9 posts tagged “god”
This story for my writing group is based on a historical event, commonly known as the Battle of the Braes. It was the last major action of the highland clearances and is often referred to as the last battle on British soil. I got the idea for the story after reading a news report of the battle in which the author marvelled at the vehemence of the women who participated. So I started thinking about this story as from the viewpoint of one of those women. In the process, it developed into a story about this one woman's belief in God. This is the revision after incorporating the inputs from my writing group.
MAIRI’S BATTLE
18 April 1882
“They’re here! They’re here! Comin’ roon the brae!” the cry pierced through gaps in the door slats and the cloth covering the open window. Mairi pushed open the door, standing in the damp April air and watched as neighbors left their crofts and headed toward the road.
Mairi knew it would happen, but it still came as a surprise. She had hoped it would all disappear, like the mist that creaps in from the sea and then, one day, dissipates to blue skies and pony-tail wisps. She hoped Laird MacDonald would take mercy on them, seeing how wretched and poor their lives were. It would be the right thing, the Christian thing, for him to do, like when Christ took pity on the masses and fed them on the shores of Galilee.
For weeks, now, the crofters refused to pay their rents to the Laird’s factor unless they were given permission to graze their animals on the slopes of Ben Lee. In response, the Laird sent his factor and the Inverness sheriff to serve eviction summonses. Mairi’s husband, Peter, and the men from the surrounding crofts, Norman Stewart and Alexander Finlayson—two trouble-makers—set upon the factor and sheriff forcing them to burn the eviction documents. There was whisky and fires late into the evening that night as the crofters celebrated their victory.
Mairi knew they would come back. Still she prayed. She prayed for the Lord to deliver her family from the poverty that was her heritage for so many generations, she almost believed there was nothing God could do to change it. She prayed for the Lord to share his Grace with the Laird MacDonald that he might understand and take pity on those beholden to him. She prayed that the crofters would remain righteous in God’s eyes by turning the other cheek.
When it appeared that each of her prayers had gone unanswered, she prayed a prayer of contrition and apology. It wasn’t her place to question God’s plan. Everything was His doing. This was God’s design. The Laird was wealthy because God willed it. Her family was poor and hungry because God determined that to be their status in the world. How could she question the architect of this world, the One who gave her her husband and children, the One who painted the glorious Skye sunsets and who caused the northern lights to billow in the night sky? Mairi thought she may have offended God with her selfishness, and she finished her prayer with tears.
So, when she stood in the doorway and saw her neighbors leaving their crofts for the main road, she folded her hands and bowed her head. “Dear Lord, help them to see your plan and know their place in it. You are truly a great God from whom all things emanate. We all are humble and give thanks for what we have. Amen.”
As she finished, Peter came round the side of the house, a wood pitchfork in one hand. He stood with Mairi for a moment, watching, and then quietly said, “MacLeod says constables are comin’. From Glasgow. About fifty. The Laird must have hired them to run us off.” He fell silent for a moment, then continued, “I have to go, Mairi.”
“No, dinna go, Peter. No.”
“Hush woman. I was there at the beginning. I’ll be there at the end.”
“There’s only trouble there, Peter. Someone could get hurt. You could get hurt. Then where would we be?”
Peter remained silent.
“If it’s the constables, you could be arrested.” Mairi’s voice began to crack. “Think of this, Peter. If you don’t go, if the Laird hears that we weren’t part of this, he might take pity on us and leave us alone.”
Peter looked at Mairi with dark eyes and shook his head.
“What if this is the Lord’s will, Peter?”
Peter kicked a stone, then looked to the distance where already a crowd gathered. “Then I suppose I should get on with earning my passage into Hell.” Peter began walking toward the road and the growing band of crofters.
Mairi lifted her apron and held it to her face, in part from shame over Peter’s blasphemous comment, and in part to catch the tears of fear now streaking her cheeks.
She imagined being put out of her home and being sent to a seaside village where Peter would need to learn fishing and the women waited on shore to clean the fish or waded out into the low tide muck in search of clams and mussels. She’d been told the smell of raw fish never leaves you, though you get used to it in time. Her two boys, Niall and Ailean, eleven and nine years old respectively, would be forced into someone’s employ to help put food on the table every day. Worse still, they could all be put on a boat and sent to Canada or the United States. She’d heard rumors that life in Canada could be difficult with short growing seasons and bitter cold winters. In the States, foreigners were looked upon with disdain and treated as outcasts.
Those fears were soon forgotten, though, when from her periphery she saw Niall and Ailean running to join Peter.
“Niall, Ailean, come home, now!”
They did not stop, nor look back.
“Even if they could hear ye Lass, they wouldna come home.” Old Anna approached from behind the house. She carried a large walking stick and a cloth bag at the end of a leather strap that she had over her shoulder and across her body. The bag was filled with something weighty.
“Anna, they shouldna be going. This isn’t something for bairns.”
“I’m thinking ye couldna stop them.” Anna leaned on the walking stick slightly out of breath. “They want to be men, and men they’ll be today.”
“No!” cried Mairi. “They’re too young!”
“Mairi, when yer protectin yer hame, no one’s too young.”
Mairi looked after Peter and her sons and began to sob.
“Here now, Lass.” Anna put her arm around Mairi’s shoulder. “They’ll be fine, I warrant it. I’ll tell ye what ye can do. Why don’t ye come with me, and we’ll go and keep a watchful eye on those lads o yers, eh?” Anna squeezed Mairi’s shoulder.
Mairi nodded.
“Ah, fine. That’s grand. Here now, carry me bag if ye will. I’m no as young as I used to be.”
Anna lifted the strap over her head and handed it to Mairi. Mairi nearly dropped it, it was so weighty.
