The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl Read online

  ‘It was you who picked out the Good Samaritan’, God said, ‘as the best possible proof that God is love.’

  ‘That was just an instance’, the humble Christian objected, ‘of the message conveyed by the gospel story as a whole.’

  ‘But excluding’, God said, ‘the message conveyed by all the bits that are not what you have in mind. There isn’t an enormous amount left. Walking on the water,17 do you perhaps mean? I can see that as a demonstration of previously unsuspected properties in the surface tension of liquids but not as a demonstration of God’s being love. Neither should I have thought that your hero was demonstrating that he is love had I been one of the Gadarene swine whom he forced into insanity and suicide.18 Or, indeed, had I been one of the fishes whom he condemned to be killed in the miraculous draught of fishes.’19

  ‘That’s another thing’, the humble Christian said accusingly. ‘I noticed it about you during our previous discussion. You’re forever on about animals.’

  ‘Should you be surprised?’ God asked. ‘Surely you believe that a sparrow does not fall on the ground20 without my taking note of it?’

  ‘I daresay God can cite Scripture for his purpose,’ the humble Christian replied sulkily.

  ‘However,’ God said, ‘I suppose you also believe the flattering assurance that occurs two verses later, “Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows”?’

  ‘I most certainly do,’ the humble Christian replied with enthusiasm.

  ‘One mark,’ God said, ‘that your religion is of human, not divine, origin is its conviction that it is man whom God made in his own image.21 The ancient Egyptians, who were more impartial and scientific, were prepared to consider that it might be the crocodile or the baboon or the hippopotamus.’

  ‘There you go again,’ the humble Christian complained, with a loud, derisory sigh. ‘It became quite obvious during our previous discussion, when you subjected me to a passage of blatant propaganda for vegetarianism, that you consider animals more important than humans. You completely ignore the spiritual qualities of man, which give him his unique value.’

  ‘I don’t think I can’, God said thoughtfully, ‘consider animals more important than humans, since I consider that humans are animals. Of course, man is a unique species. But so is every species. When you talk of unique value, you evidently mean value in someone’s eyes. No doubt by the someone you mean an impartial observer above the whole contest, who doesn’t himself belong to any zoological species. In short, you mean me. But you’ve taken care that I shan’t in fact be impartial, since you’ve invented me in your image and you pretend I created you and no other species in mine. So far as I know, man is unique in believing himself able to exercise logical and moral choice. But then the whale is unique in being able to grow to such a size and yet keep himself warm in deep waters. Of course man is uniquely valuable in man’s eyes. But so, I daresay, is the whale in the whale’s. Who’s to say that the one judgment is more valid than the other? Especially since the man didn’t choose to be a man or the whale to be a whale.’

  ‘I don’t understand a word of what you’ve said,’ the humble Christian replied, ‘but it’s quite clear to me that it’s nonsense. You admit that only man has moral choice, and moral choice is obviously a much more advanced and valuable quality than whatever it is you say whales have that we haven’t. What matters is how man uses his moral choice. You’d like him to use it in becoming a vegetarian, quite as though he hadn’t more important things to think about. I can’t see what you suppose is so wrong about eating animals, anyway. Lots of animals do it.’

  ‘But you agreed that man is the only animal who could choose not to,’ God said. ‘You seem to be arguing that when a fox eats a chicken that’s a mark of his lowly animal nature, but when you do it’s a mark of your spiritual, superior-to-other-animals nature.’

  ‘I’m not arguing at all,’ the humble Christian maintained firmly. ‘I’m just pointing out a few simple common-sense facts which you ignore. For instance, you forget that man has an immortal soul, whereas an animal hasn’t.’

  ‘I don’t think that would appear a simple common-sense fact to a reincarnationist,’ God said. ‘However, if you were right, wouldn’t that be a reason for allowing the animal to live out the one life he has? Your doctrine that humans do and animals don’t go on from life to immortal life seems to me to imply quite imperatively that you ought to do everything you can to prolong the mortal life of animals, since they can expect no other, but should take no steps whatever to detain a human in this vale of tears but speed him on his way to heaven.’

  ‘Chop-logic!’ the humble Christian snorted. ‘And you know quite well that Christianity doesn’t take that line at all. Hundreds of nuns devote their lives to nursing the sick and collecting for the poor. You’re just slandering Christianity in order to evade the subject under discussion, which is animals. I consider feeding humans a great deal more important than prolonging the life of a few animals.’

  ‘Then you must become a vegetarian,’ God replied.

  ‘If that’s your idea of logic—!’, cried the humble Christian, flinging up his hands in scorn.

  ‘Haven’t you noticed’, God asked, ‘that growing grain and feeding it to non-human animals and then feeding those non-human animals to human animals is a very lengthy, and therefore a very expensive, process compared to growing the grain and feeding it directly to humans? The land that’s needed to support one human carnivore will support three human vegetarians. Given the over-population of the earth by humans, the endemic famine which afflicts so many countries, and the fact that at least 300 million humans are mal-nourished,22 human carnivores are condemning not only millions of non-human animals but millions of their fellow-humans to death.’

