Firestorm 2034: Chapter Thirty-Two: In Spirit and in Truth

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Taberah spent the day reading the Bible and researching on the computer; at dinner, he said, "Nathella, do you remember when you asked me a question about my place and this place, and I said it was harder to think of and harder to explain in words?"

Nathella said, "Yes."

Taberah said, "I was able to find words. In Bible, Jesus was talking with a woman at a well. She asked him what mountain to worship on. He said not to worship on this mountain or that mountain, but in Spirit and in truth. This land knows not how to worship in Spirit and in truth."

Aed's eyes narrowed. Aed and Nathella said together, "How so?"

Taberah said, "I have just begun to see how religion is, and it is not religion. It is private. It is an interest. It is a hobby. It is tame. Where I come from, religion is public because it pervades your whole being; it is who you are, and never has a pagan invader told a Catholic, 'You may be Christian, but make it a small thing. It is --"

Aed nodded and said, "That criticism has been made before, and it is not to be lightly dismissed. Is there anything else you see?"

Taberah said, "I slowly began to notice, when navigating on the computer -- where I am from, when people build a cathedral, they carve the backs of statues. I was shocked when I saw that people here do not do this. When an artist carves a statue in my land, he is not just working on a statue; he is making an offering to God, and his carving is a prayer. He carves the back as well as the front, working on a place whose fullness he may never see, because he is not making something for himself or other men, as much as making a prayer to God, who sees the back of the statue as easily as the front. Here, on the web, people do not do that. They think in terms of making a creation for other people. They do not try for completeness; they want -- I do not know the words."

"Good enough for government work?" Clancy said.

"Yes. Except that making something that is 'good enough' does not mean making something that is good. God is only in the compartment called religion; he is not big enough to make virtual reality for -- only other people who will not take the site very seriously is that important for."

I cannot make complete sense of Taberah's tangled wording, Nathella thought, but I do not need to. Taberah has difficulties with language when he is concentrating most intensely. She understood the meaning, if the words sometimes eluded her.

Aed said, "Anything else?"

Taberah said, "I hesitate..."

The room was silent.

Taberah continued, "I hesitate, but there is something strange about clothing and nudity. In my land, people wear clothing for custom and for decoration; being without clothing is not much. Here, clothing is for decency (a polite way to put it); there are chaste people and there are nude people, but there are not chaste, nude people. When a woman wears no shirt in an advertisement, her no-shirt means 'Look at me in lust!' She does not have a no-shirt that doesn't mean anything besides 'I don't want to have a shirt now.' There are people who say that we don't need to say clothes, and most of them say that not wearing clothes is not sexual, but few of them are chaste, or even acknowledge chastity.

"That is a symbol of something deeper. You need to cover your bodies, but even more you need to cover God, because you are ashamed of other people seeing them. And so you produce arguments to justify the existence of God, and God does or does not exist depending on whether or not he's covered.

"One of the theologians I know of, Thomas Aquinas, began his great work with five arguments for the existence of God. But these arguments have a very different meaning than yours; they were for adornment, and not for shame. Aquinas was not trying to give a needed proof of God, as your theologians do; certainly he did not think that if he failed to prove God's existence he was not able to believe in God. You speak of justifying belief, as if it needed justification, as if it were shameful if it were not covered by an argument.

"About clothing literally, I will not argue. Your way of looking seems to me a silly limitation that causes a lot of lust, but chaste nudity is not important. It is not one of the great things in life. But about clothing symbolically, I will argue much. You need in your minds to have an unblushing nudity, that can say, 'I believe in God and I accept his providence,' and not have a guilt about it for believing more than matter. You -- I am sorry, I should be able to produce more examples. But there are many ways where you do not know how to worship in Spirit and in truth."

Aed was stunned. After a while, and after nobody else said anything, he said, "Son, you've got a brilliant mind. I have a feeling of being held under a microscope. I don't know how to respond, beyond saying that you see things I would never see, and I hope you keep thinking."

Nathella said, "You almost seem like someone from another era."

Taberah said, "What's an era?"

Aed said, "Later, Taberah. Later."

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