The Harvest

by John David Krygelski

  Smiling, Elohim entered the room and said, “May I join you?”

  McWilliams answered, “Of course, please.”

  He pulled out a chair for Elohim. Reese and Claire were both distracted, staring into each other’s eyes.

  “Okay,” said Reynolds, “That takes care of them. How about the rest of us? That is, if anyone else here cares…I know I do.”

  Nicholas looked around the table at the others. McWilliams’ eyes were downcast, as if he were trying to read the fine print on the sweetener packets. Penfield, although claiming to be not yet convinced of Elohim’s authenticity, looked apprehensive.

  Craig spoke without looking up. “I’d like to know.”

  Penfield added, trying to act nonchalant, “Sure. Me, too.”

  Elohim lifted a cheese Danish from the platter and took a bite, chewing it slowly. After swallowing, he cleared his throat slightly and said, “Each of you will join me.”

  An instant smile filled Craig McWilliams’ face, his eyes rising to look at Elohim. Then, just as suddenly, his smile disappeared. Before he could speak, Elohim answered the unasked question. “Craig, your wife will be coming, as well.”

  Reynolds, upon hearing the news, had crossed his arms over his chest and now looked as if he were hugging himself.

  Turning to Penfield, Elohim said, “You look concerned.”

  “Well,” he replied, “From what I understand, the percentage that you are taking is a small one. What are the chances that all of us in this room would go, including Craig’s wife?”

  “Craig’s wife and yours, as well.”

  “That’s wonderful…but even more of an anomaly.”

  “Walt, the chances are obviously one hundred percent. There are times when you need to think less like a mathematician and think more like a psychologist,” said Reese, who had recovered somewhat. “Elohim expected this question from everyone who was brought in to interview Him. How smooth would this process proceed if the people who were supposed to validate Him had been told they weren’t going to Heaven?”

  “So we’re all just being told this? It’s not true?”

  Although Penfield directed the question at Elohim, Reese answered, “Elohim has promised to be truthful in His answers. Therefore, either everything that He says is true….”

  “Or that statement was not,” finished Elohim. “Quite a paradox. Like so many other dilemmas in your lives, only the outcome will determine the truth.”

  Penfield, still not satisfied, asked, “I know I’m not supposed to think like a mathematician for a moment, but you have to admit it seems a little odd, doesn’t it?”

  Elohim replied, “Only if you assume that I had no input into who joined this group. There are others within each of your fields who could be sitting here today, instead of you. Reese is correct. How fruitful would this interview process be if some of the interviewers had been told they were not to join me?”

  Reese looked at Penfield. “Walter, there is a press conference today at two o’clock. I need to have my answer ready. If you feel that you can become comfortable by then, I would appreciate your participation.”

  Penfield said thoughtfully, “I obviously need some more time. I….”

  Elohim interrupted, “If you would prefer to discuss me in private, I can leave.”

  Penfield said, “From what I’ve seen and heard, we wouldn’t have any more privacy if you did. No, it’s okay. I just…I’m still struggling with what I need as a proof. As I was saying before you arrived, and as you know, you could provide me with the answer to every great mystery of physics and that might make you superior to Einstein, but would it prove you are God?”

  Elohim sat quietly, letting him speak.

  “A miracle?” offered Craig.

  “I took a vacation several years ago in Las Vegas. David Copperfield was performing at one of the casinos, and my wife wanted to see him…so we went. I expected to be able to figure out his tricks and wasn’t all that excited about the prospect of seeing his show. He blew me away. For the most part, I was as dumbstruck as the rest of the audience. In the weeks and months that followed, I made it kind of a hobby to figure out each of the tricks. I made a list of them, and as I solved each one, I checked it off the list. It took me two years to finish the list.” Looking at his watch, he said, “I have less than six hours, not two years.

  “Elohim, you’ve already performed miracles. I can’t explain how you fixed Craig’s spine. I can’t explain how you produced Reese’s lost book or solved several of the open cases at the FBI. Hell, I can’t even explain why touching you affects everyone so profoundly and differently. But I know this: if I could go back in time three thousand years and meet with the people of that time, I could do things for them they couldn’t explain.”

  “Walt, maybe I can help you explain this,” Reese said. “It’s right up my alley, so to speak. For the masses, throughout history, all that could not be explained or replicated was attributed to the gods, from rainfall to getting sick. Back then, God had an extremely full plate. He was doing just about everything. As the sciences progressed and more became explainable, each of those tasks was removed from God’s purview so that now we’re down to the last, I don’t know, five percent…fifteen percent of the things that are still unexplainable. It has been the orientation of the scientists to resist automatically chalking off the unexplained as just God messing around again. If that hadn’t been their orientation for the last thousand years, we wouldn’t have figured out all the things that we have. We’d still be praying for our children to get well instead of giving them antibiotics. That’s all that Walt is doing today…resisting the urge to assume it’s God’s work. You can’t help it; it’s almost hard-wired, right?”