“What’s in here?” Mairi asked while opening the mouth of the bag to look.
“Some wee stones I gathered in the field.”
Mairi quizzically looked at Anna.
“There of no use in the field now, are they.”
As they walked toward the road, Mairi was conflicted. She wanted to rush to where her boys were, but she felt obliged to stay with Anna who was laboring with the soft, uneven ground and the slight incline. To make matters worse, Anna did not talk in her exertion, leaving Mairi to fret unabated. At one point, Mairi asked Anna if the constables would carry guns. All she received in reply was Anna’s heavy breathing and a wave of impatience from her free hand.
The crofters, men, women and children, arrayed themselves along the short stone fence bordering the road. Four men and one woman crossed the fence and now stood on the road facing in the direction from which the constables would approach. As Mairi approached the forty or so crofters she began to hear murmurings and an occasional raised voice. Nearly all gathered had something in their hands—a rake, hoe, pitchfork, a walking stick, or stone. It frightened Mairi.
“I don’t see Niall or Ailean.” She stopped thirty feet from the crowd.
Anna took a step or two past her unaware they were stopping, then leaned heavily on her stick and looked back at Mairi. Between deep breaths she said, “Well, come on then. Ye’ll no find em back here.”
Mairi was becoming more frightened by the apparent attitude of the crofters and didn’t move. “I canna see them, Anna. Can you?”
“Lass, let’s go look together.”
“No, no. I want them to come to me. To come away from that . . . that . . . rabble. Can’t ye see?”
“Aye, I can see well enough. Yer afeared, aren’t ye, Lass?” Anna shook her head and stepped back toward Mairi. “Give me the stones then. I’ll find yer bairns and shush them back to ye.”
Mairi helped Anna lift the leather strap over Anna’s head and onto her shoulder.
“Mairi, the future of yer hame, yer life, is going to be right here, on this road. The Laird’s hired men are coming to take it all away from ye. Will ye no stand up for yerself?”
Mairi said nothing, looking past Anna as though she hadn’t heard a word. Anna turned, shaking her head, and trundled to the back of the crowd. Soon Niall and Ailean emerged from the crowd slowly and dejectedly walked toward Mairi. Ailean stumbled and fell from watching behind him and not on the ground he was walking.
“What are you two doing here? This is no place for young lads.”
“Others are here, Ma,” said Niall pointing back to the crowd.
“Well, they shouldn’t be. This is not a Christian gathering. This is not the sort of thing Christ would have taught us. No. I’ll no have my bairns straying from the teachings of Christ. Do you hear me?”
Before the boys could answer, one of the men in the crowd shouted, “There!” and soon all eyes, including Mairi’s, were focused down the road where a lone horseman rode out from behind a rise. The rider trotted a short distance, then stopped. He stayed there for several moments before wheeling his horse and leaving from the way he’d come, disappearing around the curve and behind the rise.
To a soul, the crofters remained silent while the rider was in sight. As soon as he disappeared, their murmurings started again, but at a noticeably higher decibel.
“See, now,” Mairi said, her voice betraying relief, “he spied us and thought better of it. It’s all over. We should be to hame, now.”
“What about Da?” asked Ailean.
“They’re all staying, Ma,” said Niall.
“It’s over,” Mairi raised her voice, “and that’s the last I’ll say of it. Ye’ll go hame now and say yer prayers thanking God for his grace and wisdom that kept us all safe.”
“Look!” shouted Ailean pointing back down the road. “Look, Niall.”
From behind the same rise, the rider reemerged. This time, men on foot followed. From this distance and in the muted light, Mairi could still see their dark uniforms with dark caps. The crofter’s murmuring stopped again.
It was now coming to pass, and the fear gripped her by the throat. Marching up the road in navy uniforms with brass buttons was her misery. They were the harbingers of homelessness. On their belts were truncheons of destitute lives. On their caps were badges of cold-heartedness. Mairi began to feel the desolation deep into her soul.
Still, her soul was buoyed by the thought that this was all part of God’s plan. Recognizing that her destiny was unfolding before her, even though she had no notion of what that destiny held, was a small comfort. These constables could be, instead of the messengers of misery, the instruments of God’s will come to ensure God’s will come to pass.
Nevertheless, she feared them and the destiny they brought. She feared finding a new home. She feared going hungry and watching her bairns starve. Most of all, she feared the possibility she could be put on a boat destined for a different and foreign land.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone turn and run away, toward the crofts of Balmeanach. With her eyes, Mairi followed his flight until he disappeared behind some buildings. When she looked back, Niall and Ailean were no longer in front of her. They were nowhere to be seen. Mairi panicked and moved closer to the road to try to find them. When she reached the stone wall, she saw them. They were on the road with their father, Peter, facing the oncoming constables.
“Niall! Ailean!”
The boys looked at her, then at their father. Peter patted Ailean on the head. They stayed with him.
“Peter! I dinna want them there!”
Peter looked at her and frowned.
“Fine young men ye raised there, Mairi,” said Anna tanking Mairi’s arm. “Their Da will keep them from harm.”
“He shouldna have to,” said Mairi. “They shouldna be there.”
“Och, let them be, Lass. Ye’ll remember wha they done here wi’ pride, ye will. They’re good, brave lads, sure.”
Anna moved back toward the bulk of the crofters. Mairi looked to the approaching constables who were now close enough she could make out the determination on their faces. Then, from her right periphery, she saw more people from Balmeanach climbing the hill toward the road. To her left she saw movement among the stones on the slope above the road. Now the constables would be outnumbered and it only served to build Mairi’s dread.
