YOU don’t question religion.
I learned that when I was eight years old.
‘Sir, but why didn’t the crocodiles eat the rooibokkies?’
I asked that question in Grade 2 Sunday school class.
Sir’s actual name was Popeye, and when he wasn’t teaching curious young minds about Jesus, or taking the collections in church, he fixed people’s cars at his workshop in town.
Popeye could explain in detail why a buggered coil caused a car not to start, but couldn’t tell me why the two crocodiles lumbering behind the pair of impalas up the ramp into Noah’s Ark didn’t do what crocs do.
‘They already ate’, was Popeye’s best attempt under pressure, and in case they didn’t eat enough before getting the call to board, he added: ‘And God told them not to eat the other animals.’
I still wanted to ask why crocodiles needed saving from water if they live in water, but the tone in Popeye’s voice indicated the Noah’s Ark picture in the children’s Bible is not up for any further discussion.
The matter was settled. It’s the Bible, and therefore must be truthful.
Cobras and monkeys
The Noah’s Ark question stayed with me for many years, but I eventually figured it out, without the help of a Popeye.
Whoever drew that picture got it wrong because there were no crocodiles on the boat.
No monkeys, no elephants, no cobras and definitely no koala bears, because there was no need to load two of every single species as we were made to believe, because the Genesis flood didn’t cover the entire planet.
It happened before the World Wide Web and Facebook, in times when a handful of beardies in robes living in a valley somewhere in the Middle East could have easily made the honest mistake of thinking they were the only people on earth.
So they loaded what was in their valley, which couldn’t have been much because that part of the globe is not known for its diversity of wildlife.
And there was no need for Noah to mark himself as ‘Safe’ on Facebook because he had no mates over in Australia or knew about the existence of those on the other side of the mountain, for that matter.
Respect
Everything in the Bible can be explained by simply seeing it in context, except the Jonah story, of course, because there’s no way a human can survive being swallowed by a whale.
Not even for just a few minutes.
While I bet Popeye would’ve had an explanation of some sorts of how Jonah survived the stomach acids and methane gas, it’s not important and doesn’t really matter.
What is important is that we respect people’s beliefs regardless of whether we can make sense of them or not.
And that goes for all of it – Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and especially Rastafarianism because those guys really have it figured out.
The world will be much poorer without them.
