Come And See

For a faith that is assumed to deal mostly with intangibles, Christianity is unusually empiricist. I am struck by the frequency with which characters in the Bible are exhorted to "come and see" — that is, to make themselves physically present in order to observe a specific phenomenon.

More than that, the concept of controlled testing is not alien to the book either. In the first chapter of Daniel, the eponymous author proposes a clinical trial (well, not double-blind, but a simple one) in which he and his friends will eat a vegetarian diet for ten days and then be compared to the rest of the cohort in terms of fitness to serve in the king's court. Later, King Nebuchadnezzar very cleverly demands that his dream-interpreting sorcerers and diviners should tell him the contents of his dream first before they interpret it. Only Daniel passes this test.

It's interesting to see also Elijah's test on Mount Carmel, where he demands that his sacrifice be wet down with water three times, the water overflowing into a trench, before calling down fire from heaven. The precision of the resulting strike is now a matter of legend, and the consequences to his opponents proportionately dire.

One verse that is often quoted out of context is: "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test." That kind of testing is the test of provocation, not the test of hypothesis; it is the kind of testing we imply when we say, "Do not test my patience." The God of the Bible doesn't otherwise seem to mind having his power being tested for a specific reason.

Generally, the many tests of power in the Bible are rooted in results — a test is proposed with a result that allows falsification (i.e. proof that the assertion tested is false). It is thus no wonder that early scientists like Galileo and Newton were able to investigate the natural world without seeing conflict with their faith (although they might have cut it fine with their nominal co-religionists).

To this day, just as with science, two kinds of tests remain in everything Christian — the test of reason and the test of findings. If hermeneutic reasoning shows an assertion to be theologically unreasonable, or if the findings of an empirical test show an assertion to be false, the penalty used to be death by stoning or the sword. In this supposedly more enlightened age, we have a much, much more tolerant response to false prophets and other snake-oil salesmen of various persuasions.

Belshazzar

One of the most fearsome images of my childhood was that of Belshazzar's feast. It is the scene, described in the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel, in which part of a hand appears and writes mysterious glyphs upon the plaster of a wall, illuminated by candlelight. That is what is referred to whenever someone mentions 'the writing on the wall' as a sign of coming doom.

Daniel writes:

But (thou, O Belshazzar) hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven; and they have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou, and thy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them; and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified:

Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing was written. And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.

These are ominous words indeed, and verily, that night, Belshazzar is slain and Babylon falls to Darius.

Sudden downfalls are always, in retrospect, presaged by mounting desires to find glory and claim it for oneself. Bellerophon rides Pegasus toward Olympus and is cast down; Phaethon rides the chariot of Helios to fiery doom; Icarus flies so high that his wings disintegrate; Herod claims glory as a god and is struck down by worms; Nebuchadnezzar claims that Babylon is the product of his might and honours his majesty, and loses his mind. The trick, as with most forms of power, it seems would be to diffuse the energies before they burn you up; it is self-destroying to keep glory to oneself, especially if one does not deserve it.

Whatever people think of the Bible (and indeed, of any other book of lessons), the fact is that there is learning to be had in it. There are reminders of human limits and, with those, the idea of redemption.

Nebuchadnezzar, acting like a beast of the field, is eventually restored; Belshazzar, who has never shown anything but blasphemous license, is not. Icarus, soaring too high, has his broken body recovered by Daedalus, more cautious and slightly wiser. So endeth the lesson.

Globalisation & Its Malcontents

Sometimes you hear the most appalling exaggerations about the role of globalisation in bringing corruption to places hitherto deemed uncorrupted. What I heard yesterday from some lay 'preacher' seemed to imply a state of Edenic bliss on this sceptered isle prior to the advent of evil globalisation with all its wealth and power.

Tsk tsk. This island has never not been affected by globalisation except in the mythical past. Obviously such people, straitened by the adversity of preaching about something about which they appear to know little, just seize a convenient target which already has a bad reputation for other, completely different, reasons.

There are obviously at least two exceptions one must raise against Christian speakers who say such things.

The first one is to point them back at their own core theology, reminding them of original sin and the fact that Jesus himself is recorded as saying, "Nothing that enters a man from outside can make him unclean." The passage as a whole is in direct contradiction to anyone who would equate the consumption of rich food (for example in Daniel's account of his dealings with the court of Nebuchadnezzar) with the peril of sin from globalisation.

The second is to point out that if the argument is one about recent history and the corruption which arises from mercantilism, then ancient history must surely take precedence, as seen in the stirring condemnation in Ezekiel about the perils of islands indulging in globalisation. This is nothing new. The potentially corruptive environment of capitalism, which tempts people into making their own bad internal decisions on morality and negotiation, has been with us a long time. But even here, it is clear that the one who chooses to sully his hands is at fault, and not the trading environment itself.

The common reply to what I've just pointed out is that I'm being arrogant by daring to point out a speaker's egregious mistakes. Well, it's far worse for a person to mislead others from the pulpit.