This led to a dinner discussion of creation and the flood and other issues of historicity in the Old Testament. I pointed out, as I have numerous times, that many cultures have a flood story -- and this, coupled with evidence of flooding at different periods of earth's history (geologists are candid about this, calling them "superfloods"), suggests some kernel of truth in the basic contours of those stories. But this doesn't make any particular culture's flood story true in and of itself. Such stories could also be rooted in our habit of settling down in floodplains, which were tantalizingly fertile but subject, of course, to flooding. It would not be hard to see a particularly nasty deluge as divine retribution for something or another.
The conversation moved on to other problems of historicity. The table was a bit distraught when I pointed that there is no extrabiblical evidence that Abraham ever actually lived, especially when I pointed out the conspicuousness of having twelve tribes named after twelve brothers --though I did admit to a literary shift from the overtly mythological in Genesis 12 when Abraham is introduced (I did not point out that the shift in question seems to be one from myth to legend or folklore, or from ancient Semitic mythology to a more specifically Hebrew one). I pointed out that David was probably not the one who slew Goliath, but I didn't mention that this may not have any bearing on the story's historicity to begin with. And so on.
Eventually, everyone left the table but me and our oldest son (he's thirteen), and he stuck around to ask me about the New Testament. What did I think about that? Was it a bunch of of made-up stuff, too? "No," I said facetiously, "It's true. Every last word of it." But he was on to me, and wanted to know where I drew the line. What's true and what's not? I was evasive. "I don't know," I said. "All we have are stories." This wasn't good enough.
"But what do you think? Don't you have an opinion? Don't you care?"
"Sure," I said. "These stories are important."
"Yeah, they're important," he said with teenage petulance. "But do you think they really happened?"
"What do you think?" I deferred.
"Well, I think the Old Testament has a bunch of goofy stuff in it but the New Testament seems okay."
"Okay," I said, "but some people think the Old Testament must be 100% accurate, because their faith relies on it being that way. And there are ways to believe that if you need to. On the other hand, some people think the New Testament is full of goofy stuff, too."
"Yeah, sure. But what do you think?"
I tried different evasions but it eventually came down to me admitting that I wasn't going to tell him. Maybe, I suggested, when he's thirty. He left frustrated, and I apologized later for being evasive. He said it was okay, but I still felt like I'd failed him somehow. Wouldn't a real dad impart his hard-wrought wisdom to his progeny? Part of me knows, however, that whatever I take a hard stand on now is going to be what my son rebels against later. I like to keep that list small.
He can't, as the old movie line goes, handle the truth, but the truth that he can't handle is not that the Christian faith is predicated on a bunch of historically questionable claims, but that his father feels that way. Part of me is concerned about one of our children blurting out their father's theological idiosyncrasies at an inopportune moment, but the bigger part of me is simply concerned about the cognitive dissonance of him trying to deal with his music-minister father being an agnostic or maybe even an atheist. I think he'd feel betrayed. Being my son, he's a bit more skeptical than the average evangelical kid (hence his suspicions about the OT), but he's still a believer, and even as his dad I don't know that I have the right to trump that. I know he just wanted to hear what I thought, but I don't think I'm flattering myself to suspect that what I think might carry some weight, and I want to be careful with that.
I regularly download podcasts from The Moth. It features "true stories, told live without notes." A recent podcast featured a woman with cerebral palsy who told her story with the help of a translator. Even though she spoke English, her speech was mostly incomprehensible except, apparently, to the friend she brought with her. Occasionally a phrase would be intelligible but otherwise we were left to wonder at her translator's ability to make sense of things.
What amazed me was the patience, grace, and enthusiasm shown by her audience. They laughed, they applauded, they cheered. They seemed -- and maybe I was just projecting here -- genuinely interested not only in hearing her story, but in seeing her succeed in the telling. The story, on the surface, didn't seem terribly compelling. It was the story of her first relationship, one that culminated in her first sexual experience; so while there were no lurid details, the story seemed at once pedestrian and a little salacious.
The way she told the story, however, was as a woman who wondered if she'd ever have that kind of relationship, wondered if she'd ever be seen as desirable. As she concludes the story, she speaks of the joy of having been regarded as a woman and not as a disability. At this, the audience erupts into raucous applause and I admit to being moved to tears.
It's this that I want my son to understand someday -- that as important as questions of belief might seem to us, and are to many, to someone like me they are really just a backdrop to the human drama of needing our stories to be heard, of needing to be loved, of needing to be seen as desirable. As much as we'd like to tell ourselves we're more sophisticated than that, we aren't. I'm not.
Maybe when he's thirty.
1 comments:
You are right to be concerned with such things. My sons were deeply hurt by church leaders for what I now believe to be my asking the challenging and complex questions in Sunday School. And I cannot say that I asked these questions with complete innocence. I do accept some of the blame due to my own arrogance.
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