There was a time before YouTube – remember? – when people relied on the television for humorous video snippets. And if you wanted to watch one again (and again and again and again) you'd better hope that somebody had set the VCR.
Well, my family were utterly entranced by a dog called Domino that said "I want one". He starred in a 1988 episode of the BBC's 'That's Life' and my dad has been doing impressions of him ever since. (In fact, I'm pretty sure we didn't catch it on tape – which means we probably only saw the actual footage once; it was dad we had on repeat).
Unsurprisingly, by now it can be found on YouTube, comfortably at home alongside a selection of tortuous wannabes – talking dogs just aren't what they once were. It's an odd experience watching it for real for the first time in all these years. Like most memories, it's evolved in the retelling; for something so embedded in our family culture it seems strangely unfamiliar. (There's a post in that, but not the one I had in mind today!)
The noises that Domino and his string of copydogs make are ... well, they're not all that different to your usual canine noises. Not really. They're a bit like the audio equivalent of 'magic eye' pictures; you've kinda got to squint your ears to catch the supposed human-language messages. But if you like that sort of thing, there's room to spin it that way. Me, I'm one of the sceptics, quick to chastise my folks for their naive anthropomorphisation of domestic animals – no, the dog hasn't acquired intelligent speech, he's just replicating a noise in programmed response to his animal appetites. But the haste of my chastisement at least partly arises from the fact that I'm rather unsettled by the suggestion of a talking dog. I can't just accept Domino as a cute one-off; either his speech is an illusion or it messes with all my parameters. And I have neither the time nor the energy to have my parameters messed with right now. In short, my family hear what they want to hear, and I don't hear what I don't want to hear.
I think about Domino fairly regularly, if for no other reason than that his impression remains in my dad's repertoire of dinner table regalements. But the other day he sprang especially to mind during my workout, when this bit in John came round on my 'Johnny Cash Reading the Complete New Testament' device [1]:
This seems to me so familiarly human a response, from both sides. We don't like to trust anything we can't verify with our senses, but then when we do get sense data we filter it, according to our pre-existing desires and world-views, to the point where, in practice, we're all but shut down entirely to the challenges of new information.
As for us, in the here-and-now, confronted with the account in the form of words on a page ... we don't even get the benefit of sensory evidence by which to judge what 'really happened'. Not one bystander had a smartphone at the ready; there's no first-hand footage of the incident on YouTube. All we know is that someone from the Johannine community claimed to have heard from someone else that some people claimed to have heard a noise from the air that sounded to them like spoken word but that some other people who also heard it reckoned on a perfectly rational meteorological explanation. Well, perhaps we know a bit more: we know that that someone in the Johannine community thought it was worth writing down; we know its place within the context of the wider story about Jesus, made up of collected other claims that people claimed to have heard about from people claiming to have witnessed them and which were also considered worth writing down (cf. John 20:30-31); we know that story's place within the wider story of Israel and claims about God's interaction with a whole people group over a longer period of time; we know the impact that this collection of claims has had on subsequent history and on individual lives within it, if their own personal claims are to be believed.
Sounds ... aargh ... messy, no? Unfair, maybe, even? Can God really expect us to make life-changing decisions of faith based on contested, several times handed-down information? Why doesn't He give us – here, now – more, and more obvious, indicators of His existence and interest in us? Well, some would say He does. Reports of 'signs and wonders' are more frequent in certain churches than others (places like Bethel and Causeway Coast Vineyard spring to mind) but most Christians I know (me included) can think of times when they've had 'unusual' experiences which seemed to be from God. (See, e.g., the mathematician Blaise Pascal). Of course, it's important to be wise about each individual account, and realistic about the possibilities for human misconception or deceit, but I am confident that in many cases God really is at work. There's often a 'rational explanation' readily available, though, for those who want it ... and even when there isn't – even at the most unambiguous end of the 'signs and wonders' spectrum – there will be those who prefer a tenuously constructed rationalisation to the alternative.
Or, as my skeptical counterpart might frame it: "Occasionally it is difficult to arrive at a concrete rational explanation, but it remains more likely than not that one exists. Even at the most unambiguous end of the 'rational explanation' spectrum there will be those who persist in believing that the so-called signs and wonders are evidence of God at work". Oh dear; one more lap each of our separate circles. You see the problem?
When it comes to new information, we all of us have a ruling tendency to hear exactly and only what we want to hear; I certainly do not exempt myself, as a Christian, from this diagnosis (this very post is nothing if not self-illustrative). We can do it with first-hand sensory experience almost as adeptly as with sources like the Bible and other people's testimony: if it doesn't fit with what we think we know already, we re-jig it in our memories to make it fit. It takes more than evidence to change one's own mind; it takes immense amounts of courage. For the sake of my relationship with God I pray for a changeable mind; I want authentic faith, not fear in disguise. And for anybody out there 'waiting for a sign': I pray you get it ... but especially I pray for you to have the bravery to see it if you do.
[1] AKA iPod (listening to the Bible in the gym is nigh-on the only thing I use it for these days).
[Thumbnail cc from blumenbiene on Flickr].
Well, my family were utterly entranced by a dog called Domino that said "I want one". He starred in a 1988 episode of the BBC's 'That's Life' and my dad has been doing impressions of him ever since. (In fact, I'm pretty sure we didn't catch it on tape – which means we probably only saw the actual footage once; it was dad we had on repeat).
