a secular parable by Matthew Arnold

August 2008 - I’m turning this into a webcomic this month, one frame at a time. I’ll put up more pictures as I complete them.

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. I noticed there was only one set of footprints. So I said, “Lord, which one of us is leaving the footprints?”

There was only silence.

“How profound.” I said. “What does He intend to teach me with this silence?” I mulled that over for a long time before I finally had a profound realization - I mean, God gave me a profound revelation. (There I go, taking credit I don’t deserve.) So I picked up a rock on the ground and wrote on it:

Thus sayeth the Lord: I promise that the result of talking to Me is to change thee. That is the real purpose. Thou shalt look for what thou canst learn in all things, and that is My message to thee.

It had to be so because it was extremely virtuous.

I continued walking, but it was a little more tiring with the responsibility of changing myself by talking to God. It was a heavy rock. “Not even an acknowledgment, Lord?” I said. “I don’t even mean doing something good or saying something wise. I just mean, how about a sort of receipt? I feel lonely hearing only my own voice.”

There was only silence.

“It must be that all I ever need from God I will find already written, so that explains why he never seems to carry on a conversation.” I wrote on a conch shell:

Thus sayeth the Lord: I promise that all you ever need you will find already written. Be vigilant not to miss it. Thou shalt study the scriptures until thou hast found the answer to thy question.

I had no right to feel lonely. I didn’t need something so trifling as an acknowledgement that God had heard me, when he really wanted such deep wisdom for me. Although the guilt of the conch weighed down on me with the rock, this was a stroke of genius on God’s part. Now we could carry on private conversations without the whole beach listening in on any further flaws he will reveal in me. I value the privacy of my intimacy with God, so this must be so.

A little farther down the beach it occurred to me that it was all right if the whole beach listened in, because both of the promises from God so far would apply to anybody. “Lord,” I said, “I’d like to take advantage of your infinite knowledge. Which direction should I be walking? I don’t mean all Your followers, but me specifically. Send me anywhere. Would You name the one You want me to marry? How about which career I should enter?” By now I had gotten used to the Lord’s innovative mode of communication, so I immediately started looking for something to write on.

Immediately there was a piece of driftwood on the beach! There were hundreds of driftwood planks up and down the beach, but this one washed up right in front of me as if lovingly hand-delivered. The odds against that being a coincidence were astronomical. I would have to defy all reason to think otherwise. “Wow,” I said. “Only God could do that. How dare I feel lonely when God is proving His presence like this?” It was the answer to my question. I was destined to write on the driftwood,

Thus sayeth the Lord: I promise to give thee the next step thou art to take. Always choose the most virtuous option that presents itself, and that will please me.

This, too, was best for me. After all, if God told me specifically which path to take all the time, I would not be learning to take personal responsibility.

As I continued it started raining. So I said, “Lord, could you keep the rain off me?” I wrote,

Thus sayeth the Lord: I promise all things will work out right in the end. Since I enforce cosmic justice, whatever happens to thee must be the right thing if only thou couldst see behind the scenes. Therefore be strong and of good courage, for adversity builds character.

The only thing I could find to write that on was a heavy slab of slate. I drank in the rain eagerly. It tasted like chlorine, but I must have needed chlorine. I felt grateful. After all, here I was, needing acid rain at just the right time when it was available!

After this system had repeated enough times, I was staggering back and forth under the burden of all the reassurances that God had committed himself to for my benefit. They were all phrased in the form of promises, but I never before had encountered promises that had to be obeyed by the one who received them. Previously I had only used the normal idea of the word “promise”, in which the promiser obligates himself instead. By the time the dream ended, my legs were so shaky from being strong and of good courage, that I couldn’t walk straight. I started leaving what looked like two sets of footprints.

Nevertheless, God kept every commitment He had made, to the letter - that is, if you understand them. You see, His presence was the same as his total absence, but that was not a problem, because He had such noble motivations to make it that way.

It was great how multi-purpose the messages were. By making no references to what was going on, they never became obsolete. God was very frugal that way. I might start acting like that to everybody I know.

