So the truth about anybody consists of a collection of facts – universal truths – which provide a sort of skeletal framework but little more, and a whole mass of personal truths. And it is these personal truths that fill in the flesh and blood, add the smiles and the frowns and thus bring the skeleton to life.
Writing about my father I had relied on factual truths and my own set of personal truths. Had I been writing instead a biography, I would have needed to make a collection of other people’s personal truths. Comparing them I might then have noticed certain similarities and so could have recorded a ‘general opinion’. But no general opinion, however widely held, can ever invalidate a personal opinion, however contradictory. And this is an important difference between factual truth and personal truth. A factual truth makes its converse false. ‘Born in 1882’ implies ‘not born in 1883’. But one observer’s personal truth leaves another’s untouched. ‘He is kind’ and ‘He is unkind’ can exist together both truthfully expressing the impressions of two different people. Many people, for example, tried to draw my father’s portrait. Only one achieved what I felt was a true likeness. But this didn’t make the others untrue; for a picture is not a description of the sitter alone but also of the artist, and only the artist knows what the artist sees.
Eddington once described man as ‘a kind of four dimensional worm’ meaning that he occupied a small volume of space but had considerable extension – seventy odd years – in time. Elaborating a little on this picture, I see man as a kind of four dimensional marine bristle-worm – the sort that can unfurl a crown of long, waving, thread-like tentacles from the top of its head. The body of the worm is the factual truth about the man. Each thread as it touches someone becomes their personal truth. The tentacles that range on either side of the worm’s body are those personal truths established during the man’s lifetime. Those that stretch ahead are those truths that will be established after his death as people in the years ahead are touched by his life. Every child who, at some future date, reads about Pooh – whether in the original text or in translation or even in Disney’s version – will be holding a personal truth about my father. Disney’s Pooh may have little resemblance to the original Pooh, but this in no way affects the matter or makes this personal truth less truthful. Should it ever happen that the supporters of Shepard went to war with the supporters of Disney, this might be regrettable. People might die. But truth would not.
What applies to man applies generally. On the one hand you have factual truths, scientific truths, truths that can be tested and checked and to which all must agree (or else prove them mistaken): the astronomer’s Moon, the botanist’s flower, sodium chloride. On the other hand you have personal truths, artistic truths, poetic truths, emotional truths, Keats’s ‘truth of imagination’: the poet’s Moon, the artist’s flower, the taste of salt.
Today we worship our scientists and despise our poets; and so we sometimes dress up our truths as if they were scientific truths to give them an air of greater authority. I once heard it suggested that we should approach the theory of Christianity as a mathematician approaches the theory of gravitation, testing it and so proving it true. But Newton knew better.
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and again finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
In this great ocean lie all the more important truths about man. And here too, never to be washed up on to the shore, never to be picked up and handled and looked at under a microscope, lies the Truth about God.
If one thinks of man as a marine bristle worm, then God is a marine bristle worm of infinite length whose body is totally beyond the range of all our recording and measuring devices. We know him only through our personal threads of contact and from what others report of their contacts. The extent to which we are influenced and helped by others depends on the similarity of their threads to ours. It is the same with music. I get great pleasure listening to Mozart but none at all listening to Debussy. I am much helped in my enjoyment of Mozart by those who, sharing my feelings, have made recordings which I can then buy. Other musicians have made recordings of Debussy. These I do not buy. I do not dispute the facts of Debussy’s life nor the opinions of his admirers, but I do not see that this is any reason for submitting myself to another unhappy session with ‘L’après-midi d’un faune’ when I might be listening instead to the Flute and Harp Concerto.
And so it is with religious beliefs: we welcome those that harmonize with our own feelings. Those that do not we leave. This is not to imply that they are false, merely that they are not for us. To suggest that one picture of God is so complete and perfect that it makes all other pictures false is surely to diminish God to the size and simplicity of the rounded stone in Newton’s hand. The Christian may argue that his picture is authenticated by the Bible which is God’s Word and therefore True. But the truths one finds in the Bible are like the truths one finds in everything else: a few are factual, most are personal. The greatness of Shakespeare’s plays does not lie in the historical facts one can glean from them, nor does the greatness of Genesis lie in its geological or anthropological accuracy. So each of us interprets the Bible in his own way. Some hold to the literal truth of every word and incident. For others the truth is of a different kind. The very vitality of the Bible lies in its multitude of meanings. Do you believe that Christ physically rose into the air and disappeared into the sky? This is one question. Was it believed and reported that he did? This is another question. What emotions are aroused in you by the story of the Ascension? This is a third question. And finally, what emotions are aroused indirectly through the words, paintings or music that the story has inspired in others? This is a fourth question. On Ascension Sunday at school I used to sing the solo ‘Ye Men of Galilee’ from Stainer’s anthem, ‘Leave us not, neither forsake us’. This was for me a very great and has remained a very enduring experience – in no way lessened by the fact that my answer to my first question is ‘No.’
