Transitions Ships and Arks
The Ark in Karen Armstrong’s Genesis¹
Karen Armstrong one time nun, religious thinker and writer
sees the Ark from a very different point of view, not as an image
expressing protection but ‘blinkered mentality’. The god of the Flood
she sees is at best like a petulant child who knocks down the castle
he’s created with building blocks. At worst a tyrant who’s assumed
god-like powers and is determined to purge the world of what he regards as
evil. She questions what ‘righteousness’ of Noah’s it is that made God
choose him and his family above everyone else, and why Noah didn’t
speak up and ask God to rescue humanity and innocent creatures, or
even try to help a few of the doomed people into his Ark.Noah’s only goodness Armstrong stresses depended on obeying the rules. If Schindler in the film Schindler’s List² was
not a righteous man in the conventional sense he was more so than Noah. For
he risked his own life to rescue people society saw as unworthy and
did not turn a blind eye as many of his contemporaries did, like Noah, to
the carnage created around him. “The Ark itself, a sealed box with only one skylight giving
access to the outside world, is an apt image of that kind of
blinkered mentality”³ Armstrong states. Yet it is significant that it
is given to children as a toy. With this Ark we think of a haven of
peace not the horrors of the Flood or the terror and despair of drowning
people. Some holocaust survivors have faced the fact of their being
spared with feelings of guilt or despair, finding no meaning in their
survival. Noah on the other hand stepped out of his Ark to survey the
devastation caused to land and people without seeming to feel any regret
about the tragedy. Then, after releasing the animals, he offered a
sacrifice to God the Destroyer who had shown such enormous cruelty. Believers might rush to God’s defence Armstrong realises,
but they should consider that if we excuse a deity who almost
destroys the human race we might also justify earthly rulers who commit
such atrocities. The Flood shows us the dreadful power of the
deity. That should repel us. Given the tragedy of natural or other
catastrophes that beset humankind we shouldn’t construct a theology that
blunts our sense of life’s horror and cruelty. Rather admit like Jacob
who fought with God, that we must wrestle painfully in the dark before
we can discern the divine – and not be reluctant about accepting
evil as part of the divine. That would mean we pass the buck as if evil
or anything
inhuman or monstrous had absolutely nothing to do with us. Armstrong’s sermon for the day! She has a point.
¹ In The Beginning, A New Interpretation of Genesis, Karen
Armstrong. Vintage, 2011
2 adapted from Thomas Keneally’s novel Schindler’s Ark
³ In The Beginning, A New Interpretation of Genesis, Karen
Armstrong. Vintage, 2011, p. 43
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