‘I Think I Can, I Think …’
“To begin with, you’ve got to understand that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull, and your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip, is nothing more than your thought itself,” instructs Fletcher Gull, paraphrasing one of the great sons of the Great Gull, Jonathan L. Seagull. And that sentence summarizes the philosophy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Richard Bach’s allegory-parable combines Mary Baker Eddy’s philosophy (Bach is a member of the Church of Christ, Scientist) with Emersonian transcendentalism under the guise of a children’s story. But unlike the fine Christian storytellers such as George MacDonald or J. R. R. Tolkien, Bach fails to consider that to gain a great good—in this case perfect freedom through perfect flying—we often experience great loss. He perceives only one form of reality and ignores the complexity of life’s multiple realities. And he does not understand or acknowledge God’s absolutes.
Jonathan Seagull, Outcast, flies alone above the Far Cliffs, disgraced because of his desire to fly. But he is disgraced only in the eyes of the flock. Banishment proves good and easy for him; he learns quickly and soon flies to a higher world. There, relying on his own intellect and physical skill—with a few wise words from a guru-like gull—Jon progresses even more rapidly. Soon he flies back in time and space to his old flock to teach others the truths of flight and freedom.
Bach in interviews has said that Jon sacrifices in returning to teach, but in the book he explains that the superseagull is “born to teach.” There is no real sacrifice, for in Jonathan’s world all worlds and all times are equal.
The narrator tells us there are no limits; we build our own heavens. Chiang, the Elder, says, “No, Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect.” Even illness and death are mere illusions, products of the mind. When crippled Maynard Gull wants to fly, Jonathan says, “You have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way.” And Maynard flies. He uses the same reasoning when Fletcher smashes into a cliff: “What you did manage to do was to change your level of consciousness rather abruptly.” Fletcher reappears, alive.
Jon in returning as the glorified gull—and in being rejected as demonic by his native land—has obvious Christ-like overtones (but then, American authors from Melville to Faulkner have created such Christ-figures). The meaning of Bach’s allegory, however, is not found in such interpretations. Neither is Jonathan Livingston Seagull a commentary on the Gospel of John (see William L. Hendricks’s heavyhanded put-on, “ ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull’: Check Your Literary I.Q.,” The Christian Century, November 22 issue, page 1,186). Bach has written a multi-level, updated version of “The Little Engine That Could.” The story charms in places, but it lacks the intellectual, tragic vision of sin that leads men to question—and understand—their purpose and God’s.
Driving Christ Out Of Christmas
In Prince George’s County, Maryland, the board of education, at the request of persons offended by Christian festivals, issued directives forbidding songs or pageants with a religious or Christian content at Christmastime. After some controversy, the decision was reformulated so that carols and other music inspired by religious beliefs may still be presented. In Westfield, New Jersey, the American Civil Liberties Union, acting on behalf of the Committee Against Religious Encroachment in Schools (CARES), is attempting to ban the traditional high school Christmas pageant. Its argument is based on the First Amendment, of course, and holds that the language intended to prevent the federal government from establishing a state church means all material with any religious association whatsoever must be rigorously banned from public institutions and facilities.
We are not so naïve as to suppose that Christmas carols and pageants win people to the cause of Christ. Therefore we are not particularly determined to maintain them. But we detect a persecuting, almost malicious spirit in the zeal of the ACLU and other groups to purge our culture of all religious associations—which, our culture being what it is, means primarily Christian associations. It is in fact impossible to purge education, culture, or any other significant aspect of man’s mental and spiritual life of all religious associations.
The principle of tolerance for minority religious sentiment has long been established in the public schools, and rightly so. Is it too much to expect, from groups purportedly trying to protect minorities from the indoctrinating “pressure” of voluntary pageantry and festivities with religious overtones, some tolerance for the culture and traditions of the majority, even when, like all cultures and traditions, these have strong religious associations? Or will they not be satisfied until they have purged from public recognition every trace of our majority cultural heritage?
Intellectual and cultural tyranny exercised by a majority is unjust; exercised by a minority, it is absurd. The vestiges of Christian tradition may be distasteful to many, but what probably would rush in to fill a cultural vacuum could be more than merely distasteful. When Christian teaching became widely derided as “myth” in Germany, for example, “the Myth of the Twentieth Century” (Alfred Rosenberg’s term for the Nazi world view) swept in to take its place.
If the ACLU attempted to prevent a minority group, such as the blacks, the Jews, the Puerto Ricans, the Irish, or the Poles, from expressing any of its distinctive traditions in the public schools, it would be courting disaster. Cannot a certain tolerance be exhibited toward those few memories of Christian belief and life that are still cherished by the majority of our citizens?
For ourselves as Christians we can only say: If a festival must be purged of all Christian associations in order to be acceptable to certain people of tender spiritual sensitivities, then have no festival. Without the Christian associations, Christmas becomes meaningless, even insulting to us. If Christ is to be driven from Christmas, then let us abolish Christmas altogether (after all, “Christmas,” i.e., Christ-Mass, is an irredeemably religious term). Let us have no pageants, no ceremonies,—and no Christmas shopping. A commercialized Christmas season during which Christ is incidentally remembered in songs and pageants is shabby enough; with Christ banned, it becomes a feast of Mammon. After all, if sensitive souls who do not believe in Christ cannot tolerate public mention of his name in song or story, we who do believe in him must find what remains after the zealots’ purge revolting and obnoxious. If there is to be no mention of Christ, except in churches, then let there be no Christmas season anywhere else either.
