it because it might put Sid on the spot. Why, I wanted to ask the group did they seem to accept the beliefs and behaviors a chronicle of the dramatic experiences of nomadic tribes of herders from millennia go as relevant to their faith and the present age? And yet, there is such are terrible history of Christian persecution of Jews, the pogroms, the discrimination, and of course the holocaust. I wanted to ask them about Mel Gibson. How many of them had seen that wretched blood fest he created with hisThe Passion of the Christ that perpetuated the libel against the Jews as “Christ killers,” a point of view he re-confirmed in a drunken diatribe against Jews when he was stopped by the police for a traffic violation. How did these people feel about Mel?
I was even more curious about the American fundamentalist Christian support for Israel. Not that Israel doesn’t deserve some support, with millions of Muslims openly demonstrating their hatred for Zionism and their desire to complete Hitler’s and Himmler’s work. It seems a curious and cynical support: was it that the need the Jews to be in Jerusalem to rebuild Solomon’s temple and for Second Coming of Christ to happen—when the final destruction of the Jews will also happen? [2] Christ was born a Jew and died a Jew. But somehow the fundamentalists cast him as the first Christian—at term he would not have recognized, because it was a Greek name he never knew. Christ wanted to reform Judaism by living out its messianic prophecy, not found a new religion, especially one that eventually would persecute Jews. Paul, and the other early true founders of Christianity, exploited Jesus, and the Jews are still being exploited. I wanted to ask these Christians straight in the face to address these thoughts. But it would have really put the Sid in the hot seat. I dropped the idea of raising this subject. I would have come off as a trouble-maker.
Anyway Donald wanted to talk about faith. But this quickly turned into testimonies and affirmations of faith. This testifying business can become quite exasperating. Several people in the group jump on the bandwagon with a practiced facility, expounding on how they believe the “Bible is the word of God,” and that “Jesus died on the cross for their sins and the sins of mankind”; things they have not a shred of proof or evidence for other than the Bibles in their laps, but in which they have complete and unshakable faith.
“I have no interest in impugning anyone’s faith,” I said when the mic got to me, “but faith seem to have the opposite attitude toward knowledge than science. Science is constantly testing the validity of its findings and theories; things are not necessarily proved as just not yet disproved. Biblical literalists like ‘Creationists,’ see this self-critical feature of science as an opportunity to say that scientific disagreements about aspects of evolution (although there is broad agreement on the fundamentals) overturns the entire body of evolutionary thought in favor of the biblical fairytale, which they accepted uncritically. The Christians were out toprove the validity of scripture by whatever tortured logic and gratuitous connections they could conjure. They might question scientists’ data on global warming as too incomplete (without, of course, understanding the science itself), something they would never do when approaching scripture.
I felt I was welcome, but tolerated, because Donald related to me as someone who apparently had no faith and therefore could not understand what it was. Faith was, he said, in paraphrase of some lines from Romans “substance without evidence,” something that was clearly a contradiction, but then, if I had faith, I wouldn’t mind that. Never mind, I countered, that for something to be substantial, in the proper meaning of the word it needed to be available to the senses in some way, palpable. Substance is that which is evident .
But that only elicited those sorts if beatific smiles that Christians can give that mean something like “Oh, you poor thing, the Lord just hasn’t come into your soul yet,” that I take to mean, “just surrender your rationality, just let go of that need for things to make sense and fit the facts.” Apparently, if you have faith, words can mean what you want them to mean. That was too much.
But “substance without evidence” was too close to that old Catholic flight from reason—transubstantiation—the notion that, during the offertory of the mass the wafer and wine were really turned into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. The substance of the wafer hadliterally changed form by the priest’s intonation of the words hoc est enim corpus meum. Wow! Imagine that being rammed into your little seven-year-old brain for your First Communion. Ironically, the Church chose age seven because it was regarded as your “age of reason.” No wonder there were all those jokes about the mass being “the magic show” and communion being “swallow the leader.” We laughed, and felt our souls were imperiled at the same time. [3]
Now, here was a Protestant Christian laying the same nonsense on me when life is a lot more serious looking back down on it from almost six decades later.
“Look these words have meanings and you don’t seem to appreciate the contradiction with than statement. Sorry, I just can’t let that pass as truth. You’re talking nonsense. It’s linguistically and logically unacceptable.” Nobody said anything. Maybe I was too strident. Maybe some of them didn’t disagree with me. Maybe Donald would ask me if I could find something else to do at the ten o’clock hour. There is a magician showing people how to do card tricks up in another lounge; there would be more “truth” in that than what’s going on here.
[To be continued]
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©2006, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 11.30.2006)
[1] Donald also needs to learn to make the circle tighter by doubling it and to get =rid of the mic, which intimidates some people and wastes time being passed around.
[2] Cf. Harris, The End of Faith , p. 153 (an appropriate notes)
[3] Some Catholics now say that the Church has shied away from the doctrine of “transubstantiation.” It would appear so, since they now actually let people handle the communion wafer, taking it from the priest and placing it in their own mouths. Or is this just a concession to hygiene in the age of AIDS and SARS?