The crofters were silent as the constables approached. Mairi wondered what they were thinking. With more coming up from Balmeanach and those on the hill, she began to worry even more that this confrontation would become a conflict of high emotion rather than a meeting of reasoned coolness. She looked back to Peter, Niall, and Ailean, and became even more fearful. Looking for strength, she folded her hands, bowed her head, and silently prayed.
Dear Lord, I know you’re a just and merciful God of Grace. And I know this may all be according to your plan. But, Lord, I feel like we’re the Israelites and the constables are the Egyptians. Ye helped the Israelites. Ye parted the sea and when they were safe ye crushed their enemies with the very thing ye saved them with. Will ye save us like you did them? What have we done, how have we sinned so, that makes us less worthy of your salvation than the Israelites? Dear God, do something. Keep my family from harm. I beseech ye.
The constables stopped short of the gathered crofters. Their eyes, edgy, almost frightened, their heads constantly moving as though they expected something to happen and wanted to see from which quarter it started.
The crofters began drifting down the stone wall until they were abeam the constables. Peter, Niall, Ailean and the other men blocking the road moved closer as well. Mairi followed from behind the stone wall.
“Yer no welcome here!” shouted one of the men standing next to Peter. “There’s nothing for ye here. Go back to where ye come.”
From the front of the constables, the sheriff replied, “We’re no here for a welcome.”
“Then go hame!” shouted someone from the wall.
“Aye, off with ye, ye buggerin bastards!” shouted someone else followed by a chorus of “ayes” and grumbles from the crofters shaking their sticks and raising their fists.
The constables’ unease was now palatable. Many removed their truncheons from their belts and held them at the ready. Mairi could see that some began moving into a stance she could only imagine was in preparation for an attack.
The sheriff dismounted his horse and reached into his coat breast pocket pulling out a folded paper. He kept watch on the crowd as he unfolded the paper and prepared to read.
“The Laird Alexander MacDonald and the magistrate of Portree have issued a warrant for the arrest of Norman Stewart, Alexander Finlayson, Malcolm Finlayson, Peter MacDonald, Donald Nicholson, and James Nicholson . . .”
Mairi heard her husband’s name and panic swelled in her breast. She could feel her throat constrict and her breathing quicken. Where was God, she wondered. Where was his compassion and justice? Certainly he could not be looking down on the misery that was about to be inflicted with a dispassionate heart. Certainly, he would not loose the wolves on his flock.
From the crofters, someone yelled, “Ye canna fool us, ye’ve come to hump our sheep.” The crowd burst into laughter.
“Ye’re all the shite in the field.”
A woman followed, “Nay, they’re the worms under the shite.” More laughter.
“Ye’ll nay take a one, sae help me,” Peter replied to the sheriff. “Ye can drag yer bloody arses back tae Glasgow.”
“Oh God, no, Peter. No,” whispered Mairi. She saw Naill standing next to his father. He now held a stone in his right hand. Ailean had backed away.
“Ailean! Ailean! Come here!” and the lad began making his way to Mairi all the while keeping watch on the formation of constables. When he reached Mairi, she could see the fear in his eyes and when she stroked his hair, she could feel a tremble. She took his hand and held him close to her.
“Wheest, child.”
The crofters were tense, waiting, it seemed to Mairi, for an excuse to rush the constables. The constables were tense as well, fearing what appeared to be the inevitable pain of sticks and stones. The crofters began shouting at the invaders. There was Anna shaking her walking stick in their direction and shouting, “Go hame, ye buggerer of boys!”
Mairi saw the sheriff turn toward the constables behind him and then point to the men blocking the road, including Peter and Niall. The sheriff then stepped out of the way and a dozen or so constables, truncheons in hand, began walking toward the men the sheriff identified. Apparently, that was all the crofters required. Stones started flying toward the constables. A few crofters hopped up on the stone wall and began swinging their sticks and tools at the police. Mairi saw movement on the hillside and looked in time to see several large stones rolling toward the massed constables.
The din was tremendous. Mairi couldn’t make out what most were saying, but she could tell it was being said in anger. She looked down at Ailean who was now hugging her side. It’s not right, she thought, it’s not right. These uniformed men, these strangers who’ve never seen any of us before, have been sent to do the bidding of the one who does know us. They’re the hired tools of a coward. No better and not much different from oxen yoked to do their masters’ labors.
As she watched in frozen horror, the clash between crofters and constables became more involved and pitched. Crofters clambered over the stone wall only to face truncheons being swung wildly in an attempt to keep crofters at a distance and to deflect incoming sticks and tools. Mairi saw crofters being hit by truncheons and staggering away. Moments later they were ready to rejoin the fray. She saw constables backing away from the pressing crowd. It appeared the crofters were gaining the advantage. Then she saw Anna stumble away from the crowd. Mairi went to her.
“Are ye hurt?”
“Aye,” whispered Anna as though she was out of breath. “A wee bit. A bastard got
me . . . before I could get . . . one of them.”
Anna turned her head away from Mairi. Her neck was brilliant red and a small trickle of blood escaped from her ear. Mairi hissed, sucking in air.
“Striking a woman. Have they no decency? It’s no too bad, Anna.”
“That’s no why . . . I left,” continued Anna. “I also got hit . . . in the chest. Knocked the breath . . . from me.”
Mairi helped Anna sit on the ground. When Mairi knelt to clean the blood from Anna’s ear, Anna brushed her away and pointed to the road. Mairi saw a desperate struggle between the men on the road and the constables.
“Peter won’t . . . give up yer hame . . . without a good row,” said Anna.
Mairi looked up to the road and Peter who was struggling against the grasping hands of the constables. She stood. A truncheon lifted above the fray. It swung down. Niall fell to the ground.
“No!” Mairi shouted and began running toward the fighting men. “A dhiobhail!” She hadn’t spoken Gaelic in years and now the first thing out of her mouth was to curse the constable as a devil.
