A Talk on The Saint and The Lottery

Afternoon coffee with 50 Great Short Stories - a recommended anthology of short stories for leisure reading or daily dose of creativity 

Short story is like a shot of vodka red bull that injects a short - lived yet intense dose of idea into the brain. Works like Dream of Red Chamber (紅樓夢) or War and Peace give such a panoramic picture of life that span a thousand or so pages. Short story as it is nicely put 'is uniquely capable of conveying, for in its very shortness lies its greatest strength'*. 

The Saint by V. S. Pritchett and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, each with its different style and highly condensed plot, throw light on an aspect of religion. 

The Saint tells of a story that religion is either reserved for the ignoramuses or a manipulative tool for the hypocrite; in fact they sometime go hand in hand. The unnamed narrator's family has converted to the Church of the Last Purification that taught a rather tautological doctrine: any bad thing can not exist in reality, since God could not have made them to harm his creatures. 

The narrator naturally followed his family to believe in it (the evils of family influence) until the coming of the Mr. Timberlake - a figure of almost sainthood in the church for reportedly performing miracles, including raising the dead - came to his home and upon the request of narrator's uncle had a chat with him in a boating. 

During the boating, Mr. Timberlake got caught by the tree branch, because of his foolish refusal to avoid it  (believing God would not have put the tree to harm him) and fell down from the water. Yet he remained in such calmness that he must have regarded any harm as merely illusory and erroneous, since God would not have made anything to harm his creatures. 

Sixteen years later the narrator discovered Mr. Timberlake has died out of a heart attack. The doctor found it a miracle he has lived so long as the slightest shock would have caused him death. 

His religious belief was, after all, a mere baby's security blanket where he can desperately hold on to  avoid any shock. Any shock is unreal and non - existent; God would not have created any of it. 

This is scary. Supposedly he is a miracle performer, leader of the church and a saint to the believers but even him has a hidden agenda of his own. It seems a cliché to quote religion as 'opium of the people' and yet that's what this story has shown. 

Another short story, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, stung me with shock at the ending. The story opens with a seeming cheerful rural community in a distant part of America organising a lottery - a tradition for a good harvest ("Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon" as the old proverb said) . Children gathered stones, while Mr. Summers, the volunteer, carried the black box that was locked up the previous night to ensure no one has touched it. 

After waiting everyone to arrive, Mr. Summers announced the rules: He'll read the names; each family head draws a paper and keeps it folded until everyone has had a turn. It proceeded smoothly and Bill Hutchinson 'got it'. Tessie, his wife, shouted 'It wasn't fair.' 

In due course, another round started with only the Hutchinsons: Bill, Tessie, three children (Bill Jr, Nancy and Dave). 'I tell you it wasn't fair', Tessie insisted. To no avail, each picked a paper and kept it folded until everyone has had turn. 

The papers of Bill, Bill Jr, Nancy and Dave were blank. Tessie got the one with a black spot on it. In a business - like manner, Mr. Summer said 'All right, folks. Let's finish quickly'

Adults and children alike, including Bill and the three children, began to pick stones and threw at Tessie Hutchinson. 'It isn't fair, it isn't right', she screamed. 

The suspense holds to the last. The unthankful 'prize' of the lottery is to get stoned to death. This all starts from a tradition with a vague promise for good harvest and one that few remembered its origin. While some traditions are relatively harmless and even entertaining (like the Cargo cult or the treat or trick in Halloween), others can be deadly. It get worse when some overzealous believers blindly follow it, just like the community in The Lottery. 

The stoning carries such a clear religious overtone that it seems religious tradition, in particular, has its part of destruction. From the Crusades in the Middle Ages to the present fundamentalists' opposition against gay marriage, blindly following a doctrine or tradition, devoid of the changing circumstance, can be deadly. 

The Saint and The Lottery with two highly condensed plots show two elements of religion. One one hand, it often falls into the hands of hypocritical people as a tool to manipulate the ignorant people and on the other, it has the power to push people into the dead corner. Either way, be an atheist. 

* From Milton Crane in the foreword for 50 Great Short Stories 

Christian Ignorance or Ignorant Christian?

