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Slippers<br><br>
I forget where I read it, but it's one of those curiously indelible bits
of stray info that permanently adhere to the geeky mind: the slippers in
the original Cinderella story weren't glass but fur. In medieval times,
the fur of a variegated squirrel was used to line mantles and gave rise
to a particular heraldic pattern. The fur and pattern were both called
"vair". The French word for glass is "verre". From
"vair" to "verre" is a short step, and so
Cendrillon's footware morphed from a warm, silky, quite special,
variegated heraldic fur slipper into something delicate, rare, and rigid,
sized only for the exactly right foot. It probably had a four-inch spike
heel, too. <br><br>
In the glass-slipper version, when each ugly stepsister's toes weren't
the right shape for the shoe, she cut off bits and pieces in order to
force her foot to fit. This always mildly horrified me, although not as
much as the rest of the original story (which, like many "nice"
fairy tales, was originally gory and vindictive).<br><br>
So what's this got to do with Godstuff? It's a bit roundabout, but bear
with me.<br><br>
I got into a discussion a while ago with a Christian whose faith in
Scripture and traditional theology is exceedingly strong and admirable.
We were getting on with the problem of evil. My friend believes firmly
that all suffering goes back to humankind's turning away from God and
trying to put humankind in God's place. This is a position I agree with
on most levels. You can't live in this world and *not* see the power of
sin; it's boldly out there. Toxicity floods our societies and our
relationships, and too often Creation itself, where we have abused
it.<br><br>
But is Creation itself swamped by sin? My friend thinks so. I can't quite
go there.<br><br>
The problem is that I have a (thoroughly outdated) degree in biology, and
I follow the sciences with interest. When someone gets cancer, I see
genes switching on that should be switched off or vice versa. The events
causing cancer are complicated and not fully understood, and I don't know
them in any detail; but my understanding is that cancer is a natural
process gone very wrong, and that the factors involved are complex.
Cancer is tragic, no doubt about that; it can be redeemed, I believe; but
is it the product of sin, particular or generalized? I don't know.
<br><br>
My friend and I got into a discussion of the great tsunami of 2004, the
one that killed hundreds of thousands in southeast Asia. Was this, I
asked, the product of sin and death? My friend said firmly that it was --
that in an unfallen world, death would have no dominion. <br><br>
I have problems with that. I have problems because I do believe that
science has provided us with a set of data that can, on the whole, be
relied upon, and the data strongly suggest that Creation simply *is*,
neither wicked nor ethical, but simply *there* in all its beauty and
muddle and complexity. The moral interpretation we slap onto it is just
that -- our interpretation. The spider eating the fly is neither guilty
nor innocent, just hungry, and the fly's suffering (hopefully brief) is
simply a condition of life. <br><br>
Those who wrote Scripture (and my friend does accept that Scripture was
written by people, divinely inspired) had no notion of tectonic plates;
how could they? Neither did the great theologians over the ages. A
volcanic explosion was an act of God, pure, plain, and simple, and likely
God's punishment for sin.<br><br>
These wise and holy people explained nature as best they could from a
moral and spiritual point of view, but they couldn't explain what they
didn't know: that bubonic plague is caused by bacteria; that rabies is
viral; that malaria involves parasites transmitted by mosquitos; that
earthquakes and volcanoes and tsunamis result from the blundering about
of chunks of the Earth's crust. And then there's astronomy...<br><br>
Which does *not* make our forebears stupid or naive (the opposite error).
In many, many ways, our ancestors had insights and observations of the
most profound emotional and spiritual wisdom. They built magnificent
structures, physical and intellectual, with the tools and materials they
had and with sheer genius. They had skills that we can no longer aspire
to. We've gained in some areas of knowledge and understanding; we've lost
in others. Third-world weavers, sitting at "crude" hand looms,
can still produce webs of a complexity that no Westerner can begin to
emulate. I look at the brush strokes in a piece of really good
17th-century painting and realize that those techniques have been lost to
us.<br><br>
The problem arises when one knowledge-set simply rejects the other.
Dogmatic fundamentalists on both sides insist that they, and only they,
have any real hold on Truth. My friend, considering the tsunami, says
that sin and death *have* to have caused the ocean bottom earthquake.
