Gone With The Wind
When I try to explain the Bible, I sometimes think of an analogy that goes something like this ...
Suppose that Nuclear War wipes out 99% of humanity and almost all documents. The only survivors are a small band of lucky people who have managed to salvage a disintegrating copy of "Gone With The Wind", written in a language that is no longer spoken among them, but has been painstakingly puzzled out by a few dedicated shamans.
Since the "Wind" is the only connection these people have with the deep past, it has become a holy book - even more revered since it takes decades of special study to read it in its original language. Literacy is, after all, useless in this hard and bitter new world. Most people know the "Wind" only by what the shamans have told them about it. Quite naturally the people build their history of the world around the "Wind". Extensive moral lessons are drawn from it and everyone knows passages by heart. In particular, since the story dates from approximately the time of the Great Disaster, the "Wind" is taken for an authoritative account of that disaster -- the time when the God of the North destroyed all of humanity.
Now there are some who claim that the "wind" is "just a story" and that there are other plausible ideas about how the old world met its end. Believers rebut such heresy by pointing out that the "wind" is confirmed by archaeological finds that proves that there actually was a war (probably Nuclear) between the North and the South in exactly the period of approximately 500 years (plus or minus) that the "wind" takes place.
The insight (such as it is) that you can get from this parable can be expanded and stepped out by substituting any historical novel or (why not?) works of serious history, such as Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples", since any serious student of history knows that the line between history and fiction is a blurry one.
Taken to the limit, the insights of Zen come into view: the "past" is just a story we tell ourselves, especially on a personal level and certainly on any level that attempts to "make sense" of the history of the world. But this may be too much for the average reader. Lets just try to read more than one book ...
Suppose that Nuclear War wipes out 99% of humanity and almost all documents. The only survivors are a small band of lucky people who have managed to salvage a disintegrating copy of "Gone With The Wind", written in a language that is no longer spoken among them, but has been painstakingly puzzled out by a few dedicated shamans.
Since the "Wind" is the only connection these people have with the deep past, it has become a holy book - even more revered since it takes decades of special study to read it in its original language. Literacy is, after all, useless in this hard and bitter new world. Most people know the "Wind" only by what the shamans have told them about it. Quite naturally the people build their history of the world around the "Wind". Extensive moral lessons are drawn from it and everyone knows passages by heart. In particular, since the story dates from approximately the time of the Great Disaster, the "Wind" is taken for an authoritative account of that disaster -- the time when the God of the North destroyed all of humanity.
Now there are some who claim that the "wind" is "just a story" and that there are other plausible ideas about how the old world met its end. Believers rebut such heresy by pointing out that the "wind" is confirmed by archaeological finds that proves that there actually was a war (probably Nuclear) between the North and the South in exactly the period of approximately 500 years (plus or minus) that the "wind" takes place.
The insight (such as it is) that you can get from this parable can be expanded and stepped out by substituting any historical novel or (why not?) works of serious history, such as Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples", since any serious student of history knows that the line between history and fiction is a blurry one.
Taken to the limit, the insights of Zen come into view: the "past" is just a story we tell ourselves, especially on a personal level and certainly on any level that attempts to "make sense" of the history of the world. But this may be too much for the average reader. Lets just try to read more than one book ...
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