Niall crawled away from the brawl. Mairi rushed to him. He was crying and holding his left shoulder. Mairi helped him away from the road. When they stopped, she tried to cajole him to stop crying to no avail.
Two constables now had Peter on the ground and one was striking Peter with his fist. Mairi looked down, then moved Niall to the side and picked up a potato-sized stone. With all her might, she hurled it at the men holding Peter. When she’d thrown it, she yelled, “A mitic an deamhan!” [You son of the devil!]
Her stone fell short of the men, but one saw her throw it and nodded toward her and said something to another constable.
“Yer a poofter!” shouted Mairi. “Aye, you, ye clotheid.”
The constable took two steps toward Mairi and stopped.
“Cha toll?” she taunted. “Pog mo thon!” [No? Kiss my ass!]
Mairi picked up another stone and threw it at the stopped constable. He caught it before it could hit him. He shook his head, dropped the stone, and turned back toward the brawl. Mairi shrieked in exasperation.
The crofters who had been blocking the road, including her Peter, were now being drug back to the main body of constables who were still fighting off crofter sticks and stones. The arrested men were handcuffed, yet struggling against their captors. In short order, the constables and their captors were enveloped in the main body of constables. When they were all together the constables slowly began backing down the road they’d arrived on with the shouting and harassing crofters in pursuit.
Mairi lost sight of Peter. She left Niall and Ailean with Anna, who was still sitting and panting, and followed the crowd. She picked up a stone and was preparing to throw it when she realized that Peter was somewhere amongst the constables and her stone might hit him. So she dropped the stone and instead shouted, “ Yer mither’s a salope and yer the gowk from her wame!” She saw another woman pick up a stone to throw and said, “No, no. Our men are in there.”
When it became apparent to Mairi that Peter was going to be taken away and the gathered crofters weren’t going to affect it, she stopped following and watched the crofters and constables drift slowly down the road, still in contact with each other. Soon more and more crofters fell out of the crowd and the pace of the constables quickened.
Mairi still seethed with anger at the whole situation—the Laird and his lackey factor, the sheriff, and the hired constables. How dare they come into her space, her home, with ill intent? They were invaders. She hated them all. They were vile thieves.
Mairi turned away from the retreating army and returned to her boys and Anna. Both boys had stopped crying, though Ailean still gulped large breaths of air. Mairi brushed back his hair from his face, then with her thumbs, wiped the dirt streaks on his cheeks.
“Where are they takin Da?” Ailean asked.
“Awa, lad,” she whispered. “Dinna fash yerself. Yer Da will be back soon enough.”
Mairi turned to Niall who was still favoring the shoulder that had been struck.
“Ah, Niall. Are ye hurt bad, dear?”
Niall shook his head.
“Can ye lift yer arm?” she asked helping him raise his arm from his side. “Good. It’s no broken then.”
“I’m proud of ye, Mairi,” Anna said pulling herself to her knees. “Ye stood up for yer man and yer hame, ye did. Against them coofs.”
Mairi looked back down the road and muttered, “Ifrinn an diabhuill . . . a dhia, thoir cobhair.” [Devil’s hell . . . God help us]
“God dinna help them like us, lass,” said Anna. She lifted her arm toward Mairi who took it helping Anna to her feet. “It’s the Laird he helps. The Laird and them like him.”
“Anna, wha now?”
“Aye, wha now.” Suddenly Anna looked frantically toward the crofters that were now trudging back. “Have ye seen Angus?”
“Aye, I did. He was fine.”
Anna looked back at Mairi and smiled. Patting Mairi’s cheek, Anna said, “Aye, wha now. I guess we go hame, go hame and wait. Will ye be alright, then? Just ye and the lads, there?”
Mairi nodded.
“Come on then, lads,” said Anna. “Let’s tak yer mither hame so ye can wait for yer Da’s return.”
In the quiet walk home, Mairi relived the day ending in the anxiousness she now felt returning. Her husband was gone, taken by the agents of a greedy, powerful, uncaring man. The Laird had taken her man, her boys’ father. She and the boys could manage the croft for a short while, but soon those same agents led by the Laird’s cousin, the Factor, would come to put her out. She and her boys, and what they could carry, would be sent to a fishing village or put on a boat to Canada. How would Peter find them when released from custody? How would they ever find each other in a foreign land? She had no answers. No convenient comforts to ease her fears. Answers abandoned her when she needed them most.
He abandoned her . . . or she abandoned Him. I didn’t matter. He wasn’t there. He didn’t protect her or her family from the calamity they now faced. He had to know what was happening to them and He turned a blind eye.
When they arrived at the croft, Mairi said farewell to Anna, assuring her again she would be fine, and sent the boys inside. She stayed outside the door in the cool, damp air and watched her neighbors and villagers stream back from the scene of the battle. Some remained defiant, boisterous to those for whom it did not matter. Most, though, were silent. Mairi thought they were contemplating the ramifications of the day and their futures that were already rather bleak. Most were barely able to eke enough from the rock-strewn, spongy soil to pay their rent, let alone have some money left over for fish or coal. The Laird would certainly be harsh in his retribution for their insolence, and they walked as though they knew it.
It was when Duncan MacPhee passed that her soul blackened into obscurity. Duncan was the most God-fearing man she knew. Many said he should be the reverend rather than the sot they had. As he walked past Mairi’s croft, she could see blood matting the hair on his head and in his beard. Here was a man who, of all men, had no sin. He lived day-to-day by God’s word. He prayed night and day. If God would love and protect anyone, it would be Duncan MacPhee.
