Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Over-reaching
On the road yesterday, some perverse whim took hold and I channel-surfed the radio until I heard a dynamic speaker with a British accent holding forth on the Book of Daniel.
The Book of Daniel, you may recall, is one of the Old Testament’s more hallucinatory tales, rife with symbols and prophecy. Call Daniel the Old Testament’s Nostradamus, or perhaps its John. What piqued this speaker’s interest was the Book’s warm-up, in which King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has a disturbing dream, summons his wise men, and demands an interpretation — without sharing with them the contents of the dream.
The Chaldeans (Neb’s usual band of wise men — whom this fine speaker equated with “the top men of Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley!”) rightly tell the King he’s being kind of a dick, that no man can interpret a dream without knowing the nature of the dream. Nebuchadnezzar sentences every last wise man to death. When the head of the king’s guard comes for Daniel, who is one of Babylon’s wise men, Daniel does some fast talking, buys some time, enough so that he can go to sleep and dream the King’s dream for him AND come up with the interpretation. Fast thinker, eh?
The interesting aspect to all this was the British speaker’s spin. He interpreted the Chaldeans’ failure to mean that the wisest men in the world cannot know anything for certain — that only God (who provides Daniel with the dream and the solution) can know anything. And thus we must look to God for knowledge and not to our own wise men who cannot, in the final account, be trusted to have any stock in Truth.
At this point, I hear the Church Lady’s voice in my head saying, How convenient. Because if we can’t trust our wise men, who can we trust? Duh: God’s messengers on Earth.
And at the same time I realize that I’m hearing something expressed in the most bald-faced manner possible, something that has characterized organized religion probably from its inception: the deep suspicion of, if not loathing for, men and women of learning. I’m a fly on the wall looking on as Galileo is shown the implements of torture. I’m watching helpless as women schooled in herbal medicine are dragged off and burned as witches. I’m lurking in the back of a dozen or a hundred fundamentalist congregations, listening to the preacher deride Darwinism (or global warming, or name your theory du jour) as sophistry, as no more than a belief, as requiring faith, as being a religion unto itself, and what did God say about worshiping other Gods before Him?
(Um, not exactly.)
I’ve always known that organized religion was a hell of a lot more about control, power, and money than grace, forgiveness, and salvation. But this was the first time I ever witnessed a preacher so obviously tip his hand to that reality.
D.
Joke from the Bible belt:
The flood in Nashville had reached the man’s front porch when rescuers arrived by boat to save him. The man refused to leave his house saying “God will save me.” The water had risen to the first floor of the house when the second rescuers arrived by boat, but the man refused to leave saying “God will save me.” The water had risen to the second floor when rescuers came again, but the man refused to leave saying “God will save me.” The water had reached the roof when a helicopter came to pluck the man to safety, but he refused saying “God will save me.” The man drowned and when he reached the pearly gates and was greeted by St. Peter, his first words were “Why didn’t God save me?” St. Peter replied, “We sent three boats and helicopter!”
Love it.