C H A P T E R T W O
Bernadette and the Magical Squirrel
Blunder 1: Failure to discern between truth and error.
My name is Bernadette Rosalinda Hernley and I speak to you in a spirit of international good will.
My occupation is “Person,” and I mean that in the most respectful sense of the term. I am an unusual little single lady of enough years to know a few things and young enough to learn more. I have been called eccentric, but there is nobody in this big city more fascinated with life than me. Being a Human Person is one of the most special and important parts of my life.
Due to some unfortunate situations in my past I am not currently employed, except as I said, as a Human Person, a job that I perform with great gusto. I am out and about on the busy downtown streets of my city most of the regular working day, doing all that I can to spread smiles and good cheer to all the people I meet. I take everything I may need with me and, when I can afford it, extra snacks and such to share with those who need it. One time when I gave a package of day-old donuts to a homeless old man he called me “The Bag Lady from Heaven.” Imagine that!
One day I had an experience so unusual you should ask me to tell you about it.
Thank you. I will.
Noon that day was one of those just-right-spring-times when the air is brisk but the sun is warm, so that you are invigorated and mellow at the same time. I had gone to the park wearing my bright, multi-colored serape—you know, a Mexican poncho—that a friend of mine (name of R. McKinley Forrester) gave me from his bus tour to Tijuana, and I took it off and spread it on the ground to sit on. Think of that! You shouldn’t do that with a coat but with a serape you can; it’s a wonderful piece of equipment.
Creativity was running up and down my brain like squirrels running up and down the trees, which is what I was doing, sitting there watching the squirrels and thinking about the similarities between us and squirrels, again in the respectful sense, because they are remarkable little creatures even if they are not as human as the rest of us.
I had brought a picnic lunch and when I pulled out a sandwich I was struck down with an idea. A comparison: sandwich, sane wish. And the thought suddenly came to me, eat a sandwich and make a sane wish. Sort of like pulling on a chicken wishbone only more convenient, especially for the chicken. See, the creativity was running fast! I really enjoy being on a mental roll like that!”
I thought it would be fun, so I took a bite and made my wish, which was, “I wish I could be friends with a squirrel.” Then I chewed my bite and swallowed it.
Get this! At that exact time a little squirrel came down a tree in front of me and he sat there watching me. He was all twitchy-like but he didn’t look nervous, just full of energy. Kind of like me, that way. And he watched and watched and I smiled and he came a little closer so I broke off a little piece of bread and tossed it about half-way to him.
He jumped back a little but he didn’t quit looking at me so I smiled again and he came closer, twitching his nose, and he looked at the piece of bread and sniffed. It must have smelled good to him ‘cause he started to creep forward. I just kept real still except for my smiling. I was real quiet although in my mind I was saying “I’m your friend and I won’t hurt you” over and over. He couldn’t exactly hear that but at that time I was a strong believer in mental telepathy, so I thought he knew.
Then he darted right over and grabbed the bread and ran behind the tree. I threw another piece to the same spot while he was gone. He must have eaten the first piece right down because he came back around and looked at the spot where the bread had been and I think he was amazed to see another piece. He probably thought “How did I miss that the first time?” but he didn’t hesitate, he just ran to it, grabbed it in his teeth and ran behind the tree.
So I threw another piece to the same place. He came back and got it and ran behind the tree. We did it all over again, a fourth piece, the exact same way.
The next one I threw only about half as far. He came back and ran straight to the regular spot like it was routine. Nothing there. He stared at me all puzzled and disappointed. I just smiled.
He looked around and saw the new piece, closer to me this time, but he didn’t hesitate. He just ran up and grabbed it and scurried back behind the tree. Munch, munch back there I think, although I didn’t know for sure. I remember thinking, “Squirrels don’t bury bread do they?”
I put a piece on the edge of the serape.
He came back, kind of unsure of himself, not running fast but sort of trotting or jogging and looking right and left, and when he saw the bread he loped up to it and took it. This time he didn’t go behind the tree, he just went next to the tree on this side. He ate the bread there right in front of me. (So now I’m pretty sure that they don’t bury bread.)
