Butcher boys with untidy noses
The atheist, Friedrich Nietzsche, had little love for people—real people I mean, actual persons. He had a vision of the ideal man but the ideal man didn’t exist so what he was passionate about was an abstraction, nothing real.
The short story writer, O’Henry introduced us to Joe and Dabster, fervent admirers of Daisy. Joe owned a tiny shop and begged Daisy to marry him; Dabster was brilliant, knew a jillion facts, ranging from the shortest verse in the Bible to how many pounds of shingle nails you’d need to secure 256 shingles to the square yard on a split level roof and from there, he could move on to the intricacies of the philosopher Hegel when he was writing while suffering a heartburn attack. To impress her, Dabster took Daisy to the roof of the skyscraper—a new experience for her—and showed her the “bipeds” below, moving like little black ants, and the cars, like toys on a living room floor.
That’s how it started and it’s how Dabster continued, letting her see how tiny and inconsequential humans are.
But Daisy took one look down from such a height and didn’t like the universal view of things. It made people look like fleas, she said, and—what mattered most of all— “One of them we saw might have been Joe.” The philosopher smiled indulgently and went on to fill her mind with facts about distances, sizes, how long it takes light from XYZ-14 galaxy to reach us, the unbearable heat and light of those nightly stars and why it is that humans are so much fungus clinging to the planetary crust. On and on he went, until poor ignorant Daisy cried out in anger, “You’re lyin’. You’re trying to scare me. And you have; I want to go down!”
The intellectual giant was filled with book-learned information but he was out for lunch when they were giving out wisdom and sensitivity. In all his use of truth, in all his talk about the facts of nature and its vastness he was brainy but heartless and (theologically ignorant to boot).
When they got down, the philosopher lost her at the skyscraper’s revolving door and Joe, trapped in his tiny shop, between his chewing gum, packs of cigarettes and piles of newspapers, was startled when his little door burst open, and Daisy, laughing and crying sent stuff flying as she bundled into his arms. “Oh, Joe, I’ve been up on the skyscraper. Ain’t it cozy and warm and homelike in here! I’m ready for you, Joe, whenever you want me.” Ain’t love grand?
Dabster was neither the first nor the last to make humans look small and insignificant. American historian of some years ago, Harry Elmer Barnes, is credited with saying: “Astronomically speaking, man is almost totally negligible.” Philosopher George Albert Coe responded: “Astronomically speaking, man—is the astronomer!”
Checkmate!
Drama critic James Agate probably speaks for most of us when he says, “Without man…there can be no beauty, and the Milky Way becomes less than a tenantless back-yard. For myself, I place the Himalayas beneath the feet of the little janitor who sweeps my room, and rate the Pacific Ocean less than my butcher boy with the untidy nose.”
All the “stuff” in creation means nothing if there’s no one to share it with. As the song Islands in the Stream would have it, “everything is nothin’ when you’ve got no one.” Plato discussed living forever only in the context of Socrates’ death. Who’d want to live forever without there being someone to love and be loved by?
In the end, it’s people that matter and it’s people that give “stuff” their value. So while people have the capacity to irritate each other (and more) they contribute to the “worthwhileness” of living. And even the grubbiest of street urchins is more wondrous than the blazing sun.
Which leads me to say that passing around pictures and facts and figures about the immensity of the universe to show that humans are a mere speck, hardly worth talking about, misses not only the point of life and scripture, it burdens the hearts of many who already feel like plastic knives and forks.There’s nothing to this “logic of size” (WH Fitchett’s nice phrase). Try telling parents that their tiny newborn baby is nothing compared with the Rockies or the Milky Way because its tiny and they're big.
Silliness!
The short story writer, O’Henry introduced us to Joe and Dabster, fervent admirers of Daisy. Joe owned a tiny shop and begged Daisy to marry him; Dabster was brilliant, knew a jillion facts, ranging from the shortest verse in the Bible to how many pounds of shingle nails you’d need to secure 256 shingles to the square yard on a split level roof and from there, he could move on to the intricacies of the philosopher Hegel when he was writing while suffering a heartburn attack. To impress her, Dabster took Daisy to the roof of the skyscraper—a new experience for her—and showed her the “bipeds” below, moving like little black ants, and the cars, like toys on a living room floor.
That’s how it started and it’s how Dabster continued, letting her see how tiny and inconsequential humans are.
