"Ignorance" and "Want"

By Tony Harriman

"A Christmas Carol" has to be one of the best surviving allegories on the market today. So many lessons to draw from the characters.

"Ignorance" is one of the creatures below the robe of Dickens' character, "The Ghost of Christmas Present" — the creature to beware of most — alongside another creature: "Want."

This is just a small observation, but I have seen that the study of the Sciences and the study of Religion have been two separate fields of interest mainly because of the ignorance of each toward the other. I have learned that many scientific minds are NOT engaged in a war to keep God hidden and banished from the text books. Many of those scientific minds are simply seeking to reconcile what they believe with what they see.

A human mind that can comprehend the vastness of the Cosmos, and perhaps can see the fingerprints of a Grand Designer, has a very difficult time confining his God to a box in which only one language is spoken; only one kind of people is accepted; and Who only shows up when called upon, like a genie who jumps out of the bottle when it's rubbed.

If it could be true that scientists are not looking for God, then it is more true to say that religionists are not looking to understand the science of the world in which they live. For the religionist, too much in the scientific world smacks of witchcraft or sorcery. This is part of the reason Jesus was accused of casting out demons through the power of the master of demons. Jesus worked outside of established understanding. He didn't perform miracles through witchcraft or sorcery or any other kind of Hocus Pocus; He used the same power which was evidently available to human beings—because His followers went out and did EXACTLY the same things when He commanded them to do so.

Ignorance of ANYTHING causes the mind to care very little about the thing. Think of that in terms of medical science, astronomy, geology, and perhaps most of all: Ecology. The less we know about these things, the less we seem to want to know, and the less we care. But these things matter. These things urge us toward the answers to the questions we ask most: Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going?

The world right now is full of stocking-stuffing attention-getters that are well equipped to divert us from finding out about things that matter. The medical world continues to frame knowledge of its findings in language foreign to the average mind. Math and physics are still frequently taught by teachers looking down their noses at their pupils. Biology and all of its siblings are ever-so-gently being pushed off the list of things to study that matter. Language sciences and poetry have been hijacked almost totally by a bizarre gaggle of songwriters who want to tell us how much they want to love their Mister or Miss Right Now. The average mind doesn't have time, space or interest to devote to things in a foreign language, so usually dwells on the mundane, or commonplace.

Planet Earth is a mess right now, held in a strange stranglehold that is taking up our entire attention. Most of the planet's inhabitants have no clue where their next meal is coming from. A smaller group lives from paycheck to paycheck, while another, much smaller group, DECIDES who gets to eat and who doesn't.

More than once I've been told, "Look, Jesus didn't have running water to His house; He didn't have indoor plumbing in any sense. And electricity? Forget about it."

It's true, the people in Jesus' day didn't have those things—and much more. But look at what was done by the followers of Jesus for the progress of mankind AFTER Jesus left. For 4,000 years the people of earth had lived in ignorance of so many things. That ignorance caused humanity to give credence to the likes of witch doctors, astrologers and alchemists. It took a while, but all that and more changed when the Spirit of Jesus got into a person.

It didn't take long, though, and humanity was once again baptized and held under the water by the Dark-Age religious folk. These folk went on a quest to burn the witches and convert the heathen—or kill the heathen in the process.

An ignorance of the Christian Bible kept priests and popes safely and warmly tucked in their beds for centuries. But then came Christian Protestantism, a movement more suited to study and inquiry of the world outside the Church Confessional. At last! The believer in God was encouraged to study the works of God. Protestants translated the Bible from the dead Latin language into languages that people actually spoke (modern-day medicine men and women could take a cue from that observation), and gave the average person a window into the thing that mattered most—instruction from Heaven itself! The average mind learned from those translations of the Bible that Jesus drew many lessons from the Book of Nature, and that the ways of God and of Heaven could be understood as the seeker after God studied the things which were being continually opened to his or her senses. Man developed microscopes, telescopes, and machines to calculate huge portions of mathematical data—data which is not intimidating or mysterious to the One Who created it.

Bottom line:

If you honestly believe it matters—whatever it is—help us understand it. Our ignorance of that which is really simple is not helping anything. Because "What the world needs now is love, sweet love" of things that matter, and that tend toward making things better.