  ‘All you’re prepared to talk about’, the humble Christian said, ‘is animals. You’re so obsessed by them that you won’t even call humans “humans”. You insist on tendentiously calling them “human animals”.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to be tendentious,’ God replied. ‘I thought we agreed that The Origin of Species is a more convincing biology textbook than Genesis.’

  ‘The scientific point of view isn’t the only one,’ the humble Christian said. ‘Other people are entitled to theirs.’

  ‘Of course’, God said. ‘The question is whether science is entitled to an unscientific point of view. It seems to me that 20th-century biology bases its principles on The Origin of Species, according to which man is one among the animal species. But when biological principles are put into practice, they are used to build factory farms and vivisection laboratories, which are based entirely on the biology of Genesis: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our own likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”’

  ‘About carnivorousness,’ the humble Christian said, ‘it’s possible that you’re right and it doesn’t benefit the human species.’

  ‘O, so you did take that point?’ God put in.

  ‘I say it’s possible you’re right,’ the humble Christian emphasised. ‘Reason isn’t always right. But about experiments on animals – or vivisection, as you emotively put it – you can’t deny that the results are beneficial to humans. Such experiments are regrettable, of course, but completely necessary.’

  ‘You speak’, God said, ‘as though all vivisection concerned matters of human life or death. Most of it is in fact done for purposes like testing shampoos. The shampoo is squirted into rabbits’ eyes. But even in the few cases where the result has a possibility of producing information vital to humans, is that a justification?’

  ‘Of course,’ the humble Christian replied. ‘Humans matter more.’

  ‘To whom?’ God asked. ‘To me? I assure you, science knows nothing of me or of my scale of values. I’m not a scientific concept. Nowhere in the fossil record can you read my authorisat
ion of man’s dominion over all other animals. If you mean that humans matter more to humans, yes, of course they do. But it is the scientific duty of science to make corrections, so far as it can, for the anthropocentric bias that results from the fact that scientists are humans. If astronomers had not corrected their anthropocentric bias, they would still believe that the earth is centre of the solar system.’

  ‘You can hardly blame biologists’, the humble Christian said, ‘if they shew loyalty to their own species. Personally, I think loyalty is a commendable quality.’

  ‘Do you commend the Nazis’, God asked, ‘for the fact that their loyalty to their German nationality led them to feel justified in torturing and, indeed, experimenting on Jews and Gypsies? Would you ask me to commend your loyalty to your family if you sought a cure for your sick child by experimenting on the children of the family next door?’

  ‘Now you’re being silly,’ the humble Christian replied. ‘The family next door wouldn’t let me. The law of the land wouldn’t let me.’

  ‘So the moral justification for torturing rabbits’, God said, ‘is that the rabbits can’t stop you?’

  ‘Man is superior to rabbits, I tell you!’ the humble Christian exclaimed.

  ‘The Nazis told me they were superior to Jews,’ God replied. ‘It seems to me you have implied that a Nazi was justified in torturing Jews so long as the Jews couldn’t stop him, and also justified in his fascist creed that the stronger may do anything he likes to the weak so long as he is the stronger and can get away with it. When you say man is superior to rabbits, you mean he is strong and clever enough to impose torture on them. Tell me: if evolution next year produces Super-Man, who is stronger and cleverer than Homo Sapiens, will he be justified in experimenting on you?’

  ‘No!’ cried the humble Christian and then added: ‘Or rather, I’m not obliged to answer hypothetical questions. Your whole speculative way of talking is designed merely to trap me. As I said before, my God talks in everyday terms and illustrates his discourse with simple parables.’

  ‘Very well,’ God said after a moment’s thought. ‘Sit down on the bench and be comfortable, and I’ll tell you a parable.’

  The historian grunted as he was joined on the marble bench by the humble Christian, but didn’t wake up.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘This is the parable’, God began. ‘Once upon a time—’

  ‘That’s a beginning for a fairy tale,’ the humble Christian interrupted, ‘not a parable. You betray your lack of acquaintance with the scriptures.’

  Stirred by the voice next to him, the sleeping historian snuggled more deeply sideways, and his head lapsed onto the humble Christian’s shoulder.

  ‘Sorry,’ God said. ‘Let me start again.

  ‘A certain pair of scientists once watched a riot. It seemed to them that those policemen who were armed with both guns and truncheons were more cruel in using their truncheons against the rioters than those policemen who were armed with truncheons only.

  ‘From this observation, the two scientists conceived the hypothesis that, the more power a person has, the more callous and harsh he is in using it.

  ‘Having conceived this hypothesis, the two scientists decided to test it experimentally.

  ‘The experiment they devised was this. They invited 60 men to take part, and divided them into three groups of 20 each. Each group was asked to train rats to push a certain lever, using the method of administering an electric shock to punish and deter the rat when he pushed the wrong lever.

  ‘The first group of men could, by pushing buttons, administer two sorts of shock to the rats, “mild” and “slightly painful”. The second group had three buttons to choose from, “mild”, “slightly painful” and “moderately painful”. The third group also had three buttons: “mild”, “slightly painful” and “extremely painful”.