  “That’s relatively accurate.”

  Reese continued, “The dichotomy between the non-scientist and the scientist is that the non-scientist is quicker than is warranted to take things on faith, and the scientist cannot take anything on faith.”

  “Wait a second!” Penfield protested.

  Reese, wanting to finish his thought, said, “Walt…the problem is that…and I’m speaking as a psychologist here…the only way any human can consistently disregard one recurring explanation is by denying its existence. The presence of horseshit on your dining room table is only a mystery if you believe that the Appaloosa living in your home doesn’t exist. The benefit of denying the existence of God is that it allowed a tremendous, beneficial progress to occur which might not have occurred. The flaw with it is…how can you prove the existence of something that you’ve already decided cannot exist? Notice I said cannot rather than does not exist, because that’s what happened. Science…and I’m not attacking you, Walt…science has reached a point where it cannot allow the possibility of God’s existence. That’s a long way from science’s origin, which was to understand His work. If you think about it for a moment, isn’t it inconsistent with the pure scientific method to presumptively disqualify any possible explanation?”

  “Yes. And you’re right. The past tendency to lump everything that couldn’t be explained under ‘God’ is something that my field has worked hard to expunge.”

  “But there’s a problem with the concept, Walt. It’s almost as though science created two bushels, one labeled ‘God’ and one ‘Nature.’ One by one, the mysteries have been taken out of the ‘God’ bushel, studied, analyzed, and explained…then put into the bushel marked ‘Nature,’ as if it made a difference.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The scientists decided that nature and God are not the same thing. Nature is not only God’s creation, it’s His toolbox. It’s what He uses to express His wishes. Scientists have come a long way in explaining the processes of nature, but that doesn’t disprove the existence of God any more than being able to explain how a car works disproves the existence of General Motors.”

  “Reese, you make some good points. But it doesn’t get me any closer to figuring out the proof I need.”

  �
��Walt, you’re not listening. My point is that the proof you’re seeking does not exist within the current framework of the discipline, because the discipline in its present form was created for the sole purpose of disproving the existence of God in the first place. Logically, no proof within that framework is possible.”

  “Sole purpose! Come on, Reese!”

  “Think about it logically, Walt. At some point in the past, it was assumed that everything was done by God. As time went by, one of the proto-scientists decided this wasn’t right, so he started studying and doing experiments until he could replicate and manipulate some of the phenomena that were attributed to God. With every new proof came a diminishment of the definition of ‘God.’ After some bumps in the road….”

  “Bumps in the road…like being executed for committing heresy?”

  “Yeah, after that stuff…anyway, scientists became empowered and continued trudging on through today. But the basic premise, under which today’s entire structure was designed, was to disprove God’s existence. Therefore, you won’t find a ‘proof’ within that structure because you can’t.”

  “I’m still not buying this,” Penfield replied. “You mentioned a minute ago that science was founded on understanding God’s work, not disproving His existence.”

  “That was a position of necessity. The choice at the time was to claim a belief in God and a desire to understand His ways, or death.”

  Elohim, who had been patiently listening to all of this, added, “Actually, very few were put to death. It is an historical fact that has been greatly exaggerated. And those who were had committed other offenses. The normal reaction, at the time, to scientists whose conclusions offended the faithful was a loss of patronage.”

  “The same technique as today, just the opposite side of the ideological fence,” said Reese. “If any scientist supports the existence of God in any way, he loses his funding, as well as any tenure-track position at a university.”

  “It’s not the best way to win a popularity contest, that’s for sure,” agreed Penfield.

  “The point I’m trying to make, Walt, is that the rest of us are trying to satisfy ourselves that Elohim is God while you’re still trying to figure out if there is a God. And since we live in a physical universe, and God does what He does by guiding the physical processes, how can you prove that it is His hand at the wheel?”

  “Or that there even is a hand at the wheel,” added Craig.

  “Right,” agreed Reese. “The argument is not whether there really is a car going down the road; everybody agrees on that. The argument is whether anyone is driving.”

  “That,” said Penfield, “is the best distillation of the positions I’ve ever heard.”

  “To stick with the driving analogy for a minute…those who believe in God say, ‘Look, the car left the Upper East Side of Manhattan, drove cross-country, and ended up in a parking lot in Santa Monica…somebody had to drive it.’ Scientists say, ‘Put enough cars in motion in Manhattan, and all of them have to end up somewhere. Given enough time and enough cars leaving Manhattan, one of them will eventually end up at that parking lot in Santa Monica.’ Walt, do you really believe that?”