Well, it got better and better. We really had rapport. We bonded. Oneness. It was great and I stayed quiet but in my mind I named him “Earl” which of course would be spelled “Uirrel.” Before you know it, he had come closer and closer to me—we were bonding, I’m telling you—so that here he was, right beside my leg, he trusted me that much.
So I broke off a whole hunk of sandwich and put it down and he started eating and eating, and he must have been loving it the way he was packing it down, but all of a sudden he started having spasms, shaking real bad and he sort of rolled over on the serape next to my leg. I thought I must have poisoned him. I was scared silly, wouldn’t you?
So quick as a wink I rolled him up in my serape and took off running for my apartment, which was just three blocks away. I heard hollering behind me, which I ignored, and I ran right across a red light. As I ran into my apartment building I saw a cop running way back behind me, which I thought maybe he was upset about my jayrunning through that light but my only thought was for Uirrel, to save his life.
Lucky for us the elevator was waiting for us so I jumped in and went right up to my apartment on third floor. Well, the moment I got in there and unrolled the serape Uirrel bounded out of it, ran to an open window, jumped from there into a tree and he was gone.
I just sat there and cried, and then, because the creativity was still running I figured out what had happened. Uirrel had got his mouth gummed up with peanut butter, but during his ride home it loosened up so by the time we were there he was back to full health but tired of being cooped up squashed and stuffy in the serape. So it was reasonable he wanted back into the trees. Sorry, Uirrel.
At about that same time there was terrible pounding on the door. The cop! Very polite and all business, he said, “Mam, I have some questions to ask you about a squirrel abducted from the city park.”
So I tried to explain and he said thank you but that wouldn’t quite do and that I must needs go with him for further investigation. This is fine with me, but where do they take me? Not to the cops; to the Head Doctors!
So there I was with a man who had more fur on his face than Uirrel and he said he’s a social worker and just wants to ask a few questions. A lady there, too, who acted very Official and wrote everything down. The questions began easy enough, like name and address, and then they got crazy like, “Were you going to eat the squirrel?” And dumb things like, “Didn’t you realize that a squirrel is city property?”
My personal favorite line was when Fur Face said, “Uh, the police report says you were reported talking to the squirrel. Uh, ahem, did the squirrel say anything in particular to you?” So I said, “Yeah, he said he’s glad he isn’t a social worker anymore.” At that point I saw enough red in the man’s face I thought his beard would catch on fire.
They went wild right then, and both of them were making up tougher and trickier questions like they were going to catch me at something really bad and put me away forever. I knew that I should never of smarted off to the man but the whole thing was so silly it was hard to take it serious.
After a while another man came in. He had close-trimmed gray facial fur, and he was introduced as the psychiatrist. I have seen enough movies that I expected him to ask me all that stuff about childhood diseases, such as did I love or hate my potty chair, but he was more sensible than the other two.
He asked me to tell him, real brief, about myself and what had been going on that day, which I explained simply and honestly. He listened real good. And then I told him what I had decided over there in the park, which I will tell you, too, in a minute when the time comes.
At that, it got all quiet and the three of them looked at each other back and forth, except I thought the social worker was smirking behind his fur, but they settled down and seemed to quit trying to think up weird and fancy questions. The psychiatrist asked some more things, and then looked at me up and down like a tailor measuring me for a straitjacket. He didn’t say a thing for a long, long time, just sat there stroking his chin and thinking, with the two vengeful ones looking at him sort of like “Please, daddy, please send her to the nut farm.” He just sat quiet to himself and then finally he shut his notebook and stood up and smiled and said, “We think you’ll be all right.”
He sent me into the waiting room and called the cop in with them. In no time the cop came back out and took me home, where I sat down and wrote about it so I could tell it to you correctly, because there is a moral in it.
Here is my secret, the same that I told the psychiatrist. This is what I thought: Uirrel was an angel.
