What if the floorboard in my house spoke? Well, in the way actions speak, so does my floorboard. Surprisingly, this board remembers where it’s from, how it was shaped, where it is (sort of), and it has an idea where it’s going after its purpose under my feet is exhausted. It’s a chore now because I need to be extra careful about where I’m stepping and how I do so. Cleaning is worlds more unnerving – I mean, it speaks; it has a history of its own and may even outlive me. It’s practically human.
Floorboard refers to its own history simply as ‘reverse engineering.’ Through reverse engineering I get to learn how ‘he’ or ‘she’ came about. Before he came to Bayside, New York he lived an enclosed existence wedged between brother and sister boards for months.
Being a White Oak, he was born in a forest of Quebec, Canada before lumberjacks felled him. He was eminent, but his many limbs were cut nonetheless. As he explains how they cut him to pieces, I realize this one board is only a smaller part of him. He’s lucky he wasn’t chipped, though parts of his larger self may have been. Afterward, the jacks, as other trees called them, took Floorboard and others to the mill for more resizing.
Telling this story reminds Floorboard that he isn’t merely a floorboard, but essentially, a White Oak tree. It reminds me that even though the jacks cut down, resized, and reshaped him, he is still wood of the species quercus alba. It is natural for him to do this – to dwell on what he is fundamentally: Wood. Like I said, it’s a good thing he wasn’t chipped.
Not everyone interested in religion is ready to talk about ‘Fundamentalism.’ For one, it’s uncouth to discuss it openly in a pluralistic society like ours. And most Americans associate the word to images of smoke, fire, or just good old-fashioned fear. However, if we learned anything from my floorboard it’s that all or most of our values derive from fundamentals planted in us during our sponge-like period of childhood. Therefore, you and I are fundamentalists in varying degrees; maybe not ‘Fundamentalist’, but definitely ‘fundamentalist’ in the lower case. We all bring to the door what we think is right. The problem in society lies not in whether or not a group is termed fundamental, but in the fundamental itself.
In the essay, The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis writes that it’s the fundamental that “will condition him [the student] to take one side of a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all.” Have you ever just believed in something without knowing why or how you do?
I think it’s right to infer that what we believe at the core of us makes us. Moreover, it’s what we are that will have the greatest impact in our society. With that said, what are we? And what is it that’s making us what we are?
All ideologies produce something. If you think of people merely as a faceless mass, it’s probably because somewhere in your thinking you added that a communitarian life is the best kind of life, and that the individual is insignificant. This, in turn, may lead you to crassly treat or view people like cattle. In another instance, one might feel that the individual is quintessential while the community is a dilution of personality. If so, that person may have predilections to extremely selfish, self-destructive behavior, which tends to precipitate wars, social injustices, and deep bereavements.
Religion’s purpose is important, but more important than this for us is religion’s results. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, "Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial." The results of religion and philosophy depend on the core fundamental of that religion and philosophy.
Observing some case-studies we are reminded of Mr. Floorboard’s principle of real value in fundamentals. One case involves a desegregationist and the ideologies at work within him. Clearly it’s the ideological edifice built on the teachings of Jesus Christ (concurrent with the non-violent teachings of Mohandas Gandhi) that led Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to help integrate African Americans when racism in America was reaching fever-pitch. King chooses to use those fundamentals inside him to induce change, but he could have easily chosen the path of passive, moral stagnation. This attitude he possesses does not come from nowhere.
Taking a closer look, that which fueled King’s particular fundamentals was the fundamental of Jesus Christ. His being that he didn’t kowtow to the time’s fundamental of violence; but instead, he instituted real moral advancements – rather than hate, forgive; do more than forgive, love; don’t just love, sacrifice yourself so that person can live. This is far from violent, and far from moribund.
These fundamentals are different. One belief is found on the premise that the strong eat the weak; another one is built on the premise that, like the ancient Greeks, the many gods compete and are indifferent toward humans – violence is amoral. Others feel that their honor-based culture defines them – if you pain me, I am obligated to pain you. Still, others value the almighty dollar that buys power and comfort. For some, it entails an innocent man hanging on a cross forgiving the very people who hung him there. The crux of the matter is not that some fundamentals are viable and others are not. But it’s that there is a set of fundamentals that lead people into loving, forgiving, peace-seeking, self-sacrificing behavior.
Let’s take time and look introspectively into our own lives, see where all our ideas come from, and either do something about it or take a seat behind the monolithic wall of obscurity erected by the likes of hypocrites and critics. The world, humanity, and possibly even your soul depend on it. So what’s your fundamental and what is it making you, you fundamentalist?
