A Hole in the Ark

Ignoring facts we don’t like is something we’ve all been guilty of at some point. But sometimes we can go to astounding lengths. Allow me to entertain you with an amusing story of burying my own head in the Christian sand and finding a hole in Noah’s ark.

I got to know Jesus in High School and immediately became an ardent defender of my new-found faith among the sea of secular students in my Swiss school who had, almost overnight, become a threat to me. Perceived attacks against my religion were everywhere: from science topics like evolution to humanistic German literature to history teachers who refused to treat the Bible as a document of history. My efforts to save God and His reputation exhausted me, but not only did they do nothing to convince my secular surroundings, the one who lost the most was me, and the thing I lost was intellectual honesty – maybe honesty itself.

I learned about the Epic of Gilgamesh toward the end of High School. This Sumerian poem, written on stone tablets around 2500 BC, tells the story of an epic flood caused by gods who are fed up by the humans they created. Because humans fail to do their gods-given duty to cultivate the earth, the gods decide to wipe the earth clean. However, one god called Enki wants to save one man, his wife, and his family from the flood as a kind of plan B. He tells Utnapishtim, the lucky man, to build an ark, take animals and food into it and seal it with tar. The flood comes, and all but Utnapishtim and his family perish. At the end of the flood, Utnapishtim sends out doves and ravens to indicate when the waters have receded enough to leave the ark. When it is time, the man sets foot on dry land, builds the gods an altar, and worships.

Imagine my indignation when, after having subscribed to an understanding of Christianity that taught me every word in the Bible was God-breathed, I was told that one of my famous, God-breathed stories was actually plagiarized! Noah’s ark, a copy?

There was nowhere for me to go. The Epic of Gilgamesh (and other ancient flood stories like it) was too well documented to doubt its existence or age. The tale had existed for centuries before the book of Genesis was written. Noah’s Ark was a retelling of an epic saga and not a “fact of the Bible”. But the assault on my faith didn’t stop there. There were also scientific facts that threatened the ark. No method we know for measuring geologic events in the past (and there are many – varve chronology, dendrochronology, and C-14 among others) shows even the slightest indication of a world-wide flood within the past 10,000 years. For all we can know, the flood did not actually happen.

Now I was in serious trouble. I had based my faith (among other things) on the assumptions that a) the Bible was directly and literally dictated by God and therefore original, and b) everything that was written in there actually happened and was therefore a fact. Therefore I did what I believe too many Christians do, simply because they can’t see any alternative. I put my head in the sand and hoped that by ignoring the whole Gilgamesh thing and other topics like it, everything would go back to normal. And I continued to take every story in the Bible literal, because I felt like my teachers were forcing me to choose between God and science. And as a follower of Jesus, there was no choice in that choice.

Do you know people who seem to constantly choose between God and science? Maybe you find yourself feeling like you have to choose as well, and I understand. To many of us, our faith is the most precious and most important thing in life, and we will do whatever we feel necessary to protect it. But consider for a moment the cost of this mindset.

First, we and our faith obviously lose credibility with even the most well-meaning scientists. The Christians who insist the universe to be roughly 6000 years old aren’t persecuted for their faith, as some of their followers like to call it. They’re simply ignored because of their narrow-mindedness. Those who proclaim that we are all descendants from the same two people aren’t defending the Christian faith. They just make it all the harder for believers to harmonize their faith with reality, and for everybody else to take anything we say seriously.

Am I saying I know all about how old the earth is or where humans come from?  Which of the many theories and models are correct? Of course not. But what I appreciate about the mindset of serious scientists, historians, and theologians is that they don’t claim to know it all either. They offer models and theories and point to the holes themselves. They tell you what’s commonly agreed upon, and then point to the many things we don’t know and might never know.

Many of them are also fully aware that the answers they can give are only of a certain nature: the how, when, and where. They understand that true science never claims to answer questions about meaning, ethics and faith. This is why many of the world’s brightest scientists are people of faith. Opening yourself to the complexities of science will often also open your heart to the wonder of who’s behind it all, and why.

But back to my dilemma with Noah’s ark. What should I do now with this story? Should I ignore it like I tried to ignore Gilgamesh? In answer to this, I’m borrowing from German theologian Thorsten Dietz. In a recent presentation on this topic, he points out that the Israelites would have known the ancient flood stories well. What must have caught their attention was the differences between the stories they knew and the story of the ark as Moses told it.

 In Gilgamesh’s epic, the gods were disappointed with mankind. Mankind’s purpose was to be useful to the gods, to cultivate the land, and to not anger them. Man fell short of their expectations, and the punishment followed swiftly. Dietz points out that people of ancient times didn’t have to wrestle with the theodicy question of why a good God allows bad things to happen.They would’ve immediately asked, “What good God? The gods are like us – power-hungry and jealous – they are just mightier than us.” The flood taught Utnapishtim to be more careful and work harder to please the gods, because the next flood was surely just around the corner, and expecting mercy was not on his radar.

But the God of Israel inspires Moses to write a different account. In Noah’s ark, God isn’t annoyed at people because they don’t work hard enough for Him. He is grieved because they hurt each other. His heart bleeds because He cares. And He doesn’t save Noah to give mankind one more chance to be better. In fact, God already knows that mankind won’t be better, no matter how much effort they put into it. He knows only God himself can free mankind from its bondage to violence and hatred. And so, centuries before God’s salvation finds its ultimate expression in Jesus, God already promises His loving and patient kindness toward the fallen nature of man and uses the symbol of the rainbow so everyone in every generation will be reminded of His faithfulness.

But even if we can see the story of Noah in a different light, there are still many others, and trying to explain all of them is just as much an exercise in missing the point as is trying to bury them. Instead, we should question what a story does to us, the reader. You might have experienced believers perceiving a topic as pitched against their faith and immediately taking “God’s side” against it. But the fruit of trying to defend God and “fight His enemies” is often bigotry, hate, and even war. By trying to save Christianity we achieve the opposite of all Christianity stands for.

But what if this dilemma between God and science and others like it were only perceived? What if in reality you didn’t have to choose between science and God, between compassion and morals, between tolerance and faithfulness?

This, I believe, is the achievement of great theologians across the centuries and cultures: to show us how it can fit together.

How the Bible doesn’t have to be taken literally in order to honor God, because he isn’t a God of the letter but of the Spirit. This means we have the freedom to contextualize what is written and find a deeper, truer, more human meaning behind the stories in the Bible.

How we don’t have to fight our neighbors to defend the truth, because it has found its way into the hearts of people around the world for two thousand years, and despite the many attempts of Jesus’s followers, it never required a single act of hatred, fear, or coercion to achieve this.

And how we don’t have to justify any racist, sexist, or genocidal story in the Bible and yet can still deeply love the God of the Bible. We can know that the stories were written by people of their time who understood God and life within the boundaries of their time. And yet, inside those imperfect stories they were able to draw beautiful pictures of the nature of God that shine through scripture, and no honest or critical reading will destroy this beauty; it will only draw it out.

Today, I love exploring the Bible. I love finding out how aspects of time, culture, politics and tradition play into these stories. How God used imperfect people to prepare us for the perfect representation of God: Jesus. I’m no longer afraid of discoveries that could “undermine” my faith, because my faith isn’t based on a book, nor on me understanding things, nor even believing things.

It’s based on a person. And that person has forever changed my life and is changing it as we speak.

And his truth is neither fragile, nor does he need to be defended. His truth shines through the lovingkindness, the compassion and the joy of his followers. It shines amidst the scientific and social realities we are invited to embrace and help shape into a more beautiful expression of the love of God.