People who believe that truth cannot be known often appeal to the story of the six blind men who come across an elephant. There are variations of the tale, but they are rather similar in the end. One touches the elephant’s underside, and thinks it is a wall; a second grabs its tusk and thinks it like a spear; a third grabs the trunk, and thinks it like a snake; a fourth feels a knee and considers it like a tree; a fifth touches an ear and thinks that he has a fan; while the sixth thinks that the tail is a rope. The story has its roots in Eastern religions, but in the nineteenth century John Godfrey Saxe drew the predictable conclusion:
So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
A profession of ignorance is then equated with humility, so any assertion of biblical truth is seen as proud, ignorant, and even dangerous.
The first thing to say is that indeed we do not know everything about God – nor even the elephant for that matter. The apostle John says at the end of his Gospel: ‘Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written’ (John 21:25). The condition of the Christian in this life is as apostle Paul tells us: ‘Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known’ (1 Cor.13:12). God’s judgments are unsearchable and His ways inscrutable (Rom.11:33). There are things that ‘we know’. For example, ‘we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ’ (1 John 5:20). Yet we also know what Dora Greenwell wrote and why she wrote it:
I am not skilled to understand
What God has willed, what God has planned;
I only know at His right hand
Stands One who is my Saviour.
It is a part of wisdom to know what we can know and to know what we can’t and don’t.
Secondly, the criticism implied in the story of the six blind men and the elephant only makes sense if the reader knows what an elephant looks like. The teller of the tale assumes a kind of omniscience in order to make his point. In effect, he assumes a stance that he then criticises. The old computer jokes about IT, the mouse, rebooting, a floppy disk, windows, and bytes only made sense if the hearer knew what all the terms meant (e.g. a mouse pad is where a furry rodent lives). If you do not know what the mouse pad is, the joke is lost (even if you do, it is not overwhelming). The teller of the elephant tale must believe that everyone is in on the joke, as it were, and that neither he nor his readers is afflicted by blindness.
Thirdly, the story assumes that the elephant does not talk. Animals only talk in Aesop’s Fables, Kipling’s stories, and cartoons, but in the story the elephant represents God. It hardly seems humble or even reasonable to believe that there is a God who created the heavens and the earth, but is unable to communicate to us. In the Old Testament, Israel was privileged in that God had spoken to His people: ‘He declares His word to Jacob, His statutes and rules to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any other nation; they do not know His rules’ (Psalm 147:19-20). Jesus affirms that God’s word is truth (John 17:17). The teller of the elephant tale is pretending that it is humility that leads him to reject this claim.
In the end, the story of the six blind men and the elephant panders to our sense of superiority and pride rather than humility and lowliness of heart. In contrast, the Bible tells us that God looks to the one who is humble and contrite in spirit and who trembles at God’s word (Isa.66:2). He who has eyes to see, let him see.
Peter Barnes