In fact I’m going to start right now. So I hereby make this promise to you, gentle reader: Whatever happens will happen, and whatever does not happen, will not happen. I promise. You will be amazed at how faithful I am in keeping that promise. If not, it must be your fault.

Interpretation of the Parable

It would be tongue-in-cheek, but partly serious, to say that there is no more satisfying relationship in life than one that you can have with a person who doesn’t exist. Imaginary friends are very accommodating to everything that matters at the core of the human psyche– if you believe in a nonexistent person, you can always believe that he or she loves you forever. You just have to put up with one thing: their total absence.

In the story as I walked along the beach, I took each event that happened to me, and invented an explanation that would allow me to believe it was communication or help. But none of my experiences on the beach needed such an explanation. These explanations are called ad-hoc hypotheses. “Ad-hoc” means “for this case only.” When the facts don’t fit a desired conclusion (such as that god exists, is present and is communicating), an ad-hoc hypothesis is an explanation invented to explain away the uncomfortable experiences. One way to recognize these hypotheses, is that they are totally unnecessary– there is nothing in your experiences to support them, they were invented for no other reason than to go on believing in spite of something.

This was my “relationship with God” when I was a Christian. Believers act like indulgent parents who insist that their bratty child can do no wrong. The difference is, not only do believers invent ad-hoc hypotheses to believe their deity can do no wrong, but also to believe that he exists, is present, and is communicating to them. This is a ridiculous way to act toward a deity. God isn’t your crutch– you’re his. Faith is going easy on a god who is supposed to be big enough to not need you to go easy on him. And yet we lower our testing standards so far that invisible unicorns and fairies could pass it. We broaden our definition of “relationship” until a relationship with a potted plant could fit the definition. When you stop letting your god off the hook for interacting with you, when you stop lowering your standards to make it easy for him to pass them, suddenly you will cease to experience what you thought was “interaction” from a god. It was never there to begin with. You were conjuring it up by playing mind games on yourself as described in the story.

How do you tell whether or not a person you have a relationship with is present? Of all the real people you have a relationship with, you don’t have to make excuses to decide whether or not they are present. At the very least, you are experiencing light bouncing off of your friend and hitting your retinas when you look at him. If you don’t see him, if you could have all the same experiences even if your friend were not present, you should assume he is absent.

We don’t see the wind, but we see it move the trees, and we feel it on our skin, so we know it is present. If the trees aren’t moving and we don’t feel it, the wind is absent. Do you make excuses to go on believing that your friend, or the wind, is present when you have no reason to believe it?

Even if by some chance you have a relationship with someone who is present but you can’t see or hear them, then they are hiding. That means you aren’t having a relationship with them now. Imagine if I was sick in the hospital and an orderly brought me a note that read, “Dear son, we are hiding somewhere in the room. We will stay with you while you are sick. Love, your parents.” I would say, “Mom and Dad, come out from hiding! If you are just going to hide, you may as well leave because what good is that to me?” What good is the hidden presence of God? There is no relationship with a person if you have to take somebody’s word for it that they are present.

We communicate over the phone with people who are not present. But the communication is specific and personal responses to what we are saying. That’s how we know we aren’t talking to a recording. Scripture is like a recorded message, because it is not interactive. You have to search through the whole thing to find a passage that relates to the questions you have at the moment. So a god wouldn’t actually have to exist in order to have a written book. The bible could be easily written by mortal men without the help of any gods.

If there has never been any contact or presence, then existence is still possible, but it is mere speculation. Until we have contact or presence from aliens, or Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster, we should not assume that they exist. Oh sure, there’s no harm if you go on looking. But there’s a big difference between testing whether something is true, and knowing it is true. The record of the bible gives us stories of alleged contact from God. But do you believe in aliens, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster just because they have been reported?

In the story I staggered around the beach leaving two sets of footprints, and therefore thought God had begun to walk with me.

The believer does absolutely all the work to see a god, takes all the blame when they don’t see it, and gives their god all the credit, similar to a battered spouse in an abusive relationship.

My advice is to stop playing this game and see what happens. Don’t blame yourself if you stop experiencing your god. It’s much more straightforward that he was an imaginary friend all along.