  ‘The second group was told never to use the “moderately painful” button, and the third group never to use the “extremely painful” button. So in fact all three groups trained their rats by means of two buttons only, “mild” and “slightly painful”, but the second and third group knew that they had extra power in reserve.

  ‘And sure enough, exactly as the hypothesis predicted, the two groups that had extra power in reserve made more, and more callous, use of the two buttons they were allowed to use than did the group which had only those two buttons.

  ‘And the group which had “extremely painful” in reserve was even more callous in its use of the two permitted buttons than the group which had only “moderately painful” in reserve.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘Is that all?’ the humble Christian asked God. ‘Or are you going to point the moral?’

  ‘This parable has not so much a moral as an irony,’ God replied. ‘The experiment didn’t need to produce any results in order to prove its hypothesis. It did that merely by being devised and set up. Scientists have absolute power over rats.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘I don’t think much of that as a parable,’ the humble Christian said, giving a shrug that bounced the sleeping head of the historian. ‘For one thing, it had a very esoteric, out-of-the-way setting, whereas the parables in the New Testament always deal with plain, everyday occurrences.’

  ‘In “advanced” societies’, God replied, ‘vivisection is an everyday occurrence. In Britain there are 100,000 experiments on living animals a week. In the United States, experiments on living animals are such an everyday occurrence that nobody bothers to keep precise records, but the figure is certainly even higher, probably a million or so a week.’

  ‘Well, in that case’, the humble Christian said, ‘your parable is obviously much less inventive and imaginative than the ones in the New Testament.’

  ‘You don’t think I made it up?’ God asked.

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘No,’ God said. ‘The experiment was devised and carried out by two scientists in the United States, after they had watched film of the riots at the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago in 1968. I read an account of it in the Sunday Times (London) of 31 December 1972.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ‘Really!’ the humble Christian exclaimed to God, giving a further shrug and, thereby, a further bounce to the historian’s head. ‘You had the nerve to call the New Testament parables muddled, and now it turns out you can’t tell fact from fiction yourself.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m muddled on that point,’ God replied in a considering tone. ‘Surely the truth is that lots of people are muddled on that point in relation to me?’

  ‘Exactly!’ the humble Christian said, as though pouncing. ‘And you try to muddle them further. Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you tried to trap me into saying that the hero of the gospels never had an historical existence. Here!’

  The humble Christian looked sideways at the historian’s head on his shoulder and gave it this time a deliberate and violent jog.

  ‘Wake up and make a useful contribution to the discussion. Speaking as an historian, you can confirm that Jesus had an historical existence, can’t you?’

  The historian sat up straight on the bench, opened his eyes and after a moment asked:

  ‘Do you mean Jesus of Nazareth? You amateurs always forget that there have been many persons of that name, some of whom unquestionably had historical existences.’

  ‘I mean’, the humble Christian said impatiently, ‘the only one who matters.’ A slight muscular tremor, whose vibrato was audible in his voice, betrayed that the humble Christian felt frustrated by the fact that the historian, in waking up, had removed all pretext for the Christian to jog him again.

  ‘That field of study’, the historian pronounced, ‘is highly specialised. Many of the best authorities consider that he had, and many of them consider that he hadn’t.’

  The historian’s head began to lapse sideways again, this time away from his companion on the bench. When the side of his cheek touched the marble seat, he sudd
enly caught up his legs and curled them onto the bench, with the result that he was lying on his side, the soles of his feet flat against the humble Christian’s thigh, to which he gave a kick before he settled back into sleep.

  ‘I get no support,’ the humble Christian said, sliding along the bench out of range. ‘There isn’t a drop of simple faith or loyalty left in the world.’ He looked directly at God and breathed a sigh. ‘I can do no more.’

  ‘In that case,’ God said, ‘I’ll be on my way.’

  ‘I suppose this Black Girl you’re so set on finding is some type of pagan idol?’ the humble Christian surmised. ‘Well, I’ve tried to reason with you, but you’re not amenable to reason. I can’t be expected to save you from your mistakes. Go, and leave me in peace.’

  ‘I take that to be the Christian version’, God said, ‘of the eastern farewell “Go in peace”.’

  As he spoke these words, God sketched a quick salaam to the humble Christian, walked briskly past the marble bench and set off down a broad track where the grass was smooth and sweet-smelling and illuminated by the sunshine into the colours of malachite.

  ‘You never miss a chance to slander Christianity!’ complained the humble Christian’s voice after him. ‘Everybody knows it’s Christianity that’s the religion of peace! Jesus came to bring peace to earth!’

  The broad track God was pursuing became a broad avenue, bordered on each side by a spiky line of oleanders.

  Their leaves, bleached and brittle under the sun, made a faint tinfoilish rubbing sound as they were interpenetrated by bees.

  In the refuge of the avenue, God paused long enough to reply over his shoulder:

  ‘I thought you believed he said “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”’23

  Then, pleased with his reply, God resumed his advance, his steps slightly sprung on the handsome, bouncy grass.

  He scanned to left and right, as he went, into the interstices between the narrow oleander leaves, looking for a glimpse of Voltaire.