When Mr. Bernard Shaw’s black girl in darkest Africa sets off in search of God she takes with her, in addition to a knobkerry, “the Bible as her guidebook”.1 As the girl goes to strike the gods she finds, they vanish, and a certain number of pages of her Bible scatter into dust. The interpretation of the parable is that Mr. Shaw has gone to the Bible to find God, and failing in his quest, has blamed the Bible. Otherwise the matter would not concern us. His book has gone into many editions, and his opinions influence a large following ; in this instance they have a dangerous plausibility which is worth attention if only to show how foolish this world’s wisdom can be.
Before the war it was customary to describe Mr. Shaw as an iconoclast, and the idols he broke were civilization’s conventions. His black girl with her knobkerry breaks several idols but they are not the God of Genesis, of Job, of Solomon, of Micah, of Jesus, of Peter and John as the author fondly imagines them to be. The true God of the Pentateuch is not an irate tyrant thirsting for the sacrificial blood of babies ; He is the Creator of all things, who, having accorded man his free will, promises reconciliation to man even after man has used his free will to disobey a simple commandment. The true God of Job is not a sneering controversialist as Shaw depicts Him ; He is a loving Eternal Father showing us that perfection of character comes through trial and suffering. The true God of Ecclesiastes is not a young philosopher in Greek costume advising us to take the world as it comes because after it there is nothing ; He is the Fountain of all wisdom advising us that we must reverence Him and that the keeping of His commandments is the whole duty of man.
Micah and Moses do not disagree concerning the character of God as the Shavian black girl professes to have discovered. It must be pointed out that Micah made a greater declaration of God’s will than that it simply is that men should do justice, love mercy and walk humbly. The prophet added that in spite of princes who oppress and judges who take bribes from evil-doers, of priests who are hypocrites and prophets who teach falsely for money, God’s glory shall fill the earth and “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks : nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more, but they shall sit every man under his vine and his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.” Moses’ God told him the same. But Mr. Shaw missed it, and therefore blandly tells us that “The alternative to the Book of Genesis is Mr. H. G. Wells’ Outline of History” and he adds this gem :
“Within the last two hundred years a body of history, literature, poetry, science, and art has been inspired and created by precisely the sante mysterious impulse that inspired and created the Bible. In all these departments it leaves the Bible just nowhere.”
As it happens, Mr. Wells has been busy with voice and pen lately, but his “gospel” as proclaimed to the students of the London School of Economics seems a very poor “alternative” to the sublime vision of Micah and Moses. This is what Mr. Wells proclaimed to students of economics :
We are living in a civilisation which is very rapidly going to pieces. There may be a dreadful fate in store for many young people here to-night. You may be shot, or maimed and smashed ; you may be scourged or starved before your lives run out ! The world as we know it is visibly collapsing. Every week there is something tumbling down or something breaking up, and it is impossible to say how far this ruin will extend. The capitalistic system is collapsing. The signs can be read on every hand. Our economic system has failed too, due to the extraordinary thing that while mankind has increased production to an enormous extent, one-half of the world is threatened with famine. In spite of these calamities which endanger our very existence, nothing is being done. The reason is apparent. There are no comprehensive organisations in the world capable of undertaking the restoration of our money and credit, our economic and social life.
Our directive organisations have not kept pace with the developments of modern life, and that is the essence of the trouble which threatens ruin and disaster to the world to-day. Just as in the time of Noah, when the Flood came, we must build an ark amid the waste of ruin that is around us. And if our efforts to save civilisation fail, then we may take heart in that perhaps we are laying the foundations for another and far better one.
If they will not have Moses or the prophets there is nothing very hopeful about Mr. Wells. But it was the God of Genesis who told Noah how to make the ark. There is still an ark whereby we may be saved even the waters of baptism but we have to go to the Bible which Mr. Shaw discards for it.
But Mr. Shaw seems to have read his New Testament even more carelessly than his Old. He is shrewd enough to see that the horrors of the crucifixion have been idolised and idealised into a system of “Crosstianity”, but he is not discerning enough to see that Jesus was more than a “conjurer” speaking of an impractical love. Nor does he escape the popular error that Peter is the rock on which Christ’s Church is built That rock was not the Apostle, but the Apostle’s inspired declaration that Jesus of Nazareth was God’s anointed Son, the One whom Moses and the prophets said should come. The black girl finds an aged wandering Jew who is asking if one has come who “said I must tarry till he comes”.
But not only did Mr. Shaw miss that part of the verse that states of John :”Yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die ; but if I will that he tarry” overlooking the significance of the little word “if”, but in a nauseating reference to the Book of Revelation as “a curious record of the visions of a drug addict”, has the ignorance to tell his readers that “a thousand years were specified as the period that was to elapse before Jesus was to return as he had promised !” “In 1000 A.D. the last possibility of the promised advent expired” ! After that it does not surprise us that this man, forgetting Palestine, declares that the only country which “seems to be reviving is Russia which has thrown the Old Testament violently and contemptuously into the waste-paper basket” ! Such is the wisdom of the wise !
Yet Mr. Shaw can confess of the Bible that “In revolutionary invective and Utopian aspiration it cuts the ground from under the feet of Ruskin, Carlyle, and Karl Marx; and in epics of great leaders and great rascals it makes Homer seem superficial and Shakespeare unbalanced”. It is such a Book, however, which Mr. Shaw thinks it an “important message at the present world crisis” to deny and deride.
The true message of the Bible is that Jesus is God’s anointed Son who is coming back to fulfill God’s gracious promises to make the earth a place of blessing and peace. Some who heed the foolishness of preaching will enter His kingdom. The foolishness of the wise of this world assuredly would keep us out.
References
- The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, by Bernard Shaw.
Reflections on the Potter and the Clay