If all this seems a rather long introduction to a statement of what exactly I do believe, it is because the most important part of my belief is that my picture of God – my own personal individual thread – and all the other pictures of God held by man whenever and wherever he may have lived are all parts of a Divine Truth that is quite beyond our tiny perceptions. Though they may differ from each other there need be no conflict between them; nor need there be any conflict with science.
Although it is always possible to find something you are not looking for – which, it may be remembered, was Joyce Green’s technique for finding things – more often it helps to look. And probably what man was looking for when – long before Christianity – he first discovered God was something to alleviate his fear of the Unknown. So much was unknown in those early days: the sun, the storm, the sea, the forest. . . . There was so much to be afraid of. And so the early gods were near at hand. But gradually, century by century, as man explored and understood, tamed and cultivated, learned to predict and to control, so the frontiers of the unknown were pushed back. Once they lay on the other side of the mountain. Today they are so distant that only the astronaut ventures beyond them and few of us are afraid of what he might find there. Yet distant though they are in space, they are still as near as ever in time, less than an hour away, less than a minute.
We are all of us explorers in time, feeling our way forward into the unknown future. Some move with confidence. Others need reassurance. They peer ahead to be certain they are on the right road. ‘Is the Ruler of this Country friendly or hostile?’ they ask. ‘Will anyone come to our rescue if we get lost?’
But whether we are confident or afraid and however often or anxiously we peer ahead, we all of us now and again look back along the way we have come. Ahead lies the unknown and possibly frightening, the fluid and uncertain future; behind us is the known, frightening
no more, solid and firm. So we look back for additional reassurance. As a tree needs strong anchor roots running deep into the ground to give it stability and enable it to withstand the winter gales, so to enable us to weather the future, we need to feel ourselves well rooted in the past.
The need is common to us all; but we satisfy it each in his own way. Most obvious is the family root, linking us to our parents: family name, family tree, family business, family possessions passed down, the home town. But another root can lie in a more general past: old customs and traditions, antiques, vintage cars, steam trains, the Queen Anne cottage, the Queen Anne-style pub, the historical biography and the historical romance. And a third root can tie us to our own past: photographs of ourselves when young, old clothes, old books, old junk. Goolie had a pile of old copies of The Times that reached practically to the ceiling. All these things reflect a fear of the future, of what is new and uncertain, of change and insecurity.
Nevertheless, though we are rooted in the past we are at the same time moving forward into the future.
There are two ways of navigating. You can take a bearing on something ahead of you and steer towards it. Or you can take a bearing on something behind you and steer away from it. Equally there are two methods of propulsion. You can mount your propeller at the front, as the aeroplane does, and, using the air ahead of you, pull your way forwards. Or you can mount your propeller in the stern as the boat does and push. So it is with humans. There are those who look ahead and pull and those who look behind and push.
We all of us live in this world, the world that starts now and stretches back into the past. This is Creation and all that we have experienced through our senses, all knowledge, all memory lie within it. Ahead of us lies. . . . nothing. Darkness and silence. We can guess what there might be, as a man walking in the dark guesses at the road ahead of him, though he cannot see it. But we can guess only a little way. We may be fairly sure of today, but tomorrow is more doubtful.
So naturally most of us most of the time mount our propellers in the stern and steer away from the past. But some of us sometimes turn to face the future. We may do this in disgust or despair at what we have seen behind us. Or we may do it because we have been told that it is a better way of navigating. In either case, facing the unknown and seeing nothing, we may well be afraid and will certainly need guidance. We need a mark to aim for. We need a guide to help us through the unseen dangers ahead. We need the assurance that at our journey’s end we will come to a safe haven. These things we cannot immediately find on our own: we need someone to guide us to our guide. And in the Western world this is the Christian Church. The Christian Church points the way through present sorrow to future bliss, through sin to redemption, through life on earth to life eternal and so to the final triumph of good over evil. The Christian Church introduces us to Christ, our guide, to God, who is the King of the Country we are entering, and to Heaven, our ultimate destination.
It is of course only a picture that the Church shows us: it is not the reality. It is Christ-in-words that we are introduced to, not Christ-in-person. It is a collection of the personal truths of others that we are given. Our own personal God-truths remain to be established. We can, if we like, accept it as we accept a portrait or a biography of someone long dead, and look no further. Or we can seek a personal encounter.
Thus for some the Church is a means to an end and for others it is an end in itself. Some through the Church find God. Others find only the Church. But even this is something – and may well be enough. They will find the Church’s own anchor root: the building itself and its furnishings, Christian rituals and traditions, familiar words and familiar music. They will find Christian morality and a way of life. They will find human fellowship and love.
