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Dec. 6/89
A relatively recent conversation with my priest sparked this particular essay. The idea, however, had been brewing in my mind for a long, long time.
July 9, 1998From somewhere in the depths of my childhood memories, I remember reading (as I did voraciously back then) a book on myths, fables and legends. One story that still stands out from the many hundreds in that book was one from India titled simply, "The Blind Men and the Elephant". It went something like this:
Once upon a time, four men who had been blind all their lives were walking down a road. On their way, they met a rich peddlar leading an elephant who stopped to ask for directions. After chatting for a while, one of the blind men said, "Sir, what manner of animal are you leading? It makes a noise such as nothing I have ever heard before!"The peddlar replied, "It is an elephant."
"An elephant?" queried the blind men, "We have never heard of an elephant before. If it please you, may we feel your elephant to find out what such a manner of beast looks like?"
The peddlar consented, and the blind men spread out about the elephant with their hands stretched out to touch it. One man ran his hand along the elephant's long trunk and exclaimed, "Brothers, an elephant is very like a snake!"
The second blind man said, with his arms wrapped around the elephant's broad leg, "No, you are wrong, my brother. The elephant is like a large tree trunk."
The third felt along the length of the elephants broad side and said, "Are you both mad? The elephant is not like a snake at all, nor is it anything like a tree trunk. It is more comparable to a huge wall."
The fourth touched the tail, and said, "Brothers, you are all wrong. The elephant is like an unravelling string."
Looking back at the story through older eyes, I have more of an insight into its simple message. Everyone has a different perspective of the things they experience: the things they see, and the things they don't see. A fifth blind person in this group would be confused or scoff at the other four. How can an elephant be like a snake, a tree trunk, a piece of unraveling string AND a large wall? These are all very different things! And yet, all four of the blind men were right. They did not know it, but all these different things constitute a whole: the elephant.
Religion is no different in this aspect. Religious groups argue and debate, fight and murder all based on the ongoing disagreement over what God is, and how many are there(among other things). People fail to grasp that perhaps what they percieve is not the whole truth, but only part of the huge truth that is God.
In conversation with Father Francis, an epiphany that I had experienced earlier became the subject of contention. I stated that I had come to believe that at the basic roots, every religion is more or less the same in that they believe in God in some form or other, and they believe the same basic things that lead to eternal happiness (A topic I will explore another time). Father Francis felt that I was wrong, and we used the belief in the number of deities as our key debating point.
Father Francis stated that believing that there is one God, and only one God is a matter of logic. After all, there is no dispute that God is infinite and eternal. Thus, having more than one God would be a paradox. For, if deities are eternal, and there are (say) two Gods, their boundaries would overlap, as it were. This makes no sense since no two beings can overlap and still remain separate. This is a physical and logical impossibility. Therefore, it is indisputable that there cannot be more than one God.
He does have a point. Yet, what about all those pagan religions, such as Wicca and Shamanism, Taoism and hosts of other African and Asian religions which claim that there is more than one God, each responsible for a part of existence? Are they completely wrong? Is Christianity the only "right" religion in this respect? Hundreds of thousands of Christians would answer a resounding YES. But how can they know with certainty?
Certainly, quotes and passages can be pulled from every part of the Bible to prove this "infallible truth" that there is only one God, but can this count as conclusive proof? Quotes and passages can be pulled from other sources, other books, other stories passed from generation to generation from as far back, and indeed even farther in the past, as when Abraham first knew of Yahweh. Are these to be discounted simply because they are not sound Christian doctrine, and therefore not "true"?
What is truth? Pilate asked this of Jesus when he was put on trial, and even then, Jesus, who knew so much, did not answer him. How can we know what truth is after all? Everyone has truths that they believe in. Yet many can be different, and even conflicting. How do we say then what is the "real" truth? Can we, in fact, identify with certainty what facts are true and what are not?
Before this gets too philosophical and too general, let's narrow these question back down to religion. Can we say with certainty that one religion is right and the other wrong?
Suppose a religious ignorant is brought into a room and made to sit in the centre of the room as judge. A Christian stands up and says to him, "There is only ONE God," and lists his proof from the Bible, perhaps giving Father Francis' logical argument as the clincher. When the Christian sits down, a pagan stands and says, "There are many Gods," and proceeds to give his evidence. Finally, the athiest stands and states, "There is no such thing as God. There is no scientific evidence that such a Being exists." Who should our religious ignorant believe?
Father Francis would say that you can only believe one of them, that only one can be telling the truth since all their statements conflict. Yet, to me, this parallels the story I presented at the beginning of our four blind men trying to discern the physical appearance of the elephant. Like the blind men, we have never seen God, never really known the mystery that is God. So, we use our senses, our minds and our theology to find out. Like the elephant, God is larger than any of us can perceive, so we spread out in different directions to feel and find Him. (You will note that I use the traditional Catholic way to refer to God for lack of an ambivalent, non-derogatory pronoun. Accept this for the sake of argument for the moment.) And like the blind men, we have different perceptions of God depending on where we felt and searched for Him.
The less perfect but still very imaginable analogy I used in conversation with Father Francis was a light shining through an infinitely large prism. If there are two people, one on either side of the prism, one will see a single shaft of white light, while the other will see a myriad of colours. Neither one is wrong, neither person is lying when describing what they see. This just depends on the perspective.
All in all, religion is not a fact-based science. It is, in fact, an extension of philosophy. And any university student who has taken a philosophy course can tell you quite frankly that there are no right and wrong answers, no black and white lines in philosophy. There are only beliefs, perceptions, ideas and discussions.
You cannot say, "There is one God, and that is the truth. Case closed," for there will always be someone who can come up with an equally convincing argument that there are several Gods, or that there are no Gods. No proof is concrete. Not even the absence of scientific proof, as my athiest acquaintances would have me believe. There is no scientific proof of our existance either. Certainly, there are photos, writings and testimony of friends and ourselves. But once we die, and our memory fades from those who know us. Who can say that we wrote those papers? Who can say for certain that those photos are of us? Who can say with certainty then that we did once walk on Earth? So, if that proof cannot be documented with certainty, how much more so for the mystery that is God?
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