Easy faith
Huffpost Religion recently ran an excerpt from Desmund Tutu's new book God is Not a Christian. It begins:
They tell the story of a drunk who crossed the street
and accosted a pedestrian, asking him, "I shay, which ish the other shide
of the shtreet?" The pedestrian, somewhat nonplussed, replied, "That
side, of course!" The drunk said, "Shtrange. When I wash on that
shide, they shaid it wash thish shide."
Tutu's
point is that context determines perspective; he's implying that the strongest
determiners of faith are accidents of birth. Other stories, like the one about the blind men and the elephant, make the same point. Such parables are meant to
discourage exclusive claims to truth.