The reason I thought so was, as I explained to the Shrink: (1) because Uirrel was so trusting, (2) because he was patient with me, and (3) because he brought me so much happiness. Usually a thing is true if it has the support of three Becauses.
When I said that he just grinned and told me that science knows better than that but if I wanted to believe it, the belief wouldn’t hurt me. “Just don’t give any of your money to anyone who tells you they are an angel,” he said.
I was not mad at anyone about getting hauled off by the cop. Like everything that happens to us, especially the pratfalls, there is the opportunity to learn. From my experiences that day I learned three things. One, life is filled with beautiful possibilities. Two, peanut butter can be dangerous. Three, too much exposure to the Head Shrink Patrol could be damaging to your mental health.
To Think About and Discuss
At the end of her strange adventure, Bernadette was thinking about the supernatural world.
1. Bernadette said that squirrels are “remarkable little creatures even if they are not as human as the rest of us.” How are humans and other animals alike? Different?
2. Bernadette thought Uirrel might be an angel. What do you think? Could it be true that Uirrel was an angel? What does orthodox Christian belief say about this?
3. What is useful about her statement that a thing is true if it has the support of three “becauses”? Can you think of something that is not true, even though three true “becauses” support it?
4. How do you decide if something is true?
Worldview Blunder 1: Failure To Discern Between Truth And Error
What would change if the majority of people in our country believed that squirrels were angels (divine servants)? In that event, Bernadette might have been charged with kidnapping, even though the victim, Uirrel, escaped. Or a tax-funded program might be established to hire people to toss bread to the squirrels.
On the other hand, suppose that most people believed squirrels to be dangerous “tree rats,” likely to jump onto their back and bite them fatally in the neck? In that situation it is likely that squirrels would be trapped, poisoned, and exterminated. We might see one only in a zoo.
What we believe changes what we do. Beliefs lead to actions by individuals and, therefore, by families, churches, businesses, and governments.
The quality of thinking determines its results. Correct thinking leads to actions that are likely to be beneficial. Timid thinking leads to cautious, defensive actions that produce little or no benefit. Self-centered thinking leads to actions that are greedy, exclude or injure other people, and invite retaliation. Corrupt thinking leads to immoral actions that reap destructive consequences. Our beliefs, and our use of our beliefs, determine the patterns and outcomes of our lives. It matters what we think.
Deciding If Something Is True
Truth is whatever is consistent with reality. Determining if something is true or not is usually easy for us in the physical world. Let us suppose that you are measuring the size of a desk with a yardstick. The yardstick is the standard of reality for the task, but how could you decide whether or not your yardstick is accurate (true)? You could compare it with your neighbor’s yardstick, but that just shifts the question of the accuracy of your yardstick to the accuracy of your neighbor’s yardstick. If the neighbor’s yardstick is wrong, you will not know if yours is accurate or not.
There is a precise way to check the accuracy of a yardstick, and that is to determine if your yardstick is consistent with reality. Our question now is: How is reality established for yardsticks? Reality in the realm of yardsticks is defined in Paris at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures where you would be able to check the length of your yardstick against the one yardstick that scientists throughout the world agree is the standard (the true reality) for all yardsticks.
Making a comparison against reality becomes much more difficult in the area of metaphysics—the area of concepts like love or joy, or of beings that cannot be seen such as God or angels. What “yardstick” do we use to answer such questions as whether or not Bernadette’s magical squirrel is an angel? We cannot see or touch any “angelness” (if any) in Uirrel; we cannot interview Uirrel. The procedure that worked so well for ensuring that our yardstick was accurate does not help us at all to answer the question about Uirrel. Let’s examine the yardstick that Bernadette used: Athing is true, she says, if it has the support of three “becauses.”
Bernadette assumed that she knew what angels are like so that she could compare Uirrel the squirrel with an angel to determine if he was or was not an angel. She believed that angels are trusting, patient, and bring happiness. When Uirrel seemed trusting, patient, and made her happy, she thought: Bingo! Three “becauses!” Therefore, Uirrel is an angel.
