CSotD: Helpless unbelief
Skip to comments
Each day, "That is Priceless" takes a piece of classic-era art and gives it a gag caption. Steve Melcher is funny — which he ought to be, since he's a TV writer — and his blog, though a little unattended lately, has a backlog of gags, including several rude enough that they probably won't make it onto his syndicate site.
This one resonated with me, however, not because of the gag line but because I recognized the story: St. Nicholas rescuing three boys from being eaten. Looking it up, the prevailing story is that a butcher had slaughtered and pickled them to be sold as ham, though I had heard that the bishop had stopped at an inn and discovered they were serving boy stew.
In any case, he went to the cauldron or tub or whathaveyou, gestured hypnotically, and out popped the three lads, alive and whole once again.
I remember this because this is the story that sparked the moment when, though still a young and impressionable lad, I said, "Well, now, hold on a minute … "
I was willing to believe in the raising of Lazarus or of Jarius's daughter — heck, I'm still willing to believe in that.
There are enough accounts of people rising up on mortuary slabs that I could quite easily see a skillful healer able to "raise the dead" in an era before EEGs and embalming, and I'm certainly ready to believe that Joshua bar Joseph, whatever else may be true of him, was a charismatic figure who could do things that would still be perceived as "miracles" today.
But once they've been sliced up and either pickled in brine or cooked into a stew, the suspension of disbelief becomes a lot less willing.
Mind you, the same saint is credited in some circles with being able to visit every home in the world in a single night, sliding down chimneys and distributing toys thanks to the assistance of a team of flying reindeer and a workshop full of elves.
And, while I didn't realize it was the same guy, I heard both stories at roughly the same age and believed them both, for a while.
The conflict comes when losing belief in one story means that you don't have to mail letters to the North Pole anymore, while losing belief in the other story means you will be eternally tormented in the fires of Hell.
You're not required to believe in Santa Claus, and a kid who holds that belief into the third grade is going to be teased mercilessly, but a good number of religions require you to believe things that are beyond science and beyond logic, and it's not fair to mix stuff they expect you to outgrow with stuff they genuinely expect you to embrace.
Francis Yeats-Brown, in "Lancer at Large," his sequel to "Lives of a Bengal Lancer," wrote of how much India in the 1930s continued to resemble the India of the distant past, which he noted made the stories of the Puranas much more immediate and real to her people.
By contrast, he said, Westerners lived in a world so different from the world of the Bible that it is easy for us to compartmentalize our lives separate from our scripture: "We repeat the rich, rolling phrases of the prophets of Palestine, without giving them literal credence; and hence we tend to similar hyperbole in our worldly affairs."
One handy thing about being a Deist — which is really only an extension of agnosticism — is that you are not required to compartmentalize what you know to be possible and what you believe into two different boxes that, like matter and anti-matter, must never come into contact with each other.
It's not the same as being an atheist, which calls for a level of certainty that flies in the face of history and logic. Anyone with a smattering of history of science knows that there have always been things lurking beyond our knowledge that seem ridiculous but that, once we figure them out, become obvious.
And, to be frank, anyone who goes nattering on about the properties of sub-atomic particles, additional dimensions and what's inside of black holes ought not to be overly smug about bishops reviving pickled children.
Just as anybody who goes nattering on about the world having been created 5,000 years ago over a period of six days, ought not to be smug about global warming, embryology or the Big Bang. (And sure as hell shouldn't be running unopposed.)
A little belief is a dangerous thing.
The Red Queen may have been able to believe six impossible things before breakfast, but "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't so." (Including the attribution of that quote.)
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
Comments 12
Comments are closed.