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This starts and ends with stories.
One day the devil and one of his little helpers were sitting on a cloud looking down at the humans below, when they saw a man walking down a road who stopped, picked up something from the road, put it in his pocket and walked on.
"What did he find?" asked the devil's helper. "A piece of the truth," chuckled the devil.
"A piece of the truth? Don't you want to stop him?"
"Stop him? Oh no," said the devil. "It's only a tiny piece of truth. Before long, he'll turn it into an orthodoxy. And then he'll be doing my work!"
There are ways in which that story sums up the history of almost all religions. It's like the ancient Hindu story of the blind people and the elephant, but with a vengeance. In the Hindu story, different blind people came upon different parts of an elephant. The one who had grabbed the ear said "Why, an elephant is like a big leathery leaf!" The one who had hold of the trunk said "You fool! It's nothing at all like a leaf. It's like a long, thick snake!" The one who had bumped into a leg said "You're both crazy! I have a firm hold on this elephant, and it is like a strong, rough, tree trunk!" And from behind, the one who had grabbed the tail called out "You're all idiots. Either you've never experienced an elephant at all, or you're lying. It is not a large thing at all; it is like a small, stiff rope!" And so on.
Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr 13 February 2005
The text for this and other sermons can be viewed online at
http://austinuu.org/sermons/
31:06
© Davidson Loehr 2005
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