Unsurprisingly, by now it can be found on YouTube, comfortably at home alongside a selection of tortuous wannabes – talking dogs just aren't what they once were. It's an odd experience watching it for real for the first time in all these years. Like most memories, it's evolved in the retelling; for something so embedded in our family culture it seems strangely unfamiliar. (There's a post in that, but not the one I had in mind today!)
The noises that Domino and his string of copydogs make are ... well, they're not all that different to your usual canine noises. Not really. They're a bit like the audio equivalent of 'magic eye' pictures; you've kinda got to squint your ears to catch the supposed human-language messages. But if you like that sort of thing, there's room to spin it that way. Me, I'm one of the sceptics, quick to chastise my folks for their naive anthropomorphisation of domestic animals – no, the dog hasn't acquired intelligent speech, he's just replicating a noise in programmed response to his animal appetites. But the haste of my chastisement at least partly arises from the fact that I'm rather unsettled by the suggestion of a talking dog. I can't just accept Domino as a cute one-off; either his speech is an illusion or it messes with all my parameters. And I have neither the time nor the energy to have my parameters messed with right now. In short, my family hear what they want to hear, and I don't hear what I don't want to hear.
I think about Domino fairly regularly, if for no other reason than that his impression remains in my dad's repertoire of dinner table regalements. But the other day he sprang especially to mind during my workout, when this bit in John came round on my 'Johnny Cash Reading the Complete New Testament' device [1]:
“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. [...]" (John 12:27-30)Another classic example of people hearing what they want to hear – for some, distinct audible words; for others, a quirk of the weather. I wonder how clear the alleged voice was? Was it rumbling and ambiguous, like the canine mumblings – easily explained away by sceptics but jubilantly leapt on by those pre-disposed to faith as confirmatory 'evidence'? Or was it frighteningly coherent, so that it was those determined to maintain that "it had thundered" who were making the greater stretch of the imagination? A genuine heavenly announcement might have substantially unsettling, parameter-messing implications; much simpler and safer to rationalise it away however tenuous the explanation.
This seems to me so familiarly human a response, from both sides. We don't like to trust anything we can't verify with our senses, but then when we do get sense data we filter it, according to our pre-existing desires and world-views, to the point where, in practice, we're all but shut down entirely to the challenges of new information.
As for us, in the here-and-now, confronted with the account in the form of words on a page ... we don't even get the benefit of sensory evidence by which to judge what 'really happened'. Not one bystander had a smartphone at the ready; there's no first-hand footage of the incident on YouTube. All we know is that someone from the Johannine community claimed to have heard from someone else that some people claimed to have heard a noise from the air that sounded to them like spoken word but that some other people who also heard it reckoned on a perfectly rational meteorological explanation. Well, perhaps we know a bit more: we know that that someone in the Johannine community thought it was worth writing down; we know its place within the context of the wider story about Jesus, made up of collected other claims that people claimed to have heard about from people claiming to have witnessed them and which were also considered worth writing down (cf. John 20:30-31); we know that story's place within the wider story of Israel and claims about God's interaction with a whole people group over a longer period of time; we know the impact that this collection of claims has had on subsequent history and on individual lives within it, if their own personal claims are to be believed.
Sounds ... aargh ... messy, no? Unfair, maybe, even? Can God really expect us to make life-changing decisions of faith based on contested, several times handed-down information? Why doesn't He give us – here, now – more, and more obvious, indicators of His existence and interest in us? Well, some would say He does. Reports of 'signs and wonders' are more frequent in certain churches than others (places like Bethel and Causeway Coast Vineyard spring to mind) but most Christians I know (me included) can think of times when they've had 'unusual' experiences which seemed to be from God. (See, e.g., the mathematician Blaise Pascal). Of course, it's important to be wise about each individual account, and realistic about the possibilities for human misconception or deceit, but I am confident that in many cases God really is at work. There's often a 'rational explanation' readily available, though, for those who want it ... and even when there isn't – even at the most unambiguous end of the 'signs and wonders' spectrum – there will be those who prefer a tenuously constructed rationalisation to the alternative.
Or, as my skeptical counterpart might frame it: "Occasionally it is difficult to arrive at a concrete rational explanation, but it remains more likely than not that one exists. Even at the most unambiguous end of the 'rational explanation' spectrum there will be those who persist in believing that the so-called signs and wonders are evidence of God at work". Oh dear; one more lap each of our separate circles. You see the problem?
When it comes to new information, we all of us have a ruling tendency to hear exactly and only what we want to hear; I certainly do not exempt myself, as a Christian, from this diagnosis (this very post is nothing if not self-illustrative). We can do it with first-hand sensory experience almost as adeptly as with sources like the Bible and other people's testimony: if it doesn't fit with what we think we know already, we re-jig it in our memories to make it fit. It takes more than evidence to change one's own mind; it takes immense amounts of courage. For the sake of my relationship with God I pray for a changeable mind; I want authentic faith, not fear in disguise. And for anybody out there 'waiting for a sign': I pray you get it ... but especially I pray for you to have the bravery to see it if you do.
[1] AKA iPod (listening to the Bible in the gym is nigh-on the only thing I use it for these days).
[Thumbnail cc from blumenbiene on Flickr].
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