As a child I accepted what I was taught. From Monday to Saturday I learned about the Ancient Romans; on Sunday about the Ancient Hebrews. After six days of struggling with my voice in class, on the seventh I shook it free of its chains and sent it, pure and clear, soaring up into the rafters of the school chapel. In solos and descants I praised the Lord. How could I doubt the truth of what I did so well?
But alas the fluting treble became the croaking bass, and when my voice broke, my strongest link with the church broke with it. In the end I was left holding a guidebook to a Guide whom I had never really met, and a picture which, though once it had satisfied me, satisfied no longer.
Why had the picture failed? Partly because, having no particular reason to dislike the world I was living in, I had no particular desire to turn away from it. Partly because the Church as an institution held no particular attraction for me once my singing days were over. But mostly, I think, because the Christian Truth I was being shown was presented as if it were Scientific Truth and therefore having to hold its own against other scientific truths. This, in my view, it failed to do. The answer was simple. God had not made Man; it was Man who had made God.
I said this in 1944 and I said it in a way that implied, ‘I am right and you are wrong. Today I still maintain the truth of the second half of the statement: Man made God. But I say it now in a way that I hope allows us both to be right.
Man has made God in the sense that our truths about God are not scientific but personal truths, mere threads from an infinite, invisible bristle worm, the tiniest fraction of a Total Truth that is utterly beyond our comprehension. Personal truths being those that link observed to observer, our personal God-truths are man-made in the sense that they are of necessity reduced and simplified to a level at which man can understand them. How can God appear to man except in a way he can understand? How can man report the encounter to his fellow men except in human words and worldly images? Did God make man God-shaped or did man make God man-shaped? The answer is ‘Both’.
My discovery in 1944 was really a personal one: that I was a boat rather than an aeroplane, a pusher rather than a puller, that I went better with my propellers mounted in the stern. I turned away from the world of the future to the world of the past and speculated not about the Creator but about Creation.
The Christian may well reply that God is everywhere, in the past as well as in the future. Maybe; but it is like saying that the stars are still overhead, even in daytime. Dazzled by the sun, we do not see them. It is like telling us about the life of the composer while we are listening to his music. Or so it seems to me. Dazzled by the world, I see only the world. Everything I see, everything I hear, all experience, all thought, all emotions – all for me lies within Creation. Thus the Bible is not the Word of God. It is the Word of Man in search of God. Christ is not God but man – and so for me becomes infinitely more wonderful. His courage was human courage. The death he went towards and suffered was real death, human death. Everything he did lies within our human capabilities. This is the inspiration he offers, us: not that he was an intervention on the part of the Creator, but that, being man, he showed us the heights to which man can reach.
So my relationship with the Creator of the Universe is a little like my relationship with the Army Commander during the war. Yes, no doubt he existed. Maybe he even knew that I existed. Certainly he was benevolently disposed towards me and hoped I wouldn’t get myself killed. But I never met him, never spoke to him. If there was anything I wanted I went, not to him, but to my Company Commander. If things happen within Creation that I do not understand, this does not surprise me. Why should anyone expect to be able to understand it all? Maybe we will one day find the answer, as today we know the answers to many questions that baffled earlier generations. There is no need to go outside Creation for what we cannot at the moment explain within it.
The world contains good things and bad things. Each individual is unique, living his own unique life, seeing the world in his own unique way and labelling it according to his own set of values. For the Christian the bad things may outnumber the good and so he turns his back on both and faces the Ultimate Good that lies ahead. I too see good and bad in this world, and agree with the Christian that most of t
he bad are man-made. Perhaps, unlike him, I feel that good cannot exist on its own. Just as you need valleys in order to have hills so you need fear to have courage, work to enjoy rest, pain to enjoy freedom from pain. You may even need war to enjoy peace (though I hope not). A flat plain is flat whether at sea level or at ten thousand feet, and after a while everlasting joy might begin to pall and everlasting life become a burden. But the main difference between us is that I must find my good not outside Creation but within it.
I find it in Nature.
I have a vision. It is of a sort of Jacob’s Ladder running from earth to heaven. Its foot rests on the rocks. On its first rung are the very simplest of living organisms, the first forms of life. A little above come the plants; then the simplest of animals; then the mammals. Then Man. Above Man the rungs are empty but the ladder continues until it disappears into the clouds. The Christian and I are standing side by side. He is staring upwards, straining his eyes. Now and again, through a gap in the clouds, he catches a momentary glimpse. Something perhaps a little like himself – but more perfect. . . . Might it be an Angel? Might it be God? He and God. . . . The gap is very great, but if he climbed a little higher, and if God reached down a hand. . . .
I am looking downwards. The other creatures are very close to me. I can touch them. Look. There is Brother Ass whom St Francis knew. And those are his birds. And here is Cousin Oak. . . .
That is how I feel about Nature: that I am a part of it, a part of the great convoy that many millions of years ago climbed out of the primeval swamp.
The Path Through the Trees Page 29
