Call me a fan of Moby Dick. My first reading of this sprawling classic captivated me, even its many meditative interludes dwelling on all things whales and whaling.
Do you remember Captain Bildad? Ishmael meets Captain Bildad and Captain Peleg, the two owners of the Pequod, when he signs up to sail on the ill-fated whaling trip under the direction of the obsessed Captain Ahab. What’s interesting for the purposes of this blog is that Captain Bildad and Captain Peleg are Quakers.
From their reading of the Bible and of the words of Jesus in particular, Quakers have long been marked by their commitment to nonviolence. This has led them to be conscientious objectors in times war. But in Captain Bildad we see a Quaker who…. well, I can’t resist sharing some of Melville’s prose:
Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired whaleman. But unlike Captain Peleg – who cared not a rush for what are called serious things, and indeed deemed those self-same serious things the veriest of all trifles – Captain Bildad had not only been originally educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many unclad, lovely island creatures, round the Horn – all that had not moved this native born Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle of his vest. Still, for all this immutableness, was there some lack of common consistency about worthy Captain Peleg. Though refusing, from conscientious scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns of leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man’s religion is one things, and this practical world quite another. This world pays dividends.
How do you and I reconcile such things?
Do we believe that a person’s religion is one thing and “this practical world quite another”?
Do the Christian ideals of love and compassion have anything to do with this practical world, especially the world that is not human?
Reading this passage from Moby Dick reminds us that we are not the first ones to note the disconnect between being followers of the Lamb, of the good shepherd and the way we treat God’s earth.
An image from the “illimitable slaughter” of whaling. Walvisvangst by Abraham Storck (courtesy of Rijksmuseum – Amsterdam)
Of course, living in this practical world is not easy. For most of human existence, simply surviving has been a tremendous challenge. What’s more, we must indeed take from the world in order to survive in the world. And even when we have the best of intentions, we can make mistakes as fallen beings.
But, nevertheless, I believe the degree to which we are willing to truly open our hearts to the transforming work of the Spirit of our loving God reveals itself in the details of exactly how we treat our neighbors and God’s earth day after day, year after year, century after century.
Our faith and our God are in the details.
And, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we will see that we are, as a world and as a Church, getting the details wrong in fundamental ways.
The emptying of the oceans and the filling of those oceans with plastic are testimony that we don’t believe that following God has anything to do with this practical world. The clearing of tropical forests and the death that the clearing brings to the forests’ inhabitants testify to that same disconnect. When we bring no ethical consideration to what we eat and the profound impact our food choices have on our neighbors and God’s earth, then our lives say we don’t believe our religion should enter the practical world.
A story of a real-life Quaker provides inspiration for how being inspired by God can prompt us to look at the world differently than Captain Bildad. John Woolman was a prominent Quaker in the 1700s who gently but tenaciously appealed to his fellow Quakers to not be part of the slave economy. His journals, published only after his death in 1772, are now considered a classic spiritual work of early America.
From The Journal of John Woolman you can read the following passage about a system that paid dividends that he would not be part of:
Stage-coaches frequently go upwards of one hundred miles in twenty-four hours; and I have heard Friends say in several places that is common for horses to be killed with hard driving, and that many others are driven till they go blind. Post-boys pursue their business, each one to his stage, all night through the winter. Some boys who ride long stages suffer greatly in winter nights, and at several places I have heard of their being frozen to death. So great is the hurry in the spirit of this world, that in aiming to do business quickly and to gain wealth the creation at this day doth loudly groan.
As my journey hath been without a horse, I have had several offers of being assisted on my way in these stagecoaches, but have not been in them, nor have I had freedom to send letters by these posts in the present way of riding, the stages being so fixed, and one body dependent on another as to time and going at great speed, that in long cold winter nights the boys suffer much. I heard in America of the way of these posts, and cautioned Friends in the General Meeting of minsters and elders at Philadelphia, and in the Yearly Meeting of ministers and elders in London, not to send letters to me on any common occasion by post. And though on this account I may be likely not to hear so often from my family left behind, yet for righteousness’ sake I am, through Divine favor, made content.
Woolman clearly sees a system that provides the convenience of speedy communication to the system’s users but does so at tremendous cost to its workers and to God’s creatures. He will not ignore it. He will not go along with it.
How would you and I live differently if our hearts were truly reshaped by God so that we strove every day to make the details of how we treat all people and all of God’s earth reflect the love God fills us with? How would our lives be different? How would our churches and communities be different? How would our country and world be different?
Are we Captain Bildads? Are we addicted to the dividends that the practical world generates when it is not bound by love and compassion?
Or does God come first?
And what would the details of our life look like if God came first as we try to live in this global, complex, increasingly uber-technological world?
Call me eager, eager to dive into those questions through this blog and with your help.
