Thirty years ago, in writing On Broken Wings, I faced a difficult challenge: how to explain religion in the abstract. The explainer was a religious man, though not exactly in the way one might expect from his habits. The explainee was a young woman who knew approximately nothing about the subject, except that her interlocutor was both admirable and religious.
Here’s what I came up with:
“Scientists study the properties of things all the time.” He set the pan down in the sink and turned back to her. “They look for patterns in the way things behave, and then they test their understanding by making predictions. When their predictions work, they gain confidence that they’re on to something. When their predictions fail, they junk their theories and start over. Mostly by little steps, sometimes by big ones, always building on the learning of those that came before them, this is how scientists come to know the world.”
He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms against his chest. There was something in his demeanor she hadn’t seen before, a kind of all-pervading delight that transformed him and made it impossible to look away from him.
“Scientists always look for the widest, most comprehensive patterns they can find, and then they try to explain them. And they’ve noticed that, the wider and deeper they go, the simpler the explanations seem to get.
“The great discoveries of the past three centuries have all pointed toward the existence of an enormous central fact, a single law for the whole world and everything in it. All the little patterns we see in things, like legs only being so fast, or arms only being so strong, or water never rising past two-twelve Fahrenheit, are just special cases of that central law, like the differently shaped shadows a statue will cast depending on how you turn it in the sun. Does that suggest anything to you, Chris?”
It took her a moment to register the question. She began to think. He waited in silence.
A million million details. A single truth giving rise to them all. Human reason sifting the details for the patterns that hid in them. Human knowledge of the patterns accumulating over the centuries, gradually reconstructing the statue from its innumerable shadows.
“The more you know, the simpler it all gets,” she whispered. “The parts might be confusing, but it’s made to be understood whole.” The thrill of discovery was coursing through her like an electric current. “Louis, it couldn’t have happened that way by chance, could it?”
He folded his hands and looked down at them.
“Some people think it could have, Chris.”
“Do you?”
“No.”
“And that’s religion?”
He nodded.
Some readers liked it; some didn’t. Not everyone felt it did the subject justice. But it was my personal take on the appeal of the religious premise: i.e., that there is a Creator behind it all. And this morning, after reading the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, I started thinking about those shadows yet again.
Some brilliant fiction has employed shadow metaphors. The one that comes to mind just now is Ursula Le Guin’s award-winner The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin used the shadow of a man as a metaphor for his personal stature and qualities. She gave the men of Gethen the rather serious “game” of shifgrethor to express its importance.
You cast a shadow, at least when the light hits you just so. But as you turn, your shadow changes. Anyone watching would see those changes. They might bore him or mesmerize him... but unless he’s unusually stupid, he wouldn’t attribute the changes in your shadow to changes in you.
Thus it should be, anyway.
If you live a more or less normal life, you’ll cast many “shadows:”
- As a child;
- As a student;
- As a young person;
- As a husband or wife;
- As a practitioner of your chosen trade;
- As a source of guidance to your progeny and theirs.
Those are just the big ones, of course. Within those shadows will be a multitude of details, formed out of the experiences you’ve had along the way. Imagine the degree of vision and concentration required of an artist who attempts to capture all those details. And imagine how hard it would be for you to hold still long enough for him to do it!
But your shadow is not you. You are much more. A good thing, too, considering how your shadow keeps changing.
In Jesus’s parable, the Pharisee praises himself for being “not as other men are.” He recounts his pieties as if he were competing for a job opportunity:
The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
What kind of prayer is that? Contrast it with the prayer of the publican:
And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
The Pharisee boasts about his pieties. The publican asks forgiveness for his sins, implicitly saying that he knows he should do better. Jesus tells his audience that the humility of the latter is preferable: “for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
Both men are aware of their shadows. The publican hopes that his will change. His prospects are better than those of the Pharisee, who thinks his practices confer a permanent state of grace.
Jesus also told us to “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” That too is about our shadows. For we all sin: some more frequently or grievously than others. But those deeds are acts in time, and time will continue to pass. If the stain of sin lingers, nevertheless if the resolve to repent, atone, and improve is there, it can be erased. Its shadow is impermanent.
The publican in the parable may have coerced or intimidated those he taxed. He may have stolen from them. He may have embezzled the proceeds rather than transmitting them to the state. And were his crimes to be discovered, he would justly be punished for them. But those are all acts in time, as impermanent as any other facet of his shadow.
God will not judge us on our shadows, but on the state of our souls when we stand before him at the Particular Judgment. Did we repent of the sins we knew we had committed? Did we strive to atone and improve? When given a chance to behave better, did we take it?
Time is given to us as a medium in which to grow and improve. But God stands above time. He’s less concerned with how your shadow looked at any instant than with whether you used the time He gave you to improve in His sight, in keeping with His Commandments.
Have a good Sunday.
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