Читать книгу The Drama of Jesus - Peter Milward - Страница 4

The place was a seminar house on the outskirts of Tokyo. We had come here, five of my students and myself, after the end-of-term exams in July. “What on earth are we here for?” had been the question of Iwao one day after class, and it had been echoed by several of his friends. “Well, you can hardly expect me to answer in a word, can you?” I had replied. “Why not take a few days off in July and come and discuss it with me.” So here we were.

That was why we were in the seminar house. But why were we on earth at all? That was what we had come to find out, if possible, by discussing the matter with one another. We had arrived in the evening and found the place so quiet after all the noise of Tokyo. We could even hear the silence singing in our ears. It was an ideal place for concentrating our minds, far from the distractions of the modern city. After a simple dinner we met in the sitting-room.

“Well,” I said to Iwao, “it was you who first raised the question. So I think you should explain what you have in your mind a little more fully before we begin to discuss it. What’s the big problem? – as an American might say.”

“It may sound a very simple problem,” began Iwao. “It’s almost like Hamlet’s ‘To be, or not to be.’ It can be stated in the simplest terms, like the verb ‘to be’. Yet for that very reason it seems to me basic to our being. Ever since I came to the university it’s been worrying me. Maybe I was too busy to think of it in high school, but now it almost forces itself on my attention. ‘Why am I? What am I doing here on earth?’ That’s my question, but no one can give me a satisfying answer.”

“Your question,” I commented, “sounds rather like another one of Hamlet’s, ‘What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth?’ But that’s really a different question we’ll have to discuss later. I mean, there’s all the difference in the world between the simple ‘I’ of your question and the complicated ‘such as I’ of Hamlet’s other question. His ‘such as I’ implies a kind of inferiority complex. He feels as if he’s not worthy to be alive. But your question is, I think, more basic. You’re wondering why you’re alive at all, worthy or unworthy. What do you think, Hiroshi?”

“I, too,” replied Iwao’s friend, “have much the same question. Sometimes when I can’t get to sleep at night, I begin to wonder what I’m doing here. I’m lying in my bed, trying to get to sleep. Then I reflect that my bed’s in my home, and my home’s in Tokyo. And then I think of Tokyo as I once saw it from the air, when I went by plane from Tokyo to Hiroshima. All of a sudden it seemed so small beneath me． But then, I continue, how small Japan is in comparison with the earth, and how small the earth is in comparison with the solar system, and finally how small that is in comparison with everything there is. Then I come back to myself and I realize how small and insignificant I am here in bed. What am I but a grain of sand on the unending shore of time? How can such a little life as mine have any meaning or value?”

“You mustn’t let yourself be deceived,” I warned him, “by thinking like that in terms of size. You know what the Texan said when he saw the famous Tower of London? ‘Why,’ he exclaimed, with disappointment in his voice, ‘it’s so small. We’ve much larger buildings than that back in Texas!’ Well, he may have larger buildings in Texas, in such modern cities as Dallas and Houston, but they’re by no means as rich in history or dramatic event as the Tower of London. No one goes on a sightseeing tour to Texas, but millions of people come every year to see the Tower of London. Yes, we human beings are like grains of sand, or rather reeds, in comparison with the vast universe. But don’t you know what Pascal said when faced with the same problem? He said, ‘We human beings are reeds, but we are thinking reeds.’ Surely a grain of human thought has more meaning and value than all the empty shores of the universe. Don’t you think so, Mariko?”

“Yes,” replied the girl, pleased to have been asked for her opinion. She was one of the two girls who had come with us to the seminar house. “I do agree with you. I can’t believe that our life on earth has no meaning. Or if it hasn’t, scientifically speaking, I think we have to put meaning into it, to make it meaningful for ourselves and others. When Hiroshi sees himself as a tiny speck in the vast universe, or his life as a brief moment in unending time, no wonder he can’t find any meaning in it! For meaning belongs not to space and time, which are just the conditions of material being, but to the mind, which is spiritual.”

“That reminds me,” chimed in her friend Chieko, “of our modern computers. Many of them nowadays don’t take up so much space, yet they contain a vast store of information. Not only do they contain that store, but they come out with it at once on being asked a question about it. That’s wonderful! And our human brain is rather like a computer. It stores up so much information out of our past experience and reading, though it isn’t always so prompt in answering questions, especially in an examination. Our memory may be more defective, but our intellect is more creative than any computer. Our brain may be small, but it is so complicated. It’s a little world in itself.”

“Then,” I added, “if you say the brain is a little world, and if we are conscious of our meaning within the universe, may we not conclude that there is meaning in that universe? After all, in the long process of evolution we human beings have somehow come to exist on this little earth of ours, as though points and centres of a vast circumference. So may not the meaning of which we are conscious in our minds, be a reflection of the greater meaning in the universe as a whole? Otherwise, if the universe had no meaning, it’s hard to see how such tiny beings as we are, with some meaning in our minds, could ever have emerged in the course of evolution.”

“But don’t some scientists say,” objected Hiroshi, “that if an eternal monkey were sitting at an eternal typewriter, perpetually typing on the keys, he’d sooner or later come out with one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, if not the whole collection of his plays? Surely, anything can happen by chance. And if anything can happen by chance, then this world with all the human beings in it may have happened by chance. Or if not by chance, how do you prove it?”