Sorry, Bernadette, we see two big problems with that: (1) How do you know how an angel behaves and what is your source of that information? (2) How do you know that three “becauses” prove that something is true? The three “becauses” that she used could be used to demonstrate that any animal is an angel. Her truth yardstick needs some help.
Christians believe that God is the ultimate reality and that he has spoken in ways that humans can hear and understand. The ways by which God communicates with people can be put into two categories: natural and direct revelation. The terms general revelationand special revelation are often used, usually in reference to knowledge about God himself. Since our context includes all aspects of life on Earth, we will use the more encompassing terms.
Natural revelation is acquired by examining our world. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands (Ps. 19:1). It also include “natural law,” the inclination of most societies to agree on certain fundamental principles—to oppose and punish acts of murder, incest, theft, for example. God has used many methods of direct revelation throughout his, the most important of which are his written word, the witness of Jesus Christ on Earth, and the work of the Holy Spirit.
Testing truth, is, for the Christian, to test whether or not something is consistent with what we know about God. Let’s use that yardstick, trusted by Christians around the world for thousands of years, to test Bernadette’s belief about Uirrel. Angels in the Bible always appear as men or as a large group of beings, never as a squirrel. When we consider Bernadette’s experience against information God has given us regarding angels, we do not believe that Bernadette was correct.
Bernadette’s reasoning was subjective; a personal opinion that probably arose from her desires and was strongly influenced by her emotions. She first assumed that angels are trusting, patient, and bring happiness. Then she assumed that Uirrel the squirrel had done the same and concluded that he was an angel. She needed protection from the influence of her desires and emotions. So do we. How can we find truth accurately?
Eight Ways to Test for Truth
Since we are as human as Bernadette, we too need methods for sorting truth from error without the process being misled by our desires, emotions, lapses of logic, or sloppy thinking. (Sorry if you feel insulted by that, but it is to our advantage to recognize that humans have many ways of fooling themselves and of wandering off track when making important judgments.) We examine eight tests we can apply to sort truth from error.
Revelation
Has God revealed himself to humans in any direct, tangible ways? Christians throughout the ages have said “yes” in answer to this question. As discussed above, he has taught us about himself through natural revelation and direct revelation. This is one of the things that Christians around the world have almost always agreed upon since the beginning of recorded history.
This sets believers apart from non-believers in how we answer questions about life. In fact, revelation is the most important, most reliable epistemological tool of all. Even so, while God’s revealed truth is without error, our comprehension of it may be incomplete or contaminated with error.
And, the fact is, although God is never wrong, the way we understand God or the Bible may be incorrect. A man in England, referred to in newspapers as the Yorkshire Ripper, confessed to killing thirteen prostitutes. Why? “It was my mission,” he told the jury. “God told me they were the scum of the earth and had to be got rid of.”
He believed he had special revelation from God. Do you agree? Or do you see a contradiction between his actions and the Bible? What would he have done if he had talked with a mature Christian? If he had considered the traditions of the church or of society? Or if he had consulted sensible people?
If we used only God’s revelation of truth from the Bible, our transportation would be only by donkey, camel, or on foot. The only vehicle we could build would be an ark. Would an ark be good transportation for you?
It is essential that we not wander off into error. That can easily be done. If we are going to successfully stay “on track,” we need a plan, and some plans won’t work. The drawing at the left is a two-dimensional image of a three-dimensional object, but the rules for drawing a picture of an object on paper have been broken. If you tried to construct the object, you’d soon be frustrated because it cannot exist in the three-dimensional world.
We need to have a workable plan to overcome the tendency to stray away from truth. The Bible is not in error, but our understanding of it can be in error. There are several ways in which we can test whether our beliefs are valid or not, and that we should use all of the ways together. Here are seven more ways to test ideas:
Empiricism
This is the philosophical commitment to sensory experience as the true source of knowledge. That is, if we can’t touch it, taste it, measure the noise it makes, take its temperature, time it, weigh it or detect it somehow, it just isn’t there. Now, that’s not all bad. Please don’t fly on an airplane that has been built without the use of data derived from empirical studies.
