David McElroy

For most of human history, men and women have developed their ideas of God through group experience and tradition — and they’ve then been willing to kill those who didn’t accept their notions of who and what God is.

Every group seems to have believed it was uniquely qualified to speak for God. Every group believed it knew the truth. Every group was willing to use force to impose its idea of God on everyone else. Every group was willing to kill those infidels who didn’t know their truth and worship their God.

Many modern rationalists like to laugh at those people — both the primitive early religious folks and the comparatively flexible and more rational modern religious groups. They like to look down their noses at religious people and say, “The world would be great if all of you stupid people would just worship my god — the god of reason.”

I’ve realized recently that rationality has been turned into just another false god.

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When I think back to the first time I spoke with the man, I’m ashamed of myself. I probably felt superior. Maybe a little condescending. I pitied him — even if he didn’t know that.

There’s a dilapidated house not too far from where I live. The houses in the blocks around it vary. Some are nice and newer. Some are old and modest.

But this house was a pile of junk where I would never live.

It hadn’t been painted in years. The wood was slowly rotting. A couple of garage doors that open into the first floor — living space is on the second floor — were falling apart. I doubt those doors had been opened in years. (I doubt they could open anymore.) But this man had just moved his family into the house.

“Yeah, I’m going to fix the house up,” he told me. “It will take me awhile, but I’ll get it done.”

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I don’t know where the woman and the little girl in the image come from. I don’t know where that train station is. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. I just know the picture is burned vividly into my brain like a still frame from an old Technicolor movie.

It’s an image which has haunted my dreams for years, but I’ve never experienced the scene in real life. I’ve never been to this place. The girl and the woman both have blonde hair. One has a red coat, because it’s cold outside. The other coat is gray or black. The trains lining the platform are pulled by steam engines, so there’s the sound of hissing pressure lines and the air is heavy with the mist of steam.

Much of the picture is fuzzy. I’m meeting the woman and the girl at the train station. Who are they? Are they arriving? Or have they come to greet me as I arrive? I can’t quite tell. I know it’s my wife and daughter, but the image is like a dream that dangles something in front of me and never quite resolves itself.

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