Free after lectures, I walked up from the stairs to the platform near the Run Run Shaw Building and was preparing to go through the Chong Yuet Ming Building, down to the Bonham Road to take a bus back home. Planning to have a nice little tea in 澳洲牛奶公司 at Jordan and to either have a frozen yogurt next to it or to try out the new dessert shop around there to enjoy the rest of the late afternoon, a man came up to me and asked 'Hi! Did ever think of what you want to achieve in your life?' 

Taken aback, I said 'Well, I never thought of that.' He briskly produced a leaflet from his pocket, confidently and proudly said 'God has already prepared what you want in his plan. What you need to do is to believe him.', then he quickly flipped through the leaflet and talked. Wearing his rimless glasses and with an amicable smile, he seems to conclude by saying 'No matter what your wishes are, be it academic achievement, a promising career or a beautiful partner, God has his plan for you. You only need to trust and to believe him.' 

Finally having a chance of saying something in response, I said 'But, I am sorry. I don't believe in God'. 'What do you think about God?', he asked.

'From what I read in Bible, God is rather cruel when he wants Abraham to sacrifice his own son to show his loyalty to him. Beside in the books of Joshua and Judges, God killed whoever that stands on his way.', I answered.  

'That's the Old Testament only. Have you read the New Testament?'

'The New Testament is almost a joke. Look at Chapter 1 of Matthew and Chapter 3 of Luke, they can't even agree on the basic genealogy of Jesus.' I have forgotten the frozen yogurt and the afternoon tea already. 

'It's only a matter of perspective and so it doesn't...' 

'No, story can be a matter of perspective but not facts. The genealogy of Jesus is simply a matter of fact. Have you read that before?', I snapped in. 

I felt I should stop when I saw that he lost his amicable smile and his glasses slipping down a bit from his nose ridge. 

In fact, I have encountered similar people before in the campus and elsewhere but I always find it irritating when few of them actually has read the Bible or rather,  has read it with a critical mind. They don't know beside the Gospels from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, there are also Gospel of Thomas, Mary Madgalene and even Judas. They don't know why those gnostic gospels are discarded (well, I will tell them because the early Christian leaders were already intolerant enough to burn all those books and persecute the gnostics as heretics). They don't know the Bible is more or less a melange of books that satisfy the rulers. They don't know much about Bible and the history of it. 

I always tried to discover people based on what to believe in God or in Christianity (which is not the same, as will be seen). When I tried to present my argument (if not in an overly aggressive manner, I hope), the final, if not the ultimate, answer I heard is: 'I have a personal relationship with God that I can always feel, and that I can find him as someone I can rely on'. I tend to shut up after hearing this because that seems to be saying 'Look, this is my personal feeling, and you are not going to question about that, won't you? I just believe, and you don't need to ask me with that logic that can't understand any emotion'. I don't want to say what I am going to say in their faces, as if I am Satan attacking his faith and hurting his feeling. 

OK, so you have the feeling to be in a personal relationship with God (for the moment, I don't dispute their psychological minds, although I do have a great deal to talk about, such as the possibility of some believer suffering hallucination/illusion/imaginary auditory voices. Anyway, I recommend them to read The Future of an Illusion by Freud to know more about their psychology though), how do you know even this God is the God from Christianity? Why can't He be Allah, Jehovah, Zeus, Thor or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Given numerous inconsistencies of Bible and its  bloody history, it seems that your kind and all - reliable God can't be the cruel and ruthless one that killed all the first - born son in Egypt and also the one that drove Christians in history to burn women alive. 

OK, so you are in a personal relationship with God, but it doesn't stop you from questioning what he has done and what he argued for his own existence. It reminded me of a game that I've played with my dad when I was small:

'I am the God', he said. 

'How do you prove that?', I asked, in a high - pitched childish tone. 

'Don't you just think of God just now? See, I've created that concept in your mind' 

'But fossils have existed way before you are here'

'Oh no worry, I've just created them' 

Of course, I ended being frustrated of trying to disprove him but the story does illustrate several points. Even though he is my dad and is in a dear personal relationship with me, first what he said isn't true. Secondly his relationship with me doesn't mean he can't talk about nonsense. Thirdly it also doesn't stop me from questioning him. 

I am afraid I must stop here, in case of offending someone back in the campus. I do want to apologize to the man with the rimless glasses that I should have talked in a more measured tone. But I just want you or any other future comers to really read about Bible and so we can have a more thoughtful discussion.