  “Look,” said Penfield defensively, “I do believe in God. Personally…privately…I believe in God. I always have, and all of the work that I’ve done in my field has done nothing to sway me from that belief. But you’re right…the nature of my field or, I guess, science in general is that we have to leave that belief at home. If you want me to stand up next to you and take the position, explicitly or implicitly, that there is a God, I can do that as a man…I can’t do that as a scientist. Before I could even address the issue as a scientist, I would have to define what God is, which, in case you haven’t noticed in your studies, Reese, is a question that has been stumping many minds for thousands of years. I doubt that I’m going to solve that one in a few hours. So, as I said, as a man, yes, I can take the position that there is a God and probably, between now and then, satisfy myself that Elohim is or is not God. If that’s good enough, I’ll be standing there next to you.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Reese, Walt, and Elohim were settled back in the conference room. Penfield looked at his watch and said, “It’s about nine o’clock. We have a lot to cover in five hours. Elohim, you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation that you have added levels of complexity in front of scientists to keep us engaged. Could you explain that?”

  “Yes, it probably does need some clarification. As I also said earlier, man and I are very much alike, in ways that would surprise you. There is, within man, the ability to create, just as there is within me. This ability is weak, extremely feeble. It becomes stronger as it joins with others, but on its own can affect nearly nothing. Fortunately, nearly nothing is what physicists now deal with on a daily basis.”

  “That’s funny,” said Penfield sarcastically.

  “I am not trying to be funny, but literal. The smallest particles that are studied have so little mass and so little energy that they are nearly nothing. And because they are nearly nothing, they can be more easily influenced.”

  “By what?” Penfield asked.

  “By your mind.”

  “This is starting to sound a little New Age for me.”

  “I understand that, but please remember that some of the New Age beliefs are based upon a rediscovery of ancient teachings, myths, and lore. Those ancient beliefs came from those who were present during my last visit. They were based on questions asked and answered then. Those who were not chosen attempted to pass on the learned knowledge. Imagine how what you learn from me today will sound thousands of years from now.”

  “Okay, for the sake of discussion, I’ll buy into this for a moment. Is this a skill that we learn?”

  “Actually, it’s one of the skills that you unlearn. When you are born, your mind has the ability to do many things. Those abilities must be developed, but they are there, ready to be tapped. If they are not developed…if they are disregarded as if they do not exist, the parts of the mind that can perform them are dedicated to other, more temporal skills.”

  “As Claire mentioned earlier, talking about musical ability or a foreign language?” asked Reese.

  “Yes.”

  Penfield continued to question Elohim. “What do you mean by ‘ability’?”

  “Walt, compare it to language. Behavioral scientists have already proved that the language input a baby receives is insufficient to teach the child to talk, listen, write, and read. In the process of mastery of language, the mind makes tremendous leaps beyond that to which it is exposed. The ability to manipulate your environment is the same. The ability is there, in your mind, ready to be encouraged and developed. But, as in a child who never picks up a musical instrument, the ability never develops to a point of physical manifestation. The ability never completely goes away; it just remains feeble and amateurish. You live in a feedback system. Learning to speak is instantly rewarded, not just with praise but with understanding of what is being spoken around you, and being understood by others. If your mind attempts to pursue something for which there is no external feedback, that direction dies off.”

  “I’m not sure I understand. If an infant attempts to manipulate its environment yet hasn’t developed the skills, what feedback would it get?”

  “Walt, not all feedback is a loop. The first sounds a baby makes are not words. It is not the loving encouragement of the parents that makes the baby want to keep trying. It is witnessing speech happening all around, and wanting to join in, that motivates. The first time a four-year-old sits down at the piano, nothing happens that anyone with a musical ear could call positive feedback; yet, the child persists because of seeing the piano teacher play, hearing other music played, and being told he or she can also play someday by following certain steps. The child makes a leap of faith, continues the effort, and eventually begins to play recognizable melodies.

  “Not only does this not happen with some of the other a
bilities of the brain, but in many cases negative feedback is received. Reese, you are an intelligent and open-minded person. If Melissa, at the age of three, had come to you and told you that she could reach into her crayon box with her eyes closed and always pull out whatever color she wanted, what would you say to her?”

  Reese felt that familiar tingle again, the tingle that happened whenever Elohim described something that had actually occurred in his past. “I didn’t discourage her.”

  “Yes, you did. You said, ‘That’s nice.’ Children learn very young that ‘That’s nice’ means ‘I know that didn’t really happen, but I love you, so I’ll say something gentle that doesn’t hurt you but also doesn’t encourage you.’ Melissa is now a talented young artist. If, when she brought her first crayon drawings to you, your reaction to her artwork was ‘That’s nice,’ do you think she would have continued drawing?”

  Smiling, Reese said, “I remember how we reacted to her first drawings. We raved about them and hung them on the walls. When she was five, we arranged an ‘opening’ where she hung all of her work, and we had friends and relatives over to look at them.”