“I doubt very much,” I replied, “if any monkey merely by banging on a typewriter could ever come out with a single sentence of Shakespeare’s, let alone a whole sonnet. However long he banged, even if it were for an eternity, he’d never produce anything but nonsense. For nonsense is the typical product of chance, just as meaning is the product of intelligence. Sometimes when I sit at a piano and try to play something, imagining myself to be the world’s greatest pianist, I can’t produce anything but discords. The more I try, the more convinced I become that, short of going through the painful process of learning the piano properly, I’ll never come out with the simplest sonata of Mozart. There just is no proportion between the wildest efforts of chance and the controlled products of intelligence.”

“In that case,” concluded Iwao, “mustn’t we say that, if there’s meaning in the universe, there’s also an intelligent being who put that meaning there? I mean, if there’s meaning in our minds, which shows that we are intelligent beings, then the presence of meaning in the whole universe must point to the presence of some immensely intelligent being within or above the universe, mustn’t it? In this way, mayn’t our minds be compared to mirrors of the outside world? If our eyes reflect the outer forms of things, our minds reflect the inner meanings behind those forms. Then we can reflect on those meanings and put them together.”

“Certainly,” I agreed, “you may well draw such a conclusion. The assertion of mere chance only confuses our minds, just as the suggestion of mere size astounds us. But the conclusion from meaning to intelligent being satisfies our minds. Then, if we raise our minds from the meaning of which we are conscious within ourselves to that which we find in the world outside us, we find that we are looking from our limited intelligence to the unlimited intelligence of a supreme being. So who do you think he is? And what do you think he’s got to do with us? What do you think, Nobuo? You haven’t said a word all this time.”

“Well,” answered the taciturn Nobuo. “I’m not quite sure. I suppose the supreme being would be God, wouldn’t he? If we human beings have emerged out of the long process of evolution, as the scientists tell us so confidently, even if we are a very small part of the whole universe, then we must be a part, and an important part, of God’s meaning, mustn’t we?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s as if the universe in its slow rotating movement is gradually coming to a point or focus of meaning. And we, with our minds, are part of that meaning. That’s why Hamlet calls the gift of reason ‘godlike’. It somehow reflects in a limited manner the unlimited reason of God. This is why at the beginning of the Bible we read that God created man and woman in his own image and likeness. It’s because we have this gift of reason in us, more than any other beings we know of in this world. So it isn’t too much to conclude that we must be special objects of what is called divine providence.”

“What do you mean by providence?” asked Hiroshi, as I paused. “And how is it connected with intelligence?”

“Literally,” I answered, “providence means looking forward into the future, not just with the eyes, for the eyes can only see what’s present, but with the mind. With our mind we can consider not only what is actually around us, but also what may possibly happen to us. We can also make plans, which have to be realized in the course of time. So when we think of ourselves, small though we are, in relation to the greatness of God, we may come to see ourselves as a part – even, as Nobuo says, an important part – of his creative plan, which is in turn part of his providence.”

“That’s it!” exclaimed Mariko. “There’s something wonderfully providential in the way everything comes to birth. Living things appear on earth one by one, not because of some mechanical fate or numerical chance, but by some power of love which runs through the universe. Everywhere there is love. Even in material objects, there is a kind of love in the law of gravity or attraction by which one thing is drawn to another. Then the more fully they are endowed with life and consciousness, as we see in animals, the more deeply we may discern in them a creative love prompting them to produce offspring and to care for them till they are old enough to care for themselves.”

“There indeed,” I remarked approvingly, “you’ve laid your finger on the deep principle governing the whole universe, which Dante calls in his Divine Comedy, “the love that moves the sun and the other stars”. Yes, it is love that makes the world go round. Even in the partly blind, instinctive loves of plants and animals for their offspring we may find a reflection of the deeply sympathetic love of the Creator for all his creatures. It is without doubt this infinite love of his that leads him to provide for each one according to its nature, and so too for us human beings. He also provides for us, I might add, by showing us how to provide for ourselves.”

“Isn’t that,” asked Chieko, “why God is also called Father? Because he provides for his creatures in the same way as a father provides for his children. Thinking of these two qualities, love and providence, it seems to me that love belongs more to a mother, and providence to a father. So if they are both perfectly present in God, may we not think of him as both father and mother?”

“Yes, I think we may,” I assured her. “When we call God ‘Our Father in heaven’, we surely don’t mean to deny that he is our mother, too. Rather, I would say that the former title includes the latter. As you say, in God we may find both fatherly providence and motherly love from the traces of those qualities we see among living creatures. Just as we admire these qualities in dogs with their puppies and in cats with their kittens, so much more may we admire the fullness of them in God. That’s what we mean by praising God, as when the angels sang on Christmas night, “Glory to God on high!” Whatever we admire in his creatures, we may attribute to him as the great Creator. But now it’s getting a little late, and so we may well end our discussion on this note of praise, as a kind of night prayer before going to bed.”

It was indeed rather late. Yet Iwao said he still had more questions to ask. So I advised him to sleep on them and to produce them for our further discussion the following morning, when we would have more time to deal with them. Then we retired to our rooms, and for a time silence descended on the house.