Yet, here he was trudging back from the confrontation with the constables and on his head a sign that God had not been with him, had not protected him. Could it be Duncan was also being punished? Could God not forgive him this once for all the years Duncan had been his most devoted servant? As the Lord’s devoted servant, Duncan suffered like every other crofter. Diseased crops, starving beasts, and a demanding landlord plagued Duncan no less than it did, say, David Conroy who drank too much, whose every sentence contained curse words and who routinely disappeared leaving his family to fend for themselves. His life and Duncan’s life were equally hard. How could that be?
Did God not care? Could he not see this part of the world to know the pain and suffering they were enduring? Had he washed his hands of men only to intervene in the world to punish? Is there not a better way, a more compassionate way, to deal with our misery? Can He not think of anything better?
Mairi took a deep breath and turned to go inside. She stood next to the fire for a moment, then said, “Lads, come here. I dinna know when yer Da will come home. It may be soon, or maybe no. I’m sure the factor will soon call and charge us to leave. So, we need to be ready. I’ll be relyin on ye two to help. Do ye understand me?”
Niall and Ailean nodded.
Mairi looked into the fire and continued, “Aye, we’re on our own now. There’s no one to help. We must do what we have to. Rely on no one or nothing.”
A common defense of religious conviction is the use of the conviction itself as a defense. “It’s part of my faith.” “I take God’s existence on faith and that’s all I need.” “At some point you just have to have faith that God exists.” What does faith mean in a religious conversation and does it differ from what it means in other conversations?
Does faith that gravity will keep you rooted to the earth mean the same thing as faith in the existence of God? No. The faith that you won’t fly off the earth is a belief based on the incontrovertible evidence of the effects of gravity. Because of your knowledge of the laws of gravity and based on experiential evidence that so far, with each step you’ve taken, you’ve not flown off the earth, you are certain that you won’t fly off the earth with your next step. It’s akin to saying that you have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. What if the possibility existed, no matter how great the odds, that at some point in your life gravity takes a holiday sending you spinning into space. If you knew that possibility existed, could you still say that you had faith that you wouldn’t fly off the earth with your next step? It would be related to saying “The odds that with my next step gravity will take a holiday are so great that I’m not really worried about it.” Certainly you wouldn’t say that if the odds were 50-50. Even at the astronomical odds of it happening you might say you have faith that it won’t happen, yet may not be willing to say that you were certain it would. In this case, the difference between faith and certainty would be the existence of the aberration in the law. Without the aberration you could be certain. With the possibility for the aberration, you could still have faith that your next step will be into that mud puddle, but you couldn’t be certain.
So, does that mean that certainty and faith are different? I think clearly they must be. By most common uses of both words, if you’re certain of something, faith isn’t necessary and if you have faith in something, certainty isn’t possible. For example, what sense is it to say “I’m certain the sun will set tomorrow, I have faith in it”? Having faith that the end of the day will happen seems to be a weakening of the certainty that it will—as though you’d never seen a sunset happen and that lack of evidence would throw the certainty into some realm of doubt. In this use, faith would have some measure of doubt inherent that wouldn’t be there with certainty.
However, some might say that their faith is all the certainty they need, essentially saying that their certainty is grounded in their faith. This seems to me a rather queer thing to say, but let’s look at the defining phrase, “all the certainty they need.” This seems to imply that the degree of certainty here is something less than, say, the certainty that your name is what it is. The certainty allowed by the faith is “good enough for them,” as though there’s good enough certainty, better certainty and best certainty. That’s understandable. We all do that sort of probability calculus with certainty all the time. We often say, “I’m fairly certain that . . .” to mean that the odds of something happening in our estimation are pretty high. It’s a statement of confidence.
Is it a misuse of the word “certain”? Of course not. Does the certainty in this use mean the same as the certainty that 1+1=2? Not at all. We often use the word as a sort of emphasis. We know the strength of certainty that the addition tables are immutable. When that lesson is learned it’s a certainty for us. There can be no doubt. So when we use the same word in a context in which there could be doubt but we assess the probability that something else may happen as very low, the use of “certain” becomes a signpost for what probability we’ve attached to what we’re talking about. Once again, though, I don’t believe this is the meaning those of faith would admit to when saying that they are certain in their faith.
In order for their faith in God’s existence to be meaningful, for their certainty that there is a God, those who profess it must believe that their faith and certainty are beyond doubt. Others may doubt, but for them it is a certainty—no less certain than that the sun will set and that 1+1=2. This, I’d submit, isn’t false, it’s meaningless.
First, imagine if I said, “I’m certain that 1+1=2, but John doesn’t believe it.” Now imagine me saying, “With recent discoveries I’m certain that there’s life on other planets, but John doesn’t believe it.” Is the first sentence the sort that the theists would say is closest to their certainty in God’s existence? Does John’s disbelieve make sense? Not really. The fact of the matter is that 1+1=2 and for someone to say that John doesn’t believe it is just another way of saying that either John hasn’t learned his addition tables or John is mentally incompetent. Imagine changing the statement just slightly to “I was certain that 1+1=2, but I don’t believe it now.” This absolutely doesn’t make sense. But, if we exchange “1+1=2” with “God exists,” it suddenly becomes very meaningful supported by numerous instances of that very thing happening.
What’s different? Obviously something about the nature of the certainty changed. In the one case, losing certainty made no sense, while in the other, it made perfect sense (passing no judgment on the speaker). The certainty means something different between these two statements. What’s different is that in the second statement, “I was certain that God exists, but I don’t believe it now,” the possibility that the essence of the subject could change was inherent in the use of the word “certain.” In other words, the certainty entailed an embedded probability that was later determined to be inordinately high. That’s not possible in the former use of “certain” with the addition sample.