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5 comments:
It's obvious that you're a good writer. I followed you all the way. However, I'm inclined to disagree with you. I want to tell you a story. My aunt (a devoted Catholic) lost her son recently. He was 39. He had a wife & two kids, and was in perfect health. One day at work he had a seizure, went to the hospital, they diagnosed him with brain tumor & he was dead within two months. He was my cousin and we were very sad. In defense of religion, my mother said to me one day, "See, this is why I wish you had a faith to believe in. Any faith. Because your aunt's faith is what gets her through this time." And my response to that is this: is it better to be comforted by a lie than disturbed by the truth? Even if the believer truly believes, and so to them it isn't a lie, is it OK? So if I'm upset by something I can cling to my faith in Gremlins to get me through it? Do you see how ridiculous it sounds when you turn "religion" into something completely uncommon but equally improbable and unprovable? Religion stops people from thinking. Remember the bubonic plague? They thought it was God punishing the Jews. Who was it, Bill Maher, I think, who said that everything that used to a sin is now a disease? Do you know what stopped all that? The evolution of rational thought. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that through changing we find our purpose. But how can we change, evolve, if there are still people out there who believe that the earth is five thousand years old & that Jesus partied with the dinosaurs?
Andrea…
I see exactly where you’re coming from, but your propositions about faith are only assumptions and not logical inferences about it.
Your first premise assumes that all religions serve as false coping mechanisms for feeble minds. The fact is, however, Christians do not use their religious experience as a means of dealing with suffering in the world; they act differently about tragedy because they understand the inherent reality of suffering. Therefore, faith is not a crutch or utopian dream from which its adherents can run into when feeling scared – faith is the insight, or the skill we practice in order to see things the way they are meant to be seen. Like most poetry: they’re not meant to be carved up for meaning, rather, they’re meant to give us profound pleasure by its other attributes such as rhythm, stress, tone, rhyme, alliteration and so on. Sometimes when we read just for the content of the thing, we kill it. We must simply “hear the music.”
Your second premise (which is closely tied in with the first) insinuates a mediocre quality of mind for the believer. Hence “religion stops people from thinking.” I think that’s just bad logic; first of all, because you and I both know a lot of brilliant religious people and a lot of dumb atheists; and vice versa. People thought the Bubonic plague was a punishment from God because they understand cause and effect (an empirical idea); and ‘devolving’ is the right idea about those who decry faith because it is as C.S. Lewis once observed, “they themselves have ceased to be men.”
But more closely, you meant to say that people of faith behold a certain cerebral deficiency in coping with ‘reality.’ And because of this you believe that faith is intellectually impoverishing. But I say friend that the person who has the ability only to read the content of a poem and not “hear the music” of it has been deprived of a true education.
Thanks for the feedback!
I totally get what you're saying, I do. And might I just say that it is by far a pleasant experience chatting with someone who can speak intelligently (I say that because I once told someone who claimed that the beauty of a sunset was evidence enough - for them - of the existence of God, that their logic was flawed to which their response was to call me an "ugly idiot-head", so, chatting with you has been pleasant, but I digress). When I said "religion stops people from thinking" it came off as insulting when I re-read it & so for that I apologize because that wasn't my intention. Here's what I meant: in my opinion, religion takes away people's need to seek out their own answers because the answers are given to you (usually from your parents/church) at a young age. You're told what to believe, where the world came from, where people came from, in very limited and specific ways, and I think this limits human curiosity as well as the inherrent desire to question that which surrounds us. People who think they have all the answers won't bother to stop and ask the questions.
Thanks for the response. A friend of mine replied to your current statement:
She presupposes that we can't ask "questions" in context of the most fulfilling relationship a human
being can experience. Christians aren't drawn to faith because of the
creation story; they delight not in when and how the world was created
-- but by whom. We're drawn to a love that no other worldly figure or
institution can come close to offering. In fact, people of faith
should encourage people to think, with the confidence that sound
reason will lead the thinker to faith.
I have a friend who's getting her PhD in Astronomy, and she's always
asking questions of how the universe came to be. She knows all the
theories about the Big Bang, the ones that say we were created from
stardust. And she believes them, to an extent; she appreciates the
science and depth of inquiry behind them. But every time she looks up
at the stars, and the more she learns about the dazzling complexity
and harmony of the universe, she is left with no doubt that only a God
who is perfect and sovereign could have created such beauty.
By Danny Lee, Dartmouth alumnus
I'm sorry, but the "dazzling complexity and harmony of the universe" has nothing to do with God. It's purely Science. I suppose it's natural for an astronomer who deals with such vastness to feel overwhelmed by the beauty found within the huge spectrum of space, but that "thing" being felt, that feeling that there's something out there bigger than us, that something isn't God, it's a universe and galaxies and planets and entire other universes and galaxies far beyond our reach. It's the notion that there are places in our vast universe so far away we can never see them. That's what that feeling is. It's about science, not God.
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