Recently I returned from a trip to Cuba with somewhat of a heavy heart for the people who were forced to live in what we in the Western World would call "substandard conditions." They endured restricted access to fresh, running water; clean public toilets; hand soap, and the like. I have shared my burden for the Cuban people from time to time, and have been disappointed on occasion to meet the ever-present self-righteous prig who can't help but counter my observations with another: "So what? Most of the world lives like this." These prigs are easy to identify; they say things you might never expect to hear from the mouth of Jesus. If you can imagine Jesus avoiding town, uttering the words, "So what? Everyone gets sick, hungry and has demons," then you will be very comfortable in the company of the prig.

The world understands "Want." "Want" causes the belly to growl, the shoulders to shiver. But "Ignorance," on the other hand, is crafty. We really don't know what we don't know—ignorance of heat will cause many of us to sit in the cold. But some people DO know, and we just wish you'd put what you know into a language we can understand. We don't need or WANT to know everything, but we DO want to know about things that matter. Things like how to take better care of ourselves, and how to better take care of the world we live in. We're not asking much.

Once again, though, history is held in chains by the religious folk who are out there shouting, "My god is greater than your god. My god helps my football team more than your team. My god helps my business more than yours. And, of course, "My god helps me make better bombs than yours." These religious folk come in all shapes and sizes. And many of them speak English.

Humanity is tired of ignorance. And we're tired of being held in the past as we mop up religious mess after mess across the face of the earth.

What's the answer? Teach us about things that matter, and perhaps we'll finally have the opportunity to get our heads out of our own noses.

We're due—totally!

Miscarriage of Injustice in Cuba

By Tony Harriman

Miscarriage of Injustice in Cuba ... 

I'm going to continue my report on Cuba, and begin with an account that I will never be able to share by voice.

(To read more posts regarding my trip to Cuba, move your mouse to the right and scroll down to "Blog Archive").

When human beings are separated by language there is a belief perhaps on the part of all of us that we do not share the same head space with our fellow beings, that maybe we aren't all affected by the same things.  What remained of that notion for me came crashing down one evening when my Cuban companions and I visited the family of a young couple in the neighborhood.  

Earlier in the day I had been invited to join a small group that was to visit a family that coming evening who had recently experienced a loss.  I wasn't exactly sure what kind of loss; details had either been unheard by me, or misunderstood due to my sad lack of Spanish vocabulary.  Just before my small group left for the meeting the power went out in the area and stayed out until early next morning.  The countryside neighbourhood started to fill with people carrying flashlights and people pushing bicycles.  We arrived at the home and were welcomed warmly.  Several church members, many with flashlights, had gathered with the family to sing and pray and offer a shoulder of solace.  

The more I listened, the more I realized that the young wife had, within the past couple of days, experienced a miscarriage and lost the child she had been carrying—with perhaps the worst possible timing.

The young husband was there along with all the parents.  Early on there were no tears, no strong sense of grief.  My first thought was that perhaps these Cuban people are gritty and tough and don't hurt the way the rest of us do in the Free World.  We sang.  We prayed.  We offered testimonies of praise.  When it came time for the young wife to say a few words she thanked everyone for coming, and shared with us her hope of the resurrection.  As she spoke her voice grew quieter, and began to tremble.  She didn't weep, but her voice and her eyes were full of tears, and it was obvious her heart was breaking.  She spoke of the angels on that resurrection morning bringing children to the arms of their parents, and she hoped this would be true for her, too.  This brave young mother-to-be had lost her child toward the end of the ninth month of her pregnancy.  All the joy, discomfort and anxiety had been experienced.  All the usual preparations had been made during the past nine months.  She had all the baby things that were available to the Cuban people — gifts from family at home and abroad.  The home was ready.  The clothes were ready.  The hearts were ready.  The only missing ingredient was the child itself.  In that small family room I, too, had a heart full of tears for this loss, and felt the sadness that is common to man.  

I later learned that the mother-to-be took the clothes she had gathered for her expected newborn and gave them to a sister in the church who needed them more than she did.

I'm not sure how much bigotry and self-importance there remains yet in my heart, but in that flashlit evening in a 60-square-foot corner of the planet in a place called Cuba I felt much of this spirit leave the building.  Until the day of this writing I have had not the strength of voice to share this experience with the many people who have been interested in my trip, so you are one of the first to read about it.  It's funny, but I find that I have also a sad lack of the English vocabulary that prevents me from adequately describing the effect of that event on the world in which I live.

Next I tell you some of my observations of the island country of Cuba.