But, I countered, tectonic plates are far, far older than humankind;
they've been clanging into each other long before anything crawled out of
the sea, much less stood on two feet and raised a fist to God. And
tectonic plates are essentially innocent. This world is indeed a fallen
and hurting place, but not because of them. Tectonic plates are just the
way this world is built, and presumably our Creator wanted it that way.
My friend simply would not go there. If tectonic plates don't fit into
Genesis, then they're off his theological radar.<br><br>
Back to those slippers:<br><br>
In a theology of glass slippers, when other information doesn't fit into
the belief system, it has to be sliced off and discarded like the
stepsisters' toes and heels. That is where Scriptural fundamentalism
inevitably leads us. In that case, everything that geology and biology
and cosmology and the other natural sciences have uncovered is true if,
and only if, it fits the scriptural slipper. Otherwise, lop it
off.<br><br>
Ditto for the glass slipper of fundamentalist science: if it can't be
hypothesized and subjected to the scientific method, it is non-existent.
(Very few scientists actually take this position, by the way; but the
ones who do get published, because scandal sells.) The problem, as Huston
Smith wisely observed, is that "absence of proof is not proof of
absence."<br><br>
But what if the slipper is fur?<br><br>
Fur has some stretch to it; it's shaped, it's defined, but it has play.
In a theology of fur, the fundamental foot-shape is still there; there's
a definite heel and toe and instep and sole. But in a fur slipper, living
toes could wriggle and stretch, fur surrounding and warming foot, foot
informing and fitting into fur. Fur is intimate. Glass is not.<br><br>
I can conceive of a theology in which scripture and science are not set
at irrevocable odds with each other, but where they play with each other
-- playing perhaps like lion cubs, a serious, intent, demanding, and
quite rough play, but also perhaps playing in sheer fun. The two need to
answer to each other as viol answers violin; they're both essential to
the music of truth. <br><br>
What kind of Creator would set tectonic plates lumbering into one
another? What's the result of evil (the power of sin and death) and
what's simply Creation doing its Creative thing, with humankind along for
the sometimes dangerous ride? Were we once pure and sinless and immortal,
and we fell? Or are we slowly blooming, with all kinds of retrogressions
and deep errors, into what we are divinely called to become? <br><br>
In my friend's narrative of Creation, humankind's relationship with God
is absolutely central. In a science-based narrative of Creation,
humankind is a very late arrival and an opportunistic and aggressive
species. And both versions are true.<br><br>
We have no evidence of pre-lapsarian immortality, other than belief; we
do, on the other hand, know that death is a natural part of <i>*</i>all*
natural life. Even when clone-forms like stands of bamboo appear
immortal, every individual within the clone must die. Is this our fault
for our rebellion against God? Or is it simply the natural order of
things? Maybe there's a different sort of death we're talking about. But
in that case, what sort? <br><br>
What on earth do we do with what Creation says to us, when we're willing
to shut up and listen? Perhaps original sin is just as much our arrogance
against Creation as it is our arrogance against the Creator. The two are
not mutually exclusive, after all. In calling Creation fallen because it
sometimes makes us suffer, haven't we set ourselves at the centre of the
universe? When we say that *our* failure taints even tectonic plates,
isn't that a whopping piece of human narcissism? <br><br>
Aren't we dragging Creation down to our own level? And is that what our
Creator wants of us? Maybe that's where the real sin lies. Whatever
Creation is, it has God's thumbprints all over it. Who are we to pass our
limited, self-absorbed judgment on what God has declared to be
good?<br><br>
Back to those slippers again.<br><br>
The glass slipper is authoritative: it says what goes and what doesn't,
because it *knows* the way the foot should be. It expects the foot to
adapt or find some other footwear. The fur slipper is experiential; it
says, let's work this out together; there's truth both sides. And yes,
maybe that gentler approach can be too loosey-goosey and over-personal.
Nothing human works perfectly, after all.<br><br>
The odd thing is that I can see virtues on both sides. I make as much
progress in fighting with rigidity as I do in exploring in gentleness and
openness. I have to know what it is I question, and that means accepting
that what I question is important enough to argue with. I cannot reject
either side, Scripture or science. I can only try to hold them together
and work out my own reconciliation. <br><br>
But it's in the struggle that I do my best God-thinking. <br><br>
My own personal slippers are soft, trodden-down sheepskin. It's still
January, and my floors are cold. Time to go dig them out and put them
on.<br><br>
<br>
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A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no
other way. -- Mark Twain </body>
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