The point of all this was to say that when a person says that their faith makes them certain, what they’re really saying is that their faith establishes for them a high probability that what they’re claiming is actually the case. Inherent in it is the possibility, for them a very low and perhaps unknown probability, that what they’re claiming could be wrong. It’s an unintended agnosticism.
More to follow.
I wrote this quickly last night and sent it out to my writing group. I've received one response and it was about what I expected. I thought I'd see what you thought.
THE ROLE OF IMAGINATION
Why do we say
that bluebirds sing
when they couldn’t tell
a whole note from a quarter?
Why do we think
that geese mate for life
with an obligation to fidelity
more determined than our own?
Why do we think
a tree craves rain
and the grass wants sun
and the blooms on hostas
reach for the sky?
Why do we say
that squirrels are nervous
and hogs lazy
and goony birds goony?
Do we want all things
to think like us,
to feel what we feel,
to be in our image?
And why do we say
God loves us?
It may come as no surprise to some and a disappointment to others, but I’ve stopped reading The God Delusion. I have to admit that I grew tired of the condescending attitude, sometimes approaching the level of grade-school name calling, of Mr. Dawson against those who hold religious beliefs. In my mind, it seriously detracted from the arguments he made. It was like he was consciously attempting to pander to the segment of the world who enjoys the banter on programs like The Jerry Springer Show. That’s not intellectually satisfying or compelling and certainly not socially appealing. The book would have been much better had the emotional whitewash been stripped out. But then the book would be half its size and publishers wouldn't be interested.
That being said, I can't say that my leanings have changed. Certainly, Mr. Dawson’s book is polarizing for those segments of the population who are looking for polarizing arguments on the subject. Virulent atheists will see it as a landmark work. Evangalistic Christians, whose intellectual curiosity has been blunted by faith, will declare it flat out wrong. For the rest, I doubt the book will change anyone’s mind. It hasn’t changed mine. God is still a human invention propagated with language and evolving as our language evolves.
Richard Dawkins idolizes Darwinian natural selection. I think that’s fair to say. Everything is a result of our innate motivation to survive as a species or is the result of a misfiring of genetic material. Religion and belief in a God is, according to Dawkins, a mutation of a genetically engineered response. At some point in our development as evolving beings, something misfired and God and religion is the result. This grossly oversimplifies Dawkins’ argument, I know, but it will have to do for this discussion.
Something bothers me about the argument. Initially, it makes sense to me. It places us squarely in the middle of the rest of the natural world, no better or no worse than any other bit of complex carbon-based entity. It’s where I think we belong. Why should I believe that I’m any more important than any other living being on this planet? Is it because I have complex thought processes that allow me to rationalize that since I can have thoughts of superiority, I must be superior? Is it because over the millennium humans have developed a complex method of communication that allows them to convince those with similar methods of communication that a superior being has designated humans as the “recipients” of the natural world making it subservient to humans? (I can’t help noting that this sort of argument, divine designation of humans as the preeminent being in the universe, is a pretty crafty way of arguing for our own survival.) Is it because we’ve become particularly capable of manipulating the environment in ways that are beneficial to humans that makes us believe that the natural world must belong to us?
But, Dawkins keeps going back to Darwinian natural selection as though it were, and I hesitate to say it but here goes, God. It is the ultimate explanation for why everything is the way it is for all life on Earth. Doesn’t anything that fits the bill as an “ultimate explanation” sound like God? And therein lays my difficulty. Dawkins seems to be no less dogmatic about his God—Darwinian natural selection—than the various religions are about their God(s). It’s just that Dawkins’ God has some existence in scientifically proven phenomenon. While I can’t claim to have scientific evidence to support my claims, it seems to me that Dawkins falls victim to the same sort of generalization error that our language seems to encourage.
The meaning of words seems to encourage us to believe that eventually, everything can be traced from singular, immutable facts or truths. That’s what drove the philosophy of Bertrand Russell and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein. At some point of linguistic analysis, we will ultimately point to what a word’s meaning refers to. That’s how we think we learn language. We point to an object, a fact, and name it. It gives us the idea that everything is reducible to the facts to which they refer. The natural inclination is to try to reduce these facts to a single, overarching theory that will explain them all. For Dawkins, that inclination leads him to accept and postulate that Darwinian natural selection is the “law” behind all living beings even going so far as to explain deviations from the “law” as misfires in a flawed biological being. It’s a tidy and convenient explanation supported by scientific evidence.
But, I find it a little too tidy to explain things like imagination, emotions, philosophy or other critical thinking endeavors, music, etc. And I think the reason that it’s a little too tidy is because science, as well as religion, has been duped by the very language we created, to believe there’s an ultimate meaning, an ultimate explanation for why things are the way they are.
What gets glossed over is that language and meaning changes with the user, culture and time. All these changes impact and reflect our views of the world, including how we investigate and report phenomena with science.
I've moved these posts from a different blog. This will be my last for a couple weeks while I'm on vacation.
If there’s a concept of God being expressed by a particular religion that’s more correct than the concepts being expressed in other religions, why is that? If the God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is the same (the God of Abraham), how is it that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are so different to the extent that they invoke the name of God to help them prevail in battle against people of the same God? What makes the believers of one religion so positive of the veracity of their religion that they hold believers of another religion based on the same God-concept in contempt? Even within Christianity, how is it that belief in the same God-concept results in such a multitude of different factions?
As much as I’d like to believe that an analysis of the language surrounding the God-concept can explain what’s gone wrong, it’s far more complicated than that. Environment, societal conflicts, emigration patterns, political intrigue, scientific sophistication all likely had impacts on the development of God-concepts.
