Elephant Parts
I don’t pretend to really know a lot about different religions. I’ve got a modicum of knowledge that I’ve absorbed through the years but it’s all pretty sparse and anecdotal. I was raised Catholic, but even on Catholicism, my knowledge is pretty spotty.
But even given all of that, I was curious that God is portrayed in such a variety of fashions, from the differences between the old and new testaments, to ancient Roman and Greek pantheons, to Buddha, Shiva, and even Mother Nature. I talked a little about this last month (see Universal Truth) and it’s been nagging at me a little bit ever since. What God told me then was that the different Gods were really just different aspects of him. Today I finally got around to asking if he could maybe explain that a little better.
So God reminded me of the story of the blind men and the elephant.
For those of you not familiar I’ll do a quick summary that doesn’t really do the tale justice. A group of blind men are let into a room with an elephant, for only a few moments, and then taken away again. After this they are asked to explain an elephant to someone who wasn’t there. One of the blind men had only had the chance to feel the elephant’s tail, and said that an elephant was like a rope. Another had only felt the side of the elephant and said that the beast was like a wall. A third had grasped the elephant’s trunk and described it as like a snake. The fourth had wrapped his arms around one leg and said that an elephant was like the trunk of a tree.
So the message I got was that no religion was necessarily wrong, but that none of them had it completely right either.
My biggest fear, then, is that I’ve been let into the room but the elephant has already left and I’m just playing in a pile of dung.
That did not come out the way I wanted it to, I meant to quote Toby as saying “My biggest fear, then, is that I’ve been let into the room but the elephant has already left and I’m just playing in a pile of dung.” and then my response.