The physical world should be studied with the best and most rigorous methods. On those topics about which it is qualified to speak, science should be applied—clearly, carefully, and completely. But, the scientific method is not equipped to answer many types of questions.
Reasoning
Humans have amazing minds! We have the capacities to think logically (in step-by-step, linear progression) and to think creatively (assembling new combinations of information).
We can validate many of our beliefs about the world around us by rational thinking. Just sitting down and putting the ol’ mind to a problem may result in a great new insight or set of principles. Or, through ignorance, carelessness, or unconscious self-deception we may do a mental swan dive into a swamp. It does not require much of an error to change good to goof.
Emotion
In our culture the question Does it work? is likely to be answered on the basis of its emotional consequences. That was approach trusted by the influential psychologist, Carl Rogers: “Experience is, for me, the highest authority.”[1] By “experience” he meant feelings. Ask yourself if you have found your feelings to be a fully reliable guide for your behavior.
It is important for us to become aware of our emotions and to take them into consideration as we think about things. Using them as the only, or even as the most important, element is risky.
Experience
What we have learned from our own experience is useful. The question, Does it work for me? is a valid question, and its answer can be a legitimate portionof our decision making unless it conflicts with other evidence.
But relying on personal experience is just as risky as relying on emotions. While it is true that we can learn from experience, the tuition can be exorbitant! Always verify your personal learning against other standards that you know can be trusted.
Tradition
Tradition is the combined experience of many people over many years. It’s worth knowing, but all that is old is not good, and all that is new is not bad. There is merit in inquiring about the track record of ideas that you encounter.
Intuition
This element has a long tradition within philosophy—with considerations far more complicated than we need here. In short, the concept of intuition states that we believe some things simply because they are self-evident. I believe that tree over there is real because if I beat my head against it the tree doesn’t move, and if I climb up in it and jump out . . . well, it will definitely be different than a dream or a TV show. So I accept, trees are not illusions, they are made of stuff.
Authorities
We areinfluenced by people we trust and admire. We may ask: What do others say? What kind of people believes it? Are these persons I want to imitate? Are these persons I can respect and whom I believe are happy?
Summary
Everyone has a set of values—beliefs about what is important and how things should be. Tying all of these beliefs together is a belief, a credo or prime principle, that one uses to put other beliefs into priority order. For orthodox Christians throughout history the credo has been that correctly understood direct revelation (primarily, the Bible) is more reliable than data from any other source. We may give great value to the writing of great Christian thinkers and to church traditions, but the God’s direct revelation is source one; all else takes second place.
There are many other credos that people may use to make decisions. For some it is, If it’s fun, do it. For others, Will it make me money? It may be the pursuit of power or fame. Whatever it may be, it is used in making decisions in the same way believers follow God’s authority in making decisions. (But the outcome is different. The believer follows truth toward life; the non-believer follows an illusion toward death.)
All truth is from God. It is only by relationship with him and use of his gifts of special and natural revelation, that we can achieve a satisfying level of harmony in the life arenas of God, others, environment, and self, and thereby live with joy and contentment. Longing to return to harmony is the basic motivating force that shapes human thought and behavior.[2] A worldview is a set of beliefs used to fulfill hungers for harmony.
People are found in a wild array of shapes, sizes, colors, and sounds. No two people are just alike. Even twins who look alike may have quite different attitudes. Yet, created in the image of God, all people are alike in their yearning to be restored to the harmonious conditions that existed in their “nursery,” the Garden.
Everyone has a worldview. Few people are aware in any organized way what their worldview is, even though their life depends upon it. Literally depends upon it.
As the book progresses you will see how not knowing how to discern truth from error leads to a defective worldview, and how a defective worldview leads to distress, or at best limits the amount of gratification a person can attain from life. There is one standard by which a worldview may be rightly evaluated, and we shall keep that “yardstick” handy as we move forward.
Check out new ideas, including those in this book. Make sure everything you believe is fully consistent with the Bible, and that your understanding of the Bible is as accurate and complete as it can be.
