When I arrived my son was delighted to see me. He ran over and gave me a hug which was great. I then had some sandwiches and chatted to some of the members of the meeting, which was fine. They are nice people who share many values with me and some of them are still friends I keep in touch with. After lunch we went up to the local park for the kids to play for a bit and have an ice cream (it was a warm sunny summer day), which again was pleasant. We then wandered back to the hall ready for the talk and prizes.
It turned out that the talk was a production of a staged news programme recounting the ten plagues inflicted on Egypt before the Exodus. And this is where the day started hurting for me. I’m on such a different page to the mainstream Christadelphian view that I felt uncomfortable watching the ‘news anchors’ and ‘live reports’ as each plague unfolded before us. The presentation was carried out with enthusiasm but it presented the plagues as historical fact assuming the ‘inerrant Bible' genre. This was reinforced by the ‘news programme’ style where we naturally expect what we hear to be trustworthy (hopefully the current ‘fake news' epidemic will make us more sceptical of the ‘news’ genre, and teach us to seek out reliable sources).
I don’t really know how to describe to a Christadelphian what the afternoon felt like for me. Perhaps one way is to imagine a news report of one of Aesop’s fables. Imagine ‘the boy who cried wolf’ as a news item with a live correspondent interviewing the boy to find out what he actually said as well as talking to villagers to get their reaction and character assessment of the lad. The implication being that it was a real historical boy who lived in a real historical village and there was a real historical wolf, and in the end the poor boy was actually eaten alive. It was like a ‘children’s story’ genre in my mind but a ‘trustworthy news’ genre to my senses. A terrible clash without the added thought that to most people in the room the plagues are genuine historic events. Add to this that my own children are in the audience and potentially being persuaded by this propaganda. Needless to say, I was glad when I could finally get out.
We can, I hope, agree that Aesop’s Fables are fictitious tales that tell us nothing of a historic reality. They are useful in describing human truths to children in an artistic way and encouraging them not to, well, cry wolf. But ‘the boy who cried wolf’ is now a children’s story. Adults don’t deliberate the finer points of exactly what the boy said or which Greek word was used for ‘wolf’ and why that is significant. Many Christadelphians do do this with the Bible and sometimes seem unable to have a grown up conversation about their approach to their sacred text. The fables are not inerrant and nor is the Bible.
So I was glad to leave the hall and my awkward feelings behind. To finish I’ll give you some of my thoughts from my journey home:
- It was good that they paralleled the plagues with the Egyptian gods showing how each plague was intended to discredit a specific deity. They didn’t use the word ‘polemic’, but they were on the way to seeing the story in that light.
- I myself thought along the lines of a mainstream Christadelphian only a few years ago. So to be too hard on others for not yet graduating from the traditions of their own childhoods is to forget that I too was blinkered and ignorant relatively recently.
- Even though I feel enlightened from my previous ignorance I’m sure the low fidelity model of reality I carry round in my head has many errors, incoherences and faults even though I can’t yet see them. I need to hold a mirror up to my worldview at the same time as criticising that of others.
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