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Two Essays:
By Ralph Lynn, Professor of History Retired, Baylor University
The Untraveled World
[This article first appeared in Brook Lane Health Services Bulletin, Hagerstown, MD]
Why is it that history is replete with accounts of people killing each other in disputes over theological matters, which we believe but about which we can know nothing, while we have no record of similar conflict over the tangible, readily observable matters associated with science?
Perhaps the nearest approach to an answer is that we desperately crave the security of certainty in our lives that are so full of impenetrable mystery.
In earlier times, religion had no rivals. Modern science is no rival, either, because scientists are seekers, never finders, of the comforting ultimate truth we cover.
Perhaps, then, we seek and find our desired certainty by committing ourselves unreservedly to some gospel that can be neither proved nor disproved. But this sort of certainty seems often to be troubled by doubts. Yet, despite our doubts--or perhaps to conquer them--each group tends to defend its gospel vigorously against all opposition.
What to do?
Perhaps we should begin by coming to terms with what seems to me to be the fact that, whether or not we are aware of it, we finite human beings are all agnostics. We are agnostics because the finite can know nothing of the Infinite. Happily, however, we can be believing agnostics.
Probably it is only after entering into immortality that we can actually know about spiritual matters. A sacred book can offer little assurance since it must be interpreted--but equally learned and equally devout scholars arrive at significantly different interpretations. Even the profoundly ignorant who insist that "it is all clear in black and white" are interpreting it.
Perhaps the way out is for Christians to approach the Bible with the humility which characterizes the approach of scientists to their "book"--which, of course, is our earth and the vast cosmos of which our planet is but a miniscule part.
Scientists are aware that they can learn only by asking humbly how Nature works. They are aware that their most cherished axioms are vulnerable and must be discarded with new discoveries. They must, in a word, be prepared to make changes in orthodoxy.
Should Christians be less humble in our search for the Infinite?
For all of us, religious or not, to quote Tennyson, "All experience is an arch where through gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades forever and forever when we move."
Perhaps we should remember and applaud that 19th century Scottish expositor of the Bible, Alexander MacLaren, who--apparently in a moment of both despair and confidence--exclaimed, "There is more light to break from the Old Book yet."
Rogue Ideologues Advocating Enmity
[This article first appeared in the Waco Tribune-Herald, September 27, 2000]
Ours is a complicated world.
Responsibility for this column must be divided between the editor, my wife and the late Alfred North Whitehead--a world-famous philosopher who left England for the United States where he taught for many years at Harvard.
The editor? He prints the "Thought for Today." My wife? She knows I do not read this item so she reads it to me. And, of course, Whitehead wrote it: "Ideas won't keep; something must be done with them."
I can do nothing with the following pair of related ideas except to get them in print and invite readers to think about them.
First, on the anti-liberal beneficiaries of liberalism
Millions of basically sensible people, who live from month to month on incomes inadequate to support their admirable life-types, have been bamboozled by wealthy politicians (Ronald Reagan) and religious demagogues (Cal Thomas) into thinking that our government is our chief problem (if not our outright enemy) and that they are wise to blame anything they do not like on liberals.
In my less civilized moments, I find myself wishing that these unhappy people could be deprived of Social Security, Medicare, guaranteed bank accounts and CDs, and the entire "safety net" which even the dinosaurs of both parties reluctantly support as the price of getting the votes of all these innocent anti-liberal beneficiaries of liberalism.
Even in my least civilized moments, I would want this deprivation to last just long enough to include one or more of the tragedies these liberal programs insure the anti-liberals against.
Second, on the National Rifle Association
It seems to be composed of decent people, robed in righteousness and patriotism, who yet appeal continuously to our primitive instincts by arousing fears of our fellows and of our government.
Even more illogically, these nice people engage in subversive mock heroics by pretending that the ridiculously extensive small arms programs they foster (instead of civilized hunting and target guns) could be effective in a civil war (to protect our "rights"!) against our government which controls a military-industrial complex and ground, air and naval forces that are the envy of every nation on earth.
Charlton Heston, the aging poster boy of their mock heroics, has had better opportunities than the rank and file of the NRA people. Heston should be ashamed of himself.
I wish I had some effective remedy for the problems these people present. As a professional student of history and religion, I always think of education and religion as remedies for human problems.
But these people can read and write and they are characteristically religious--they attend church more or less regularly and they take chicken soup to sick neighbors.
Perhaps what is missing is the habit of serious study, analytical examination of their world, and analytical self-criticism.
But this is only a way of describing most of us who have just enough education and religion to serve as guarantees that we will never develop a serious case of either.
Updated Wednesday, June 13, 2001
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