The connection between various aspects of Zoroastrianism (a Persian religion founded in 1,500-2,000 BCE that’s recognized as the first documented monotheistic religion) and the God-concept of Abraham, the source of the God-concept in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is widely documented. Within Zoroastrianism are developed concepts of Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, that are remarkably similar to those held by Old Testament Judaism. Not to elevate Zoroastrianism too much, elements of later Zoroastrianism adopted tenets of Christianity. The harshness of life in 16th century Scotland likely had something to do with the preeminence of predestination in the early versions of Presbyterianism. Would anyone seriously propose a creation story like that proposed in the book of Genesis knowing what we now know of geology, biology, astronomy and physics? When Constantine I announced the toleration of Christianity assuring the demise of the Roman Gods did Christianity’s God-concept change at all? As Christianity spread around the world, did the God-concept alter slightly due to cultural differences allowed by missionaries to ensure propagation of the religion?
Nevertheless, language, either spoken or written, is the vehicle for the propagation of the God-concept and religion. Without it, the concept cannot spread, cannot be justified, cannot be canonized. If the concept can’t be captured with language, how would we know what to worship? Without language, the concept is meaningless and incapable of being as successful as it has been. So, more than likely in we’ll find in the language used to transmit the God-concept its presumed justification or a reason to abandon it.
Let’s, for a moment, imagine an isolated culture. A culture with a unique problem—they have no language. (This is just an imaginary culture so don’t get bogged down in the details of why they have no language or how they could be a coherent culture if they didn’t have language. They don’t, period.) Perhaps they’re genetically incapable of speaking. Perhaps they’re so isolated that the capacity to speak never evolved (oh, perish the thought) and so the need to develop a language, as we know it, never matured. Whatever the reason (it’s not important for this excursion), this culture expresses itself solely through facial and bodily expressions and pointing to and showing what they’re referring to.
Given all that, can we imagine that they would have a God concept? I think it would be highly unlikely. If one of these poor sots does manage to conceive of a God, whatever he manages to postulate, without language to propagate the concept, it will likely die with him. Without language to spread his concept, no matter how simple or complex, the best the person can hope for is a hug of sympathy for his/her frustration.
But, even without language, perhaps this isolated community could muster a God they could point to—an icon. The icon could be put on a stone and the community could gather and show reverence in some way or another. The reverence could easily be learned first by imitating, then adopting the presumed reverence of others. So over time, the icon remains the same (except that the elements slowly soften the edges), but as the silent culture matures the form of showing reverence to the icon changes. Perhaps it starts out as sitting quietly watching the icon. Then it evolves to marching around the icon and further to dancing. Perhaps they even develop an entire ritual learned by imitation that ends in a state of religious ecstasy.
Here are some questions to consider about our silent community. What’s the common factor in the community’s concept of God other than the icon? Is it the method of showing reverence? Lacking the language to explain the concept, wouldn’t the reverence for the icon be an entirely individual thing? Can anyone in the community have the same concept of God that the original conceiver had? How?
Now, let’s say that a stranger shows up in the community and this stranger brings language and an expressible concept of God that’s obviously different from the apparent God of the silent community. In the course of the stranger’s interactions with the community, members of the community begin to pick up the stranger’s language. In doing so, they discover that everyone had different ideas of what their God, the icon, was. Some still cling to their icon worship despite the fact that their understanding of it changes with the introduction of language. As such, God changes slightly to allow different community member’s concepts to come closer together and they form a congregation of icon worshipers. Others listen to the stranger expound on his concept of God and begin to convert to something approaching the stranger’s concept, limited, of course, by their meager language skills.
At some point, the stranger departs the community leaving them to expand their use of language and refine their concept of God. As the communities’ understanding and use of language becomes more sophisticated, they become spiritually fractured dividing into factions of icon worshipers whose concepts of what the icon represents are similar and factions of worshipers of the stranger’s concept of God divided by the words used to describe the adopted concept.
So, what is the difference between the stranger’s concept of God and the concept of God focused on the icon? How do we know? Let’s say the stranger is a Christian missionary. For this community, what makes the validity of the stranger’s concept of God more tenable than the concept that formed around the icon? If a mute stranger came to the community and started worshiping another concept of God represented in a different icon what would the difference be between that concept of God and the communities’ original concept?
I’m fascinated by the role of language and social evolution in the development of God concepts.
I’ll return to my previous train of thought in a future entry, but today I’m obsessed with a slightly different but related question . . .
If I were to stop a handful of people on the street, or a representative sample of my office workers, or every other person leaving a Sunday church service what their concept of God is, would any of them be the same? Would there be some kernel of meaning that would be common to them all that we could point to and say “There’s the essence of God?”
I’ve heard it said many times that God is a personal God. I believe it. I believe that if I asked 20 people what they think God is, I’d get 20 different answers. The differences may range from subtle (how God listens to prayers, for instance) to radical (whether God is active or passive in the events of the world). Some may see God as the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Ghost) and others may see the Son and Holy Ghost as adjunct deities. Some may claim God to be an entity of some sort while others see God as the sum total of natural and physical law.
This puts me in a bit of a quandary. On the one hand, we have missionaries and ministers and proselytizers spanning the globe attempting to convince whoever they address to adopt their presentation of “God’s word” (and in some cases accompanying that adoption with vast amounts of tithes for massive churches and personal gain). Would any of them agree on the concept of God? Political parties are being bullied by a lobby of activist “Christians” promoting their “Christian” agenda. Would their concepts of God all agree and, if not, wouldn’t it be interesting to see what the differences are? There are Christians that don’t agree with the fundamentalist or evangelical ardor and believe in a separation of church and state. Within this category, would they all agree on the concept of God?
My suspicion is that if you cared to get beyond the surface, or even on the surface in some cases, people’s concepts of God are about as varied as the number of fingerprints in the world. The God of business owner on East Main is different in some way from the business owner on West Main, the history teacher’s concept is different from the English teacher’s, the minister at the United Presbyterian Church has a different concept from the elderly lady who has sat in the same pew for the last 60 years. The concept of God would seem to be a very personal thing.