Twisted Logic
On November 7 the voters of Michigan and North Dakota decisively rejected proposals to legalize abortion on demand. Little more than a week later, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a bill (subsequently vetoed by Governor Shapp) banning abortion except where necessary to save the life of the mother. It is clear that public and legislative opinion is running against acceptance of abortion as an admissible way of preventing the birth of an unwanted child. CHRISTIANITY TODAY had a staff member in Michigan during the last two days before the abortion referendum. In the prelude and aftermath of the vote, several things became clear.
Both pro- and anti-abortion forces in Michigan recognized that the drastic shift in voter opinion from 3:2 in favor of abortion on demand in September to 2:1 against it when the ballots were cast is explained by the fact that in September a large number of the voters really did not understand what was at stake in the referendum. The use of medical terminology, such as “fetuses,” “procedures,” and “embryos,” kept most of those polled from visualizing just what an abortion always involves: the violent destruction of what is admittedly human life, whether it weighs only an ounce or several pounds.
The pro-abortion forces were honest enough to concede that this is in fact what abortion does, but contended that other concerns could override the right of the developing human embryo to life, and that a woman and her physician should be able to decide on them. The majority of voters disagreed.
The tactics of the pro-abortionists were less honorable when they attempted to play on residual anti-Catholic and anti-clerical sentiment by evoking, in effect, the specter of a “papist plot.” Another distressing tactic of the pro forces was the constantly repeated charge that strict abortion laws represent the determination of men to prevent women from deciding responsibly about their own bodies. Generally overlooked was the fact that—except in cases of forcible rape—the problem would not arise if the women involved decided responsibly about their bodies before the unwanted child was conceived.
By contrast, an encouraging feature of the discussion in Michigan was the conviction expressed by anti-abortion spokesmen, both before and after their election victory, that they could not be satisfied with having closed the door to easy abortion but must now attempt to offer real, practical help in the social, educational, moral, and spiritual problems that lead to and result from unwanted pregnancies. If abortion on demand is a morally unacceptable way of preventing the birth of an unwanted child, it is also morally unacceptable to pretend that such a pregnancy cannot cause real hardship and unhappiness. Other countries have better laws than ours to protect the unwed mother and her child; many make the child’s father equally responsible with its mother for its care and upbringing, whether or not he is her husband. It is at this point that equality between the sexes should be assured, i.e., by extending full responsibility to both partners, not by permitting the mother to be just as irresponsible toward the conceived child as the father often is.
Among the astonishing aspects of the whole discussion is the fact that many church leaders, by supporting abortion on demand, are in effect trying to persuade the rank and file of church members to abandon historic Christian moral teaching. One of the things that distinguished Christian (and Jewish) practice from that of the pagans in the Graeco-Roman world was the refusal to commit infanticide and abortion. It seems that today the churches themselves, or at least many of them, are working to bring the laws of society back into conformity with pre-Christian paganism, against the wishes—now clear—of the majority of church members.
Even more astonishing than the fact that major church bodies support such a development is the reasoning sometimes used to justify it. The same arguments could be used to rationalize almost anything—cannibalism, for example. For instance, a Lutheran Church in America organ editorializes:
The church [LCA] did not say that the termination of pregnancy should be done on a wholesale basis, but carefully pointed out that the “fetus is the organic beginning of human life,” and “the termination of its development is always a serious matter”.… The law should permit us to exercise our beliefs without criminal penalties. Abortion—like religion—is a decision state law should leave to individuals [Michigan Synod News, September, 1972].
Try This Variation:
The church did not say that cannibalism should be done on a wholesale basis, but carefully pointed out that the “body is the organic vehicle of human life” and “cooking and eating it is always a serious matter.” … The law should permit us to exercise our beliefs without criminal penalties. Cannibalism—like abortion and religion—is a decision state laws should leave to individuals.
There are some things about which the Church must say more than merely that they are “serious matters” calling for “responsible decisions.” American Christians have often wondered how so many German churchmen, in the days of Hitler, could tolerate or even excuse his policy of wholesale slaughter. Apparently that kind of twisted ecclesiastical logic is not confined to Germany.
Shutting Satan Out
James says: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (4:7). There is increased interest today in the devil, and it is a matter not of resisting but of consorting with and even worshiping this malign majesty.
C. S. Lewis observed that there are two common errors to be avoided in demonology: one is to deny the existence of Satan and the other is to have an inordinate interest in him. A few years ago it was popular, and in some places it still is, to deny Satan’s existence; now it is popular to seek contact with Satan and build churches dedicated to him. Recently Pope Paul lashed out against this trend and affirmed what every Bible student knows, that Satan is the prince of this world, and that his major work is to defy Christ and to seek to undermine what he has done.
Scripture tells us that the role of the believer in relation to Satan is to resist him. He goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Therefore believers are not to be so curious about Satan that they become unwholesomely involved with him. It was Jeremy Taylor who said: “You may let the wolf into your house by opening the door to see if he is outside.” We are to resist Satan, but we should not open the door with curiosity just to see whether he is there. He will then enter the door we have opened and engage us in a struggle we need never face if only we keep the door shut tight.