But Daisy took one look down from such a height and didn’t like the universal view of things. It made people look like fleas, she said, and—what mattered most of all— “One of them we saw might have been Joe.” The philosopher smiled indulgently and went on to fill her mind with facts about distances, sizes, how long it takes light from XYZ-14 galaxy to reach us, the unbearable heat and light of those nightly stars and why it is that humans are so much fungus clinging to the planetary crust. On and on he went, until poor ignorant Daisy cried out in anger, “You’re lyin’. You’re trying to scare me. And you have; I want to go down!”
The intellectual giant was filled with book-learned information but he was out for lunch when they were giving out wisdom and sensitivity. In all his use of truth, in all his talk about the facts of nature and its vastness he was brainy but heartless and (theologically ignorant to boot).
When they got down, the philosopher lost her at the skyscraper’s revolving door and Joe, trapped in his tiny shop, between his chewing gum, packs of cigarettes and piles of newspapers, was startled when his little door burst open, and Daisy, laughing and crying sent stuff flying as she bundled into his arms. “Oh, Joe, I’ve been up on the skyscraper. Ain’t it cozy and warm and homelike in here! I’m ready for you, Joe, whenever you want me.” Ain’t love grand?
Dabster was neither the first nor the last to make humans look small and insignificant. American historian of some years ago, Harry Elmer Barnes, is credited with saying: “Astronomically speaking, man is almost totally negligible.” Philosopher George Albert Coe responded: “Astronomically speaking, man—is the astronomer!”
Checkmate!
Drama critic James Agate probably speaks for most of us when he says, “Without man…there can be no beauty, and the Milky Way becomes less than a tenantless back-yard. For myself, I place the Himalayas beneath the feet of the little janitor who sweeps my room, and rate the Pacific Ocean less than my butcher boy with the untidy nose.”
All the “stuff” in creation means nothing if there’s no one to share it with. As the song Islands in the Stream would have it, “everything is nothin’ when you’ve got no one.” Plato discussed living forever only in the context of Socrates’ death. Who’d want to live forever without there being someone to love and be loved by?
In the end, it’s people that matter and it’s people that give “stuff” their value. So while people have the capacity to irritate each other (and more) they contribute to the “worthwhileness” of living. And even the grubbiest of street urchins is more wondrous than the blazing sun.
Which leads me to say that passing around pictures and facts and figures about the immensity of the universe to show that humans are a mere speck, hardly worth talking about, misses not only the point of life and scripture, it burdens the hearts of many who already feel like plastic knives and forks.There’s nothing to this “logic of size” (WH Fitchett’s nice phrase). Try telling parents that their tiny newborn baby is nothing compared with the Rockies or the Milky Way because its tiny and they're big.
Silliness!
[Just recently I was sent (again) a series of illustrations of the comparative size of the earth to the sun and the sun to the galaxy and the galaxy to...you get the picture. The conclusion drawn was that humans are pathetically miniscule and their troubles are "small stuff" that they aren't to sweat. Imagine doing that with, say, Mount Everest, a massive skyscraper, a giant bulldozer and a tiny baby. Now, make the argument "from size". Pathetic!]
The scriptures never compare humans with the size of the immense universe. David was surely gobsmacked by the immensity of the heavens but what amazed him (as he alluded to Genesis 1) was that God made humans lord of it all (see Psalm 8 for yourself). Isaiah 40 speaks of the vastness of the universe but it doesn’t compare humans with the size of the universe—it aims to describe God and set him over against the gods that are nothing and do nothing and to show why Israel shouldn't worry about the nations that oppose him.
You want to know what God thinks of sinful humans (even his enemies)? Look at Jesus, the cross and the glory to which he is bringing humans in and through Jesus.
The scriptures never compare humans with the size of the immense universe. David was surely gobsmacked by the immensity of the heavens but what amazed him (as he alluded to Genesis 1) was that God made humans lord of it all (see Psalm 8 for yourself). Isaiah 40 speaks of the vastness of the universe but it doesn’t compare humans with the size of the universe—it aims to describe God and set him over against the gods that are nothing and do nothing and to show why Israel shouldn't worry about the nations that oppose him.
You want to know what God thinks of sinful humans (even his enemies)? Look at Jesus, the cross and the glory to which he is bringing humans in and through Jesus.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
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