This raises an interesting question then: Is there a core, immutable truth common to all believers that transcends personal differences?
The believer’s answer to the question is “Of course there is. The core, immutable truth is God. The differences are interpretations.” Well, that’s interesting. For the sake of argument and clarity, let’s express this position in the following way: person 1’s concept of God consists of S1, S2, S3, X1, X2, and X3. Person 2’s concept is T1, T2, T3, X1, X2 and X3. The X1, X2 and X3 that they have in common is the true nature of God. So when was the last time anyone pinpointed what the Xs are and why isn’t that universally recognized as God? If the Ss and Ts aren’t part of God, what are they? If a person says that God is both the interpretation bits and the immutable bits who’s to be the referee and what gave them the right to discount the interpretation bits.
Perhaps our language is imprecise enough to allow this sort of concept variance to exist. Perhaps underlying our language is an essence, an atomic particle, that each use of a word ultimately refers to. But, that’s complex linguistic issue that philosophers have been arguing over for a long time and likely is of little concern to those who use the word “God.”
The use of language, what words mean, and the concept of God seems inextricably linked. I believe that looking closely at how we use the word, what we mean when we use it, is really all we have to work with when looking at the concept. So, it’s in our language that God exists and that’s where we should go to explore the concept.
Someone please tell me what I’m missing.
This seems to me to be a nonsensical question. But let’s look at it closely. First, we could actually break it into two questions—is God sentient? And is God a being? Even these could be parsed into more detailed questions. For instance, the concepts of consciousness and being carry with them a world of assumptions or questions. I don’t want to get into them just yet.
Let’s start with the second question first. Is God a being? What does being a “being” mean? We’re using the word as a noun in this context. Its meaning could be compared to its meaning in statements like “Man is a rational being” or “Some beings in the depths of the ocean are luminescent” or “It’s a myth that a unicorn is a real being.” There are uses of the word “being” that are more complex. Philosophers will talk about actuality or absolute existence. But those are definitions that the average person of faith doesn’t have access to and so aren’t of interest at this point.
(For the purposes of all these talks, I intend to employ language as it’s used by common users avoiding the technical uses and meanings associated with highly academic disciplines like philosophy. After all, belief in God is not limited to an elite group of academicians. It’s in the realm of the common man. If it comes out that the academics own the nature of God’s existence and it’s different from what the common man believes the question then raises if the God of the common man is relevant.)
So, for the sake of argument (and only for the sake of argument since the definition of “being” will shift slightly each time it’s used), lets say that a “being” is something (not making any presumptions on its value) that exists. We can’t proclaim the nature of that existence. Whether the existence entails thought, reasoning, physical properties, occupies space, etc., we can’t say. We will assume that the existence can take whatever form is imaginable.
What we can say, I believe, is that if something exists, it can be identified as separate from other things that exist. Let’s start out with something simple. To say something is a being seems to say that it has something that sets it apart from other things that exist. Anything that’s indistinct from other things can’t be known to exist. The mere fact that we give it a name that distinguishes it from other things makes it distinct in some way. So, God, as a being, exists in some way distinct from other things we call beings just like man is a being distinct from the being we call unicorns. We can identify God as existing separate from other things simply by looking at the way we talk about God.
If God exists in such a way that we can identify that he exists, there must be some measure of evidence that makes what we say meaningful. There are luminescent beings that have been dredged up from the black depths of the ocean. These are beings for which we have physical evidence. This doesn’t seem to be the sort of being God is. Not only do we not have physical evidence that we can point to and say “There’s God,” we don’t anticipate that we’ll ever have such evidence.
There are mythical unicorns sprouting horns on their foreheads we can point to in writings or drawings. They have an imagined physical form allowing us to distinguish them from horses, for instance, and ensuring we never lose sight of the fact that they’re fictional. In fact, given the person talking about unicorns, their physical features and/or mythical powers can change yet they’re still identified as unicorns. We’re getting closer with this class of being. Some religious entities seem to hover nearby. I’m thinking of angels and devils. We’ve all seen depictions of angels and devils. There are descriptions of them in the Bible. However, the primary difference between unicorns and angels and devils is in the belief that the latter are not fictional.
While we’re here, perhaps we should look at Jesus Christ, his mother Mary and the multitude of saints. I’ll not argue against their existence in history. So far as I’m concerned, they all walked this earth at some point. But they, like other beings from other cultures, assumed a different state of being after their death. They assumed a state of being that closely resembles but not quite on par with the state of being presumed for God. Some may point to this proposition as proof that the state of being like that presumed for God exists. But that proof assumes the very thing they’re trying to prove.
This seems to bring us to the class of beings that would contain the likes of God. This class of being would seem to entail factual existence (as opposed to fictional) and a total lack of experiential evidence to support the postulation of that existence. The evidence often cited to support this class of being is inferential. This class of being seems to rely on faith. Supporters will point to acts of God—the creation, parting the seas, the flood, etc.—as evidence for God. They’ll point to the miracles purported to Jesus or the saints as evidence of him belonging in this class of being. They’ll point to the many apparitions of Mary as proof that she belongs in this class. Yet, in all cases, the evidence pointed to is circumstantial, reliant on reports by ancient people whose understanding of the natural world was limited, reliant on the supposition that the reports in the Bible are beyond reproach. In other words, taken on faith.
Is this a real class of beings? Why not? That’s how we use the word in language. A “being,” the existence of which is supported by faith, seems to have meaning for a vast majority of language users. But, I would argue that while this use of “being” is meaningful, we’ve neglected the